LeBron James and ESPN are closing in on a “Last Dance”-style documentary and they better dedicate a few episodes to The Process

According to The Athletic, LeBron James and ESPN are closing in on an agreement for a behind-the-scenes documentary series in the mold of Michael Jordan’s “The Last Dance.” The doc is expected to pull from footage across James’ entire career, including never-before-seen material, and LeBron is also expected to have a camera crew documenting his time with the Sixers this season.

LeBron James is getting The Last Dance treatment in Philly

LeBron James and ESPN are “closing in” on an agreement for a behind-the-scenes documentary series that will be similar to Michael Jordan’s “The Last Dance,” per The Athletic’s @AndrewMarchand.

The documentary is expected to use footage from James’ entire career, including some… pic.twitter.com/Vaomu1ZKz4

— Yahoo Sports (@YahooSports) July 30, 2026

I love it. Of course I love it.

A “Last Dance”-style series following the greatest player of all time through what he’s calling the final chapter of his career, set in Philadelphia, chasing a championship?

Sign me up immediately. I have one demand, and it’s non-negotiable if this thing is going to be done right. ESPN has to dedicate real time to the entire history of The Process, because that’s the actual story here.

So here’s the full history. The real one. The one ESPN cannot afford to skip.

Before the Process: The Team That Had to Be Torn Down

Back in 2012, the Sixers were the 8th seed in the East, a roster led by Andre Iguodala, Lou Williams, and Jrue Holiday. They knocked off an injured Chicago Bulls team in a 1-vs-8 first-round matchup, a genuine high point at the time.

Then came the disastrous three-team blockbuster that landed them Andrew Bynum, who barely played, and the whole thing cratered to a 34-48 record the next season. Jrue Holiday made his first All-Star team that year, but by the end of it, the writing was on the wall. Philadelphia needed to blow it up and start over.

Enter Sam Hinkie, the Father of the Process

The man they hired to rebuild was Sam Hinkie, a disciple of Daryl Morey from the Rockets, and his philosophy was simple and radical.

Do whatever it takes to land a top-level superstar, because championship teams are built around top-level talent. Everything else was negotiable. On August 14, 2013, Hinkie hired Brett Brown away from the Spurs to coach the team, with player development as the central emphasis, and then he got to work tearing the roster down to the studs.

Hinkie’s first move was trading his lone All-Star, Jrue Holiday, to New Orleans for Nerlens Noel and a 2014 first-round pick.

He drafted the athletic Michael Carter-Williams out of Syracuse, then spent the deadline actively making the roster worse, flipping three veterans for six second-round picks. Carter-Williams put up big numbers on a barren roster and won 2014 Rookie of the Year.

The following draft is where it all crystallized.

Hinkie drafted Joel Embiid despite the foot injury, and acquired Dario Saric in a trade that netted future picks. Neither played in 2014-15, with Embiid rehabbing and Saric stashed in Europe.

The team kept losing and kept stacking assets, and “Trust the Process” became the rallying cry. Hinkie ignored his critics, refused to sign veterans who’d win meaningless games, and instead found undrafted gems like Robert Covington and T.J. McConnell, both of whom became fan favorites. At the 2015 deadline, he took heat for trading reigning Rookie of the Year Michael Carter-Williams for more future picks.

The Fall of Hinkie and the Colangelo Mess

In the 2015 draft, the Sixers landed the third pick and took Jahlil Okafor, who shined in 2015-16 while Embiid sat out following two surgeries on the same foot. Plenty of people wondered if Embiid would ever be anything but a bust.

Then the league stepped in. On December 8, Jerry Colangelo was hired in a move backed by the NBA, positioned as the guy who’d transition the Sixers from tanking to winning.

Colangelo wasn’t working with Hinkie. He was quietly trying to hire staff behind his back.

The team finished a brutal 10-72, and on April 6, 2016, Sam Hinkie resigned. The Father of the Process was gone, but his fingerprints were everywhere. He left behind Embiid, Simmons, Saric, Covington, McConnell, and four future first-round picks plus a pile of seconds.

The very next day, Jerry Colangelo hired his own son, Bryan, to replace Hinkie. With the first pick in 2016, they drafted Ben Simmons.

A new era had begun, and it started with nepotism.

The Bryan Colangelo Era and the Burner Account Disaster

Heading into 2016-17, Embiid and Saric were set to debut while Simmons missed the entire season with a foot injury. Embiid, who nicknamed himself “The Process” in tribute to Hinkie, was electric, putting up 20.2 points, 7.8 rebounds, and 2.5 blocks in just 25 minutes a night before a knee injury ended his season after 31 games.

At the deadline, Nerlens Noel was finally traded for a underwhelming return of Justin Anderson and two seconds, since Embiid had taken his spot. Saric nearly won Rookie of the Year in Embiid’s absence.

In the 2017 offseason, they landed the third pick and traded up with Boston for the first overall selection, using it on Markelle Fultz, a college star whose shot-making had scouts drooling. Except Fultz’s shot form mysteriously fell apart in the NBA, and his struggles dominated headlines all season.

While Embiid missed time with a facial injury, Simmons led the team on a 16-game winning streak to 52 wins, blowing past projections, and won Rookie of the Year with 15.8 points, 8.1 rebounds, and 8.2 assists in a loaded class.

They beat the Heat in five in the first round, with Simmons dominating.

In the second round, Brad Stevens and the Celtics game-planned to neutralize Simmons and Embiid, and Simmons’s complete lack of a jumper became the fatal flaw in a five-game loss. The pattern was already forming.

Then came the offseason that should have been about the draft and instead became about Bryan Colangelo’s ego. The Ringer released a bombshell report exposing tweets allegedly made by Colangelo under fake burner accounts, used to criticize his own players and leak sensitive information.

The reporting suggested Colangelo wanted the Sixers’ success credited to him rather than Hinkie. Colangelo’s defense was to claim his wife was behind the accounts, which somehow made it worse, and on June 7, 2018, he resigned in humiliation.

Obviously, The Process is a Story ESPN can’t Gloss Over

Here’s the thing. LeBron James signing with the Sixers isn’t just another star changing teams. It’s the payoff to twelve years of some of the most creatively painful basketball this city has ever endured.

If this documentary treats Philadelphia as just the backdrop for LeBron’s last ride and glosses over how that roster got built and what those fans went through to get here, then it’s missing the entire point. The Process isn’t a footnote to this story. It IS the story.

So if LeBron James and ESPN don’t extend this thing to properly cover the timeline below, we’re not getting what we deserve.

Abbreviated Timeline: LeBron James & The Process (2014-2026)

2014: The Sixers draft Joel Embiid. A broken foot, a kid nobody was sure would ever play, and the single most important decision this franchise has made in forty years.

2015-16: The Sixers win 10 games. Ten. In an entire NBA season. Historic futility, openly embraced, and the low point that every fan who lived through it still brings up when someone tries to romanticize the tanking years.

2016: Ben Simmons goes first overall. Boston takes Jaylen Brown third in that same draft, which is a detail that becomes deeply relevant about a decade later.

2017: The Sixers trade up from three to one for Markelle Fultz. Jayson Tatum goes third. It was the right move at the time.

2018: 52 wins and a second-round exit to Jaylen Brown’s Celtics. The first real taste of what this era was going to be.

2018: Trade for Jimmy Butler. The swing for the fences.

2019: 51 wins, and Kawhi Leonard’s shot bounces four times before falling. Game 7. That rim. Nobody in this city has recovered.

2019: Sign-and-trade Jimmy Butler to Miami for Josh Richardson. A decision that gets worse every single year.

2020: Swept by Jaylen Brown and the Celtics. Brett Brown gets fired, Doc Rivers gets hired.

2020: Draft Tyrese Maxey. Twenty-first overall. The best pick this organization has made since Embiid.

2021: First place in the East. Blew 18- and 26-point leads to the Atlanta Hawks in the second round. Game 7 at home. Ben Simmons passes up a wide-open dunk with three minutes left and shoots 34 percent from the free throw line for the series. The franchise never fully recovered from that possession.

2021-22: Simmons sits out the entire season. For reasons that changed depending on the week.

2022: Trade Simmons, Seth Curry, Andre Drummond, and two firsts for James Harden. Then win 51 games and lose in the second round again, this time to Jimmy Butler’s Heat, because of course it was Butler.

2023: 54 wins, a 3-2 series lead over Boston, and Jayson Tatum drops a Game 7 record 51 points to end it. The same Tatum they passed on in 2017.

2023 Summer: Embiid wins MVP over Jokic, Doc gets fired, Harden requests a trade. Then Harden goes to the Clippers in October.

2024: 47 wins and a first-round exit to the Knicks. Then they sign Paul George that summer.

2025: Bad again. But they draft VJ Edgecombe third overall out of it.

2026: Exceed expectations at 46 wins, eliminate Boston in the first round. Then lose to the eventual champion Knicks in the second.

2026 Summer: Trade Paul George and a pile of picks to Boston for Jaylen Brown. The same Jaylen Brown who has personally eliminated this franchise more times than any player alive.

2026: Sign LeBron James.

Again, The Moments Above Are Just The Top Bullet Points Too

That timeline is twelve years of second-round exits, blown leads, franchise players who quit on the city, coaches fired for losing series they should have won, and draft picks that turned into the wrong player more often than the right one.

Every single entry on that list was a fanbase getting its hopes raised and then watching them collapse in the most creative way the basketball gods could dream up.

Kawhi’s shot bounced four times. Simmons passed up the dunk. Tatum dropped 51 in a Game 7. The Hawks came back from 26. The Heat, the Celtics, the Knicks, the Raptors, the Hawks, all of them took turns ending seasons that started with real belief attached to them.

That’s the emotional weight this documentary has to capture, because without it, the ending doesn’t mean anything.

Lane The Plane, ESPN

Now LeBron James is signing here on a two-year, $8 million deal because he believes this roster can win a championship. But that sentence only carries the weight it deserves if you understand everything that came before it.

The suffering is what makes the payoff matter. A “Last Dance”-style doc that skips the pain and jumps straight to the triumph is just a commercial. The real film, the one worth making, walks you through all twelve years of heartbreak first, so that when LeBron puts on that Sixers jersey, you actually feel what it means to this city.

I’m sure ESPN will touch on it. My worry is that they’ll touch on it and move on, treating the Process as a two-minute setup instead of the foundation of the entire story.

Give it episodes. Give it the Kawhi shot in full. Give it the Simmons Game 7. Give it the ten-win season. Make people who never suffered through it understand why grown adults in this city cried when the LeBron news broke.

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