WE GOT HIM: LeBron James is signing with the Philadelphia 76ers on a two-year, $8 million deal

LeBron James is coming to Philadelphia. Klutch Sports and Rich Paul told ESPN on Thursday that one of the greatest basketball player who ever lived is signing a two-year, $8 million contract with a player option to play alongside Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, Jaylen Brown, and VJ Edgecombe in a Sixers uniform.

I have read that sentence roughly forty times since it hit my timeline and I still don’t fully believe it.

LeBron James is coming to Philadelphia

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Two years. Eight million dollars. LeBron James is taking a fraction of what he could have commanded anywhere else in the league because the money stopped being the point a long time ago and the only thing left on his list is another championship.

LeBron James said it himself in the statement he put out, and the statement is the part that’s going to stick with this city for a very long time.

LeBron James on Twitter:

another championship.

I believe I can help make the Philadelphia 76ers a championship team and I am so excited to energize a new fan base and start this incredible journey one last time.  

Thank you LA. Miami I’ll forever love and Northeast Ohio will always home!

🙏🏾🫡👑

— LeBron James (@KingJames) July 24, 2026

LeBron said he thought he was done when the season ended. He wasn’t ready to announce it, he needed time to really decide, but he was pretty sure he had played his last game. He was honest at that final press conference when he said he needed to look at himself and figure out whether he still loved this game. He does. He said he still truly loves it and has more to give.

Then the part that matters most for anyone reading this in Philadelphia.

“I’m not going for money. I’m not going for family. What am I really playing for at this point? I still want to sacrifice. I still want to work. I still want to grind. I still want to compete, to win and to have a chance at the feeling of winning another championship. I believe I can help make the Philadelphia 76ers a championship team and I am so excited to energize a new fan base and start this incredible journey one last time.”

He thanked LA. He said he’ll forever love Miami. He said Northeast Ohio will always be home. And then he chose Philadelphia for the last chapter, which means the final years of the most accomplished career in the history of the sport are going to be spent trying to end a championship drought that started in 1983.

Every Single Person in This City Played a Part

Maxey led the charge as a fellow Klutch client who has trained with LeBron for years and calls him a big brother. Embiid leaned on the relationship they built winning gold together in Paris in 2024.

Jaylen Brown built on the MVP endorsement LeBron gave him unprompted back in February. Josh Harris had a conversation with him at Fanatics Fest. Bob Myers went on Rich Paul’s own podcast and told him this was his best chance to win. Mike Gansey told The Athletic he respects the hell out of him and considers him the best player of all time.

Then it went beyond the Sixers entirely. Saquon Barkley pitched him at a youth football camp in Haddonfield and told him he’d be remembered forever if he brought a title here.

Mike Trout pitched him at All-Star Media Day at Citizens Bank Park. Governor Josh Shapiro ran into him at a restaurant in New York and made the case over dinner. The entire commonwealth was deputized and every single person delivered the same message from a different angle until the volume of it became impossible to ignore.

It worked. All of it worked.

A Few People Owe This City an Apology

Tracy McGrady told everyone that Embiid and Jaylen Brown hadn’t even spoken since the trade, which the Sixers’ president publicly refuted and ESPN’s reporting later buried completely when it surfaced that Maxey, Embiid, and Brown were all in active contact with LeBron throughout the process. The narrative that LeBron didn’t want to come here because of Embiid was always garbage, and it turned out to be exactly that.

The “certified LeBron hater” over at 94.1 WIP who went on the air and told a championship-starved fanbase they should be embarrassed about the courting process can spend the next two years watching LeBron James play at Wells Fargo Center and thinking about that take. The Process was never the problem. Rich Paul calling it a negative was never going to be the deciding factor. The city wanted this, the players wanted this, the front office wanted this, and now it’s real.

What This Roster Looks Like Now

Embiid. Maxey. Jaylen Brown. LeBron James. VJ Edgecombe. Anfernee Simons for the shooting. Labaron Philon coming off an 18-point, seven-assist summer league debut. Adem Bona and Ariel Hukporti behind Embiid at center. That is the most talented starting five in the Eastern Conference and arguably the most talented in basketball if Embiid is healthy, which remains the single biggest variable attached to any Sixers season.

At $8 million over two years, the Sixers got the greatest player in NBA history at a price that leaves them room to keep building around him. That’s not a signing, that’s a gift.

ITS TIME

The Sixers haven’t won a championship since 1983 and haven’t been to the Finals since Iverson dragged them there in 2001. There are people in this city in their fifties who have never seen this franchise win anything. There are fans who sat through the tanking years, the Simmons saga, the injury years, and every second-round exit believing that something like this was eventually coming even when nothing about the evidence supported it.

LeBron James is a Philadelphia 76er. He took less money to be here. He said he wants to help make this a championship team and start this journey one last time.

Welcome to Philadelphia, LeBron James. This city is going to love you like nowhere else ever has.

WE GOT HIM.

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