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  • Bryce Harper took the wrong approach. But that’s not saying he wasn’t completely right.

    Bryce Harper took the wrong approach. But that’s not saying he wasn’t completely right.

    Bryce Harper was right to be frustrated.

    He had the right diagnosis. He had the right prescription. He had the right motivation.

    He took the wrong approach.

    The first four of those things are the only ones that should matter to anybody invested in the Phillies’ approach to this year’s MLB trade deadline. That goes for the fan base and the members of the media, both social and mass.

    To the bloggers, the Twitterers and the TikTokers, the radio gabbers, the ink-stained goobers still typing with two hands, and to anybody else who has spent the last couple of days displacing their aggression upon a guy who desperately wants to win and has served honorably on the mission … let’s all heed the words of QB1 and “keep the main thing the main thing.”

    The Phillies do ‘need some help’ by trades. But they also need some from Bryce Harper and his teammates.

    The main thing is this: Harper is right.

    “I think we need some help,” Harper told reporters earlier this week. “But you know, I think we’ve proved pretty much all year we’ve done a pretty good job. But anytime you can get some help in here and reinforcements, I think it helps.”

    The Phillies need all the help they can find. Rarely does a World Series contender arrive at August with this many holes. Dave Dombrowski will be doing his roster a massive disservice if he operates in triage mode. Starting pitching? Relief pitching? One outfielder? Two? Yes and yes and yes and yes. If the Phillies want to escape the slippery slope they are currently sliding down, they can’t afford to treat the deadline as an either-or proposition.

    “I think both,” Harper said when asked whether the Phillies need an arm or a bat. “Obviously, everybody knows what we need …”

    Phillies designated hitter Kyle Schwarber has been one of baseball’s best power hitters. But the question is, how long can he sustain this?Yong Kim / Staff Photographer

    Is it unrealistic to think that the Phillies can acquire everything they need over the next three days? Maybe. But they darn sure need to try. Harper, Kyle Schwarber, Zack Wheeler — all are at points of their career where they may never be as good again as they are right now.

    Factor in Jesús Luzardo and Jhoan Duran and Cristopher Sánchez and the Phillies almost certainly will never have another season with this much individual dominance among their stars. That group alone is enough to give the Phillies a near-even chance in practically any playoff series. But they need to get there, and they need to do it with enough depth to win three or four series in a row.

    Brandon Marsh learned a lot clawing out of his last slump. He’s relying on those lessons to get right again.

    Unrealistic? Maybe not when considering how low the bar for improvement is. The Phillies entered Thursday with the lowest on-base percentage in the majors. There’s no mystery why they seem to struggle to score runs. The fewer men a team puts on base, the fewer of them can score.

    Harper sees it. Think about your frustration level when watching it on TV. Now think about how you’d feel if you were watching it from the dugout, or the on-deck circle, or while standing on second base.

    Phillies left fielder Brandon Marsh (right) has been a consistent threat but is in the throes of a slump.Yong Kim / Staff Photographer

    The five most discouraging words in the human language are, “Now batting fifth, Edmundo Sosa.” The seven most discouraging words: “Now batting sixth, Bryan De La Cruz.” The Phillies lineup right now is Harper and Schwarber and a bunch of replacement-level players.

    That’s almost literally true, by the way.

    Besides Schwarber and Harper, the only two regulars with a positive offensive WAR are Bryson Stott and Brandon Marsh. The Phillies entered Thursday with MLB’s fourth-worst aggregate WAR among position players. That’s especially damning when you consider how good Harper and Schwarber have been. The only teams worse are the Mets, Rockies, and Reds. Just ahead of them are the Blue Jays and Angels. All will be selling off their rosters over the next few days.

    The Phillies must go through the Dodgers. To do it they’ll need to find a lefty reliever at the trade deadline.

    The Phillies shouldn’t need to bankrupt their system to bring in a line change at the trade deadline. Four years ago, they acquired Marsh, David Robertson, Noah Syndergaard, and Sosa midseason. Two years ago, they landed Austin Hays, Carlos Estevez, and Tanner Banks. Last year, they traded for Duran and Harrison Bader and also signed Robertson. Quantity is rarely an issue.

    Rarely has it been so sorely needed.

    The trade deadline’s dirty little secret is that it doesn’t matter nearly as much as everybody dreams it does. Baseball is too fluky a sport to expect two months of game-changing impact simply because you paid a high price. I would venture to guess that Dombrowski’s results haven’t been better or worse than the average GM.

    Former Phillies prospect Hao-Yu Lee, who was traded to Detroit for Michael Lorenzen is hitting is hitting .307 in his last 51 games for the Tigers.David Banks

    He won the Marsh deal, marginally lost the Hays deal, and more or less got what he paid for in aggregate. One exception could be the 2023 trade for starter Michael Lorenzen. Prospect Hao-Yu Lee is hitting .307 with an .817 OPS in his last 51 games for the Tigers. He bats right-handed, by the way.

    The overarching point here is the process. The smoke signals are at least promising. The Phillies scouted Mets righty Clay Holmes’ rehab outing earlier this week. He’s a guy who would make a ton of sense, both as a rotation stabilizer in the present and as a potential postseason swingman in the future.

    A report from the New York Post had the Phillies interested in Blue Jays outfielder Daulton Varsho. The son of former Phillie Gary Varsho, he had five extra-base hits in the Blue Jays’ American League Division Series win over the Yankees last October. He’s left-handed, but, again, the Phillies need help everywhere. Plus, he can play center field.

    Toronto Blue Jays’ Daulton Varsho (center), son of former Phillies outfielder Gary Varsho, is a player some say the Phillies are looking at.Nathan Denette

    The broader point about Holmes and Varsho is they are the guys the Phillies should be targeting. Each is a couple months way from free agency. Dombrowski and John Middleton both have a history of taking big swings on players with years of club control beyond the present season. Duran and Marsh both fit that profile.

    Before them: Hunter Pence, Cliff Lee, etc. The Phillies’ needs are broad enough that they can’t afford to pay a premium price for any single player. Rentals sure look like the way to go for a team in their situation. Add the Orioles’ Taylor Ward to the list.

    As for Harper? From at least one perspective, the debate about his comments is much ado about nothing. There’s nothing less consequential than a player’s relationship with his front office.

    From another perspective, Harper would be wise to reconsider his approach. Nothing that he says is going to change a thing about how the Phillies operate at the deadline. It’s far more likely that his outspokenness ramps up the pressure on the guys whom he has implicitly deemed to be not good enough.

    The issue is not so much clubhouse chemistry as it is individual psyche and its impact on performance. Sure, some guys need a kick in the butt. But many others need a comfort zone. Whatever Harper’s evaluation of the talent around him, however accurate it is, the Phillies are likely going to need at least one or two of them to perform to win a World Series.

    Next time, he’d be better off keeping his honesty off the record and taking comfort in the fact that the rest of us already know exactly what the Phillies need to do.

  • LeBron James chose underdog Philly like Bryce Harper, Pete Rose, and Saquon Barkley. He chose us.

    LeBron James chose underdog Philly like Bryce Harper, Pete Rose, and Saquon Barkley. He chose us.

    To witness the reaction to LeBron James’ decision to play in Philadelphia the next two seasons, you might have thought we’d beaten the Russians to the moon or ended the next world war. Folks drove down Broad Street honking their horns, heads hanging out of their cars. Total strangers standing on subway trains staring at their phones got the notification, looked up, and high-fived. Somewhere, lions lay down with lambs.

    This, for a 41-year-old coming off the worst of his 23 seasons?

    Yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes. But why?

    Because Philadelphians won. They won the LeBron Sweepstakes.

    The King chose Philly.

    The King chose us.

    James chose a franchise that hasn’t won an NBA title in 43 years, has only one title in almost 60 years, and hasn’t advanced past the second round of the playoffs in 25 years. He chose a city with three total championships since James was born in 1984; James himself has won four. He chose a city with a national reputation for abrasiveness, confrontation, and, above all, losing — a reputation resented by the residents of Philadelphia and its region.

    Still: He chose us. He might occasionally commute to Philly from Manhattan, but he’s paying his taxes here.

    If Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey and Jaylen Brown and VJ Edgecombe again fall short in the playoffs, LeBron still chose us. He could have joined Steph Curry in San Francisco, Giannis Antetokounmpo in Miami, James Harden in Cleveland.

    But no. We won. And we acted like it.

    Phil Martelli, revered basketball coach and lifelong Philadelphian, knows why.

    “I’ve had this in my head forever. People think we’re bad losers. That’s not what we are,” Martelli said. “We are insufferable winners.”

    Validation

    I’ve been a Philadelphian for 31 of my 57 years. Martelli’s been a Philly guy for all 71 of his. I told him that, in my three decades, I’ve observed that Philly has an inferiority complex, a chip on its shoulder, and a healthy sense of pride.

    “No doubt,” Martelli agreed. “No doubt.”

    So, when good things happen, a dam always breaks. From climbing greased streetlights to eating horse manure (this really happened), Philly fans have earned a reputation of, well, overexpression when the rare championship finally lands at their feet.

    It is that rarity, that desperation for validation, that generates euphoria when a big name decides that Philly is good enough for him.

    That’s the key: The decision must belong to the player.

    LeBron James validated Philadelphians when he picked us. Yong Kim / Staff Photographer

    That’s why Reggie White doesn’t qualify. Eric Lindros, Julius Erving, Moses Malone, Roy Halladay, all trades or purchases.

    Bryce Harper, however, already had won an MVP by the spring of 2019. The Yankees, Dodgers, Giants, and White Sox courted him. So did the Padres, until they signed Manny Machado, who, folks might not remember, was the Phillies’ first choice. But the fans always preferred Harp, and, ultimately, Harp preferred them. And he was only 26.

    Similarly, by the 1978 offseason, Pete Rose had been a National League MVP, but he also was the MVP of one of his two World Series titles with Cincinnati. He was a stone-cold winner, and, even though he would be 37 in 1978, he was still the top free agent. The Phillies’ four-year, $3.24 million offer was the worst he received — others included more money, a lifetime $100,000 annual pension, oil and beer investments, and racehorse ownership — but Rose saw a winner in Philly, and Philly utterly rejoiced.

    The Phillies do ‘need some help’ by trades. But they also need some from Bryce Harper and his teammates.

    Compared with Harper and Rose, there was less excitement (and less competition) when Saquon Barkley signed with the Eagles in 2024. The Bengals, Texans, Ravens, and Bears contended but the Eagles won, and Barkley, a Lehigh Valley native, came home, to much rejoicing. That season Barkley produced record-setting numbers and pushed the Eagles to a Super Bowl win, so it’s tempting to recast his choice as being a bigger deal than it was. He’s still never going to have to buy his own beer in Philly.

    Saquon was the centerpiece of a run to the Eagles’ second Lombardi Trophy. Rose pushed the 1980 Phillies to the first World Series win in franchise history. Harper won a second MVP, in 2021, and led the Phillies to the 2022 pennant.

    They delivered on their promise.

    This seldom is the case.

    Unfulfilled promise?

    Age, injury, and Ryan Howard made Jim Thome redundant in the mid-2000s. Cliff Lee rejected the Yankees and took less to return to the Phillies in 2011, but to no good end. Jake Arrieta was a big-time bust, Lance Parrish was a late-80’s disappointment, Al Horford was a bad fit with Embiid, and Nnamdi Asomugha was cooked by the time he became a “Dream Team” Eagle in 2011.

    LeBron never will be classified among Philly’s worst signings, if only because his two-year, $8 million contract earns him 33% less than Anfernee Simons (for casuals, Simons is the new backup shooting guard). LeBron would be a magnificent value at $4 million a year if he was an assistant coach.

    The Sixers now boast LeBron James and Jaylen Brown. How do they stack up in the loaded East?

    Still, there are expectations. After LeBron signed, the Sixers’ aggregate odds to win the NBA title jumped from tied for sixth-best, at 20-1, to third-best, at about 9-1.

    “You know there’s people already staking out spots on Broad Street for the parade,” Martelli said.

    When Rose, Harper, and Saquon signed, everybody got excited. Nobody staked out spots on Broad Street.

    The LeBron-mania is palpable. Ticket and jersey sales have been inflated beyond sanity and availability, with no real end in sight. Don’t expect Knicks fans to take over Xfinity Mobile Arena this season.

    There has been excitement surrounding arrivals before, but never anything like this. The only arrival that might cause a similar disruption would involve a biblical rapture.

    Like that king, this King will be expected to raise his following from the dead.

    And, like that king, this King has chosen us.

  • Jalen Carter got his money. The Eagles have to hope he has grown up enough to earn it.

    Jalen Carter got his money. The Eagles have to hope he has grown up enough to earn it.

    Jalen Carter plodded off the dais late Wednesday morning with a look of relief on his face, as if he were a student who feared public speaking and had just delivered an oral presentation for class. The Eagles’ first practice of training camp, at the Jefferson Health Training Complex, had ended minutes before. It was humid, and Carter wiped his brow with a towel. To his left were Dom DiSandro, who is the Eagles’ chief security officer, and Toni Brown, who is Carter’s mother. Dom and mom. Maybe the two most important people in making sure that the Eagles get their money’s worth from Carter, who is, for the moment, the highest-paid defensive tackle in the National Football League.

    “I messed up a little bit,” Carter said to Brown and DiSandro, “but it was good.”

    The Eagles had announced Tuesday that they and Carter had agreed to a four-year contract extension that reportedly guaranteed him $106 million and could pay him as much as $160 million. When a modern professional sports franchise holds a press conference, it does so not just to acknowledge the news that has already broken. The point and purpose of the event, from the franchise’s perspective, are to send subtle signals about what the angle on the news is supposed to be.

    The Eagles extended Jalen Carter ‘based on future performance,’ Howie Roseman says

    So there was Brown near the dais. And there was tackle Jordan Davis, Carter’s teammate at the University of Georgia and with the Eagles, hanging near the back of the media tent, ecstatic for his friend. And coach Nick Sirianni and vice president Howie Roseman had been there hours earlier, making no mention of the risk the Eagles had taken on with this commitment to Carter.

    And there is risk here — plenty of it. Carter is just 25, and he has been a great player at times for the Eagles. He was the primary reason they beat the Los Angeles Rams in the 2024-25 NFC divisional round, and he has the power, strength, and raw talent to be the league’s best defensive tackle if he can stay healthy and keep his head on straight. But from the road-racing accident in January 2023 that led to two people’s deaths and caused him to drop far enough for the Eagles to trade in that year’s draft, to the decline in his play in the second half of his rookie season, to his dumb decision to spit in Dak Prescott’s face in last season’s opening game, to the two shoulder procedures that cost him a month of time, Carter has given the Eagles ample cause to cross their fingers here and hope.

    Roseman likes to consummate such deals — extending the contracts of players whom the Eagles want to retain for years — as early in an offseason as possible. Carter’s, though, took much longer, and the reasons go beyond the ones Roseman cited Wednesday, the suggestion that he and Drew Rosenhaus, Carter’s agent, were simply waiting for the market to settle.

    At just 25, Jalen Carter has the power, strength, and raw talent to be the league’s best defensive tackle if he can stay healthy.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer

    “We felt like [defensive tackle] was one of the strengths of our team,” Roseman said. “We want that to be one of the strengths of our team going forward. The defensive tackle position in the league, in college football — it’s a deficient position. It’s hard to find guys like that. So we feel like it was a priority.”

    Understand: That’s why Carter got this extension, and that’s why the Eagles didn’t have much of a choice in giving it to him. He’s that talented, that vital to Vic Fangio’s defense. “The attention he draws is incredible,” linebacker Zack Baun said. “You’ve got to have four hands on him,” meaning the opposing offensive line has to double-team Carter at all times, opening up possibilities for his teammates to make plays. There’s no replacing a player like Carter, and if he commits another awful mistake off the field, if he does something dirty on the field and the NFL doesn’t go easy on him again — as it did last season after the Prescott incident — he will cost the Eagles dearly. As Roseman and more than one player said Wednesday, the Eagles don’t pay you for what you’ve done. They pay you for what you’re going to do.

    To his credit, Carter said all the right things Wednesday, even pausing, after taking two questions, to thank the Eagles and chairman Jeffrey Lurie and even the media members in attendance. Any teacher or professor would have passed him on his assignment.

    “When you get picked in the first round, a top-10 pick, you get a little bit of decent money,” he said. “That didn’t change me. I still came here. I had a goal. I let the team know and the fans know that the goal was to get a championship. It happened, but it’s a new contract, and it’s time to get more championships for the city of Philly.

    “My goal wasn’t to come out and ‘Let me be the highest-paid defensive tackle.’ My goal was to build team chemistry and win a championship. I think that all falls in line with getting to where I’m at now.”

    The proof was never going to present itself Wednesday. The easy part is over for Jalen Carter. He got his extension, and now he has to earn it. Now he has to keep every day clean. “I don’t think money is ever going to change me,” he said. It was an assertion that could cut either way, for good or bad, and it’s on him, his support system, and the Eagles themselves to make sure they don’t regret that he said it.

  • Draymond Green is right about VJ Edgecombe. But he couldn’t be more wrong about LeBron James.

    Draymond Green is right about VJ Edgecombe. But he couldn’t be more wrong about LeBron James.

    Draymond Green is wrong about one thing. VJ Edgecombe’s agent should be ecstatic. If he isn’t, then Edgecombe should find a new agent. There are only a small handful of people who have more to gain from LeBron James signing with the Sixers, and all of them own charter helicopter services that fly between New York and Philly.

    That’s not to say we should completely dismiss the concern raised by Green in a recent podcast episode.

    “If I’m VJ Edgecombe’s agent, I’m not sure I’m happy with the summer that the 76ers have had,” said Green, the star power forward whose Warriors were among a number of contenders that had hoped to land James. “Like you go from being sometimes the second option when [Joel] Embiid was out to sometimes being the fifth option. It’s a big, big difference.”

    Green isn’t wrong about the overarching issue. What he’s missing is that the issue predated James, and that James is much more likely to alleviate it than exacerbate it.

    Nick Nurse will need to be mindful of Edgecombe’s usage rate. On a team with three prime-aged players accustomed to getting 20-plus shots per game plus LeBron, the Sixers would be doing themselves a disservice if they allowed Edgecombe to pause his superstar progression to spend a couple of seasons as a glorified Josh Hart. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call it a concern. But it is most definitely an unknown, one that carries some downside risk. Green is right about that.

    Edgecombe’s superstar flashes as a rookie occurred in moments and stretches where he operated as the primary option. We got the best glimpses of the guy he could become in the moments where the Sixers needed him to be that guy: when the offense ran through him, when the success or failure of the possession at hand was his to dictate. Remember the 20 points he scored in the first half against the Celtics in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference semis? Edgecombe scored five unassisted buckets during that heater. Four of them were pull-up jumpers, including a 27-footer from three-point range.

    Sixers guard VJ Edgecombe will be a key member of one of the NBA’s best five-man lineups.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer

    That aspect of Edgecombe’s game is why NBA folks mention guys like Jimmy Butler and Dwyane Wade when talking about his potential. Neither is a perfect comp. Butler is a better one than Wade. They both make sense from a stylistic viewpoint. Wade and Butler are/were two of the best at methodically getting to their spots and then owning that spot. That’s something a player needs to develop, both in terms of feel and in terms of pacing. So, yeah, it’s a potential drawback if Edgecombe always gets last dibs on spots. I’m just not sure I agree with Green that LeBron compounds the potential issue. I actually think he could prove to be a godsend for Edgecombe.

    Two things you can say about James throughout his career. One, he recognizes talent; and, two, he is willing, even eager, to facilitate things for that talent. That’s especially true of young talent.

    Kyrie Irving flourished alongside James in Cleveland. So did Austin Reaves in Los Angeles. James has played with a slew of young up-and-comers who didn’t have nearly the talent that Edgecombe has. All had plenty of opportunities. Kyle Kuzma and Brandon Ingram both averaged at least 18 shots per 100 possessions when they were on the court with James during his first year with the Lakers. Malik Monk had arguably the best season of his career as a 23-year-old Laker. D’Angelo Russell’s most efficient seasons — really, his only efficient seasons — came during the 125 games he played with the LeBron Lakers.

    Two years ago, Russell, James and Anthony Davis all averaged between 14 and 18 shots per game, while Reaves and Rui Hachimura both got between 10 and 12. Keep in mind, James and Davis both played 70-plus games and 35-plus minutes per night that season.

    Nurse will be able to find spots to let Edgecombe do his thing. James only played in 60 games last season. Embiid has played in 96 total over the last three seasons. During the course of a game, you could see a lineup with Edgecombe, Dean Wade, Anfernee Simons, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and a backup center on the court together.

    Can LeBron and the Sixers win it all? We ran the numbers.

    James shouldn’t be a drag on Edgecombe. He should be a force multiplier. There’d be a bigger reason for concern without him. Really, it’s what makes the signing of James so transformative. Before, there was some real reason to wonder how well Edgecombe and Maxey would mesh with a couple of ball-dominant alphas who both feel as if they have a lot left to prove. James’ biggest benefit to the Sixers is his ability to smooth that dynamic, not so much in the locker room but on the court with his style of play and commanding presence. There’s a very real world where he ends up serving as the bridge connector between the younger and older halves of the foursome.

    The biggest winners of last week’s wild turn of events were Edgecombe and his financial dependents. Them, and the Air Redick operators.

  • LeBron James believed he could win with Joel Embiid. The 2024 Olympics can show the Sixers how.

    LeBron James believed he could win with Joel Embiid. The 2024 Olympics can show the Sixers how.

    On a practice court in Paris early in the 2024 Summer Olympics, during the event that was supposedly a testament to his selfishness and opportunism, Joel Embiid glanced around the gym at the stars who soon enough would meet their expectations of gold-medal glory. There was Steph Curry. There was Kevin Durant. There was You Know Who.

    There was LeBron James.

    “This is a great setting for me because I’m playing with a lot of great players,” Embiid said then. “It’s all about finding ways to win. Whatever I can add to make sure we win, that’s all there is.”

    Two years later, with James’ decision last week to become Embiid’s teammate again, Embiid’s up-and-down experience during those Games should take on a new perspective and value. If the sacrifice of Embiid’s playing in those Olympics, dragging his body up and down the court for five games in that tournament, was a lost Sixers season in 2024-25, maybe the real upshot is that the entire experience and Team USA’s victory paved the way for James to stun everyone and sign with the 76ers.

    Only Embiid and James know how many text messages it took, how much pleading Embiid had to do to persuade James that Philadelphia was the place for him, that Embiid was healthy enough and committed enough for the two of them to win a title here. Whatever words and memes passed between them this offseason, they were enough that a source with knowledge of their interaction said that Embiid played “a significant role” in coaxing James to choose the Sixers.

    He wasn’t the only one. Bob Myers brought the necessary cachet and credibility, and Mike Gansey’s relationship with James from their time together in Cleveland helped, and Tyrese Maxey’s talent and connection to James through Klutch Sports mattered. Still, this was mostly a peer-led push from Embiid and Maxey to get James to see the possibilities here.

    Most importantly for the Sixers and the player who has been their centerpiece for the last 12 years, Embiid already had to have established a baseline of confidence with James for LeBron to take this leap.

    They’ve been in the NBA together since 2014, but when Embiid finally settled on playing for Team USA in ‘24 — after shopping his skills to France and Cameroon — his relationship with James could have fallen apart. And from an outsider’s view, it had the potential to crumble. It was a chore just to watch Embiid lumber around the floor, his left knee leaving his whole body wobbly and unstable, the sweat flooding his face.

    Joel Embiid (11) was not physically at his best in the 2024 Paris games but his efforts were a step towards a future alliance with LeBron James. Michael Conroy

    The complaints that Embiid had put his own aims and goals — “It feels good to be part of winning something as a team,” he said after Team USA’s victory over France in the gold-medal game — above the good of the Sixers were to be expected around here. They also ignored the priority that Embiid’s Team USA teammates, James among them, placed on competing on that stage, for the right to call themselves the best in the world. In that context, there was an understanding that it took a lot for Embiid just to be out there playing, and there was an appreciation that, without him and his 19 points and second-half dominance of Nikola Jokić in the semifinals against Serbia, the U.S. wouldn’t have won gold at all.

    No, Embiid wasn’t the overall force that James or Curry or Durant was in Paris, but he apparently didn’t do anything to dissuade James from thinking that he could win with him. Now Embiid gets another shot to witness what James does each day to prepare, how much that preparation matters to him, and how he can model the habits and behavior on which James has built his remarkable 24-year pro career.

    “Even though I see a broken-down Joel — in the fourth quarter, if ever the verb ‘trudge’ would fit anybody, Joel just trudges up the court — even given all of that, I would say it is absolutely true it’s good to [be] around these guys who have won something — just getting a different kind of culture,” former Sports Illustrated staff writer Jack McCallum, the author of Dream Team, the definitive work on the 1992 U.S. Olympic men’s basketball team, said in a 2024 interview.

    “What those guys got from the other guys. I was sort of astonished to hear that. … ‘Oh, I really found out how Karl Malone worked out. Oh, I really found out about Larry Bird’s shooting drills. Oh, I watched [Michael] Jordan and [Scottie] Pippen play defense, and I took that back to my team.’ As much as [the Sixers] are probably going, ‘No,’ I would say play, because I think there’s a real positive aspect that he can get out of that.”

    The time to show what he learned is now. At 32, without having appeared in more than 39 games in any regular season since 2022-23, Embiid can’t be counted on and shouldn’t expect to be the primary focus of the offense every single time he’s in the lineup. The best-case scenario for the Sixers, of course, is that he won’t have to be — not every night, not even most nights. Among James, Brown, Maxey, VJ Edgecombe, and an improved bench, they have plenty of firepower even if Embiid isn’t their alpha and omega. “You’re used to being the guy,” he said in Paris. “Now you’ve got to be with these guys.” What they’ll likely need is what he gave Team USA against Serbia. What they’ll need is Embiid to pick his spots, to win them particular games against particular opponents. He’ll still be vital, but he might end up bearing a lesser burden, and the team might be better for it.

    Team USA’s superstars won a gold medal together, and their work habits rubbed off on one another. Mark J. Terrill

    “There’s a certain amount of relief that comes with not having to bear the full responsibility of the franchise,” Steve Kerr, who was Team USA’s head coach in Paris, said at the time. “These guys get to lean on each other. Every game is different. They get to throw all the other nonsense out the window because none of it matters. The only thing that matters is winning the gold medal.”

    The same standard applies here and now for James and Embiid, for the Sixers, for a city waiting 43 years and counting for its latest NBA championship. Joel Embiid’s performance in those Olympics was mostly a hard watch and a distant memory until these last few days. But come next spring, if there’s a celebration here unlike any since 1983, the windfall will have been worth the stiff investment.

  • LeBron James’ maddening process was everything the Sixers needed

    LeBron James’ maddening process was everything the Sixers needed

    LeBron James chose the Sixers the only way he could.

    By letting everyone think there was no way he would.

    It all makes a little more sense now, doesn’t it? The weeks of deliberations, the radio silence, the professions of ignorance from those close to James, the cryptic dispatches from the Man Behind the (Recording Studio) Curtain. For nearly a month, the world watched and waited and speculated amid a maddening self-muzzling interrupted only by the occasional communication via proxy. What we knew came almost entirely from a handful of podcast episodes where Rich Paul sounded more like a bystander than James’ agent and confidant.

    Eyes were rolled. Deep breaths were sighed. Every lapsed news cycle was another shell in the stockpile of the critics and skeptics and purists who prefer brands of basketball to basketball brands. James’ most hostile audience has always been those who would rather live in a world where the Greatest of All Time is not first and foremost a business, man. But let’s give them their due. Even someone who is unbothered by the primacy of the 1099 in sports could have found their patience tested by James’ monthlong melodrama.

    LeBron James explained why he picked the Sixers. Here are four other factors that may have helped.

    In hindsight, James’ actions seem perfectly reasonable. This wasn’t attention-seeking behavior. It was the private torment of a man who was about to choose, via his own free will, to move from Los Angeles to Philadelphia.

    But it is deeper than that. Everybody involved needed it to go down this way. The significance of James’ signing with the Sixers is that he had every reason not to. He had other options, all of which had won championships within the last decade-and-a-half. They had superstars, some of the greatest to ever play the game: Steph Curry, Nikola Jokić, Giannis Antetokounmpo, James Harden.

    They had stronger personal ties, more spotlight appeal. They had the tech scene, the outdoors, the party scene. James said he was looking for basketball bliss. Which means there is a lot of political capital in the fact that he chose the Sixers. The basketball is all they had to offer.

    LeBron James has a well-documented friendship with Tyrese Maxey with both being part of Klutch Sports.Chris Szagola / AP

    It’s perfectly valid to question whether James at 42 years old will create the on-court impact worthy of the hoopla surrounding his decision. There are plenty of scenarios where the sum of the parts exceeds the whole. That’s true even before you factor in age and injury. In James, Jaylen Brown, and Joel Embiid, the Sixers have three players who are accustomed to having the loudest voice in the room. In Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe, they have two young players who have been plagued by bouts of deference when sharing the court with more established veterans.

    Yet, therein lies the significance of James’ deliberate evaluation of his options. The great general Charles de Gaulle once said that silence is the ultimate weapon of power. For weeks, everyone wondered what he would decide, and why. They thus imbued his ultimate decision and explanation with a tremendous amount of power. It meant something when James finally picked Maxey, and Edgecombe, and Brown, and, yes, Embiid. Everybody assumed James wouldn’t pick the Sixers because they were the Sixers. But he did pick them, which automatically makes them something nobody thought they were before.

    Intentional or not, James’ decision-making process has empowered both his new organization and his new teammates before he has even arrived.

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    You probably saw the social media video Maxey released in the wake of James’ signing. It was just a few seconds of him yelling spastically. You have to think that there was a little bit of that going on inside Brown and Embiid as well. At various points over the last few years, both players have allowed their veils to slip from their insecurities. Brown, passed over for the Olympic team after winning NBA Finals MVP, second fiddle to Jayson Tatum, inefficient, overpaid, not a real superstar.

    Embiid, injured, maybe finished, soft, selfish, supplanted by Maxey and Edgecombe as the heart and soul of a franchise. Who knows how those insecurities would have played in a power vacuum like that which could have existed without an unquestioned adult in the room. Insecurity is mostly thirst for validation. To be good enough for the best is a heck of a quench.

    Part of me wonders whether LeBron’s real attraction to the Sixers is an opportunity to lead. Not that he hasn’t always led, in both spirit and example. But the Sixers offer him a unique opportunity.

    More than any of the teams that pursued him this offseason, maybe even more than any team he has been on to this point, the Sixers were a team that genuinely needed exactly a player and a person like James is right now. It will be fascinating to see how the whole thing will look on the court, and what part James will play. Don’t be surprised if his biggest impact has already been made.

  • A note to LeBron James’ skeptics. And maybe to the Sixers’.

    A note to LeBron James’ skeptics. And maybe to the Sixers’.

    Anybody who doubts the existential significance of the news that broke late Friday morning only needed to walk through Center City as the world broke for lunch. It was the darnedest of things, borderline ridiculous, enough to make you cringe in real time at the thought of writing it down. You could keep a steady pace and never escape the news, for every few strides there was another person telling someone else at a volume everybody else could hear, receptionists and tradesmen and medical technicians and folks waiting for buses to parts unknown, flashing phone screens like lottery tickets and yelling “Yo” into microphones and, in at least one case, wandering alone looking up toward the sky with a smile so zen you could have sworn you were one of the ones getting left behind.

    It was a startling thing to witness. A revelation, even. Amid the direct and inescapable blast of modern day America’s technological firehose, there are still stories so universally relevant as to draw a chorus from chaos and fragmentation.

    It was also a reminder. A reminder that, however ardent his skeptics and critics, however loud their sighs, however long their rolls of eyes, LeBron James long ago escaped the containment of both basketball court and court of public opinion. He is a cultural singularity, to an extent that few athletes before him have ever been.

    That might be a helpful thing for the sighers and eye-rollers to keep in mind. Even if LeBron is not your GOAT, or even your ideal of what a great athlete should be, it has little bearing on the significance of his deciding to cast his final lot with the Sixers. He is unquestionably on the shortest of short lists for the best to have ever done something, and even if he isn’t the best still doing it, he is good enough to have had a standing offer from virtually every contending team in the NBA. Sure, there are teams, and fans of teams, who could argue that the spectacle might conflict with the mission. But, then, these are the Sixers. The spectacle is James choosing to join them. The reputational risk is disproportionately his to bear.

    LeBron James has won titles recently, and the Sixers have not been close. Mark J. Terrill

    It would be silly and self-disqualifying to ignore the magnitude of such a decision. Miami, Cleveland, Golden State, Denver — all have won titles. Those who have done it without him might be justified in thinking about legacies, whether that of the organization or that of the incumbent superstar. The Sixers have no legacy. Less than a month ago, they had very little hope of being relevant for the next three years. There aren’t many worst-case outcomes for them.

    Isn’t that the genesis of the reaction? Its universality? Its … audibility? On a basketball level, on a competitive level, one has no choice but to at least pay some reconsiderations to one’s prior assumptions about both player and team.

    The only thing the Sixers had going for them was the basketball level. Whether James proves to be a difference-maker is almost secondary to the fact that he thinks he can be. Nobody has ever done what he is attempting to do, on practically every different level. Win a title with a fourth team. Win a title at the age of 42. Win a title alongside Joel Embiid.

    Nobody has ever done those things. Yet, few have done anything that James has already done at every juncture of his career. He already holds the record for most minutes played at both age 40 and age 41. The 1,989 he logged last season were nearly 300 more than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1988-89. That doesn’t include the postseason, when James averaged 38 minutes and 23.2 points per game to lead the Lakers to a first-round upset of the Rockets without co-star Luka Dončić.

    James isn’t the player he once was, obviously. He may not even be the player that the current consensus holds him to be. His .594 true shooting percentage — a measure of collective offensive efficiency from the field and foul line — was slightly better than league average in 2025-26. His 30.8 points per 100 possessions average was his lowest since his rookie season and nearly four points lower than any season since. He does not rebound or force his way to the foul line the way he once did.

    But all of that only lowers James to the level of all of the other players throughout his career who weren’t anything close to the players he was in his prime. The difference is that those players were also in their primes. James is 41. If you erased everybody’s age from the stats, you’d easily zero in on him as a player who would be a massive value on a playoff roster at $4 million per year. That’s before you factor in the sum of his game: not only the ability to carry an offense for stretches as a primary scorer and spend the interim as an elite connector, but also the true ballplayer aspects of the game that escape quantification. It isn’t a fluke that the Lakers were a better defensive team in both the regular season and postseason when James was on the floor. It isn’t a coincidence that they rebounded better and committed fewer turnovers in the postseason.

    For all of James’ physical advantages, for all of the legitimate debates one can have when weighting those advantages in the Greatest of All Time argument, anybody who has watched James play should be able to appreciate the feel that he has for the game of basketball. He is the rare superstar who is also a glue guy, as evidenced by the varied rosters with which he has won championships.

    Therein lies the real coup for the Sixers.

  • LeBron chose the hard, dramatic path when he picked the Sixers. Get ready for a wild ride, Philly.

    LeBron chose the hard, dramatic path when he picked the Sixers. Get ready for a wild ride, Philly.

    If LeBron James is to be believed, if he was telling the truth when he took to Twitter/X late Friday morning to explain why he had decided to shock the basketball world and sign with the 76ers, if he was speaking from the heart and not merely trying to sell a new city and fan base on his choice, then this could be a red-letter moment in the history of Philadelphia sports.

    LeBron to the Sixers is unlike anything that has happened around here. Those with long memories like to think that back on Pete Rose’s signing with the Phillies in 1978 or the Sixers’ trading for Moses Malone in 1982 are comparable, and it’s understandable why. Those superstars provided exactly what those teams needed to win a championship, and each of those teams promptly won one — the Phillies in Rose’s second season, the Sixers in Malone’s first.

    But James exists in a different stratosphere economically and culturally from the one Rose and Malone did then. His fame is global. His wealth makes him a multibillionaire. He is among the five best basketball players ever to walk the Earth and among the most famous people walking it now. And he is a perfect fit for this Sixers team, for a franchise that hasn’t won a championship since 1983 and is making an all-in move to end that drought.

    The most heartening aspect of James’ decision isn’t even that, at 41 years old, he should be the ideal power forward/point guard to play alongside Joel Embiid, Jaylen Brown, Tyrese Maxey, and VJ Edgecombe. He is a player unlike any other; he can bring the ball up, get it out of Maxey’s hands, run a halfcourt offense, and play at any pace.

    No, the encouraging thing about his announcement Friday was his reason for making it. He admitted that he had contemplated retiring, that he had spent time with his family and friends, “with all the people I love,” he wrote, “trying to figure it all out.” He wanted to keep playing, but he had to acknowledge to himself why.

    “I’m not going for money,” he wrote, which partially explains why his contract with the Sixers reportedly is just two years long and worth just $8 million. “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.”

    Live reactions to LeBron coming to Philly

    That desire — to win an NBA championship — really was the only factor that stood a chance of drawing James here, and there was a case to be made that the Sixers didn’t even offer the best opportunity for him to win his fifth ring. The Miami Heat have Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bam Adebayo and Pat Riley and Erik Spoelstra and that vaunted Heat culture, and the Cleveland Cavaliers were just in the Eastern Conference finals last season, and he was familiar with both franchises and revered in both markets. He could have gone to either of those teams for sentimental reasons alone, never mind the rosters and the possibilities on the court, and no one would have been surprised.

    Instead, he chose a harder, more dramatic road. Assume he had decided to spend his final season or seasons with the Heat or the Cavaliers. Either of those teams could lose in the second round of the playoffs with him, and James’ legacy and reputation would remain untarnished. They love him in those places and always will. He helped build a dynasty in Miami. The championship he won in 2016 with the Cavs was Cleveland’s first in 52 years. Philadelphia is something else entirely, and not merely because the Sixers have gone so long without a parade.

    A franchise that hasn’t won a championship in more than 43 years, that was expected to win a championship for more than a decade in the aftermath of The Process and never got all that close, will be expected to win one because of James’ presence. People here had grown jaded about the Sixers, about all these iterations of the team, about a franchise that hasn’t had an identity since Allen Iverson was sacrificing his body every night for the sake of scoring 40. James’ decision has blended that cynicism with hope and created a powerful concoction. Ticket sales surely are skyrocketing already. The Sixers will be at the center of every hoops-related talk show, podcast, international news story, and dinner table conversation into the foreseeable future. Their roster will be a fascinating study in leadership and group dynamics, and it will test coach Nick Nurse and his staff like nothing they’ve encountered in their careers. The pressure on this team will be withering.

    LeBron James signed up for all of that. He did it because he wants to win and thinks he can with the Sixers. The stakes for this franchise, for pro basketball in this city, have never been higher. Get ready for a journey no one here has taken before. Get ready, win or lose with LeBron James, for the wildest ride you can imagine.

  • It’s concerning that the little things the Phillies and Dodgers did were quite the contrast

    It’s concerning that the little things the Phillies and Dodgers did were quite the contrast

    It’s time to talk about every baseball diehard’s favorite topic.

    The little things.

    They are often overlooked, and often deservedly so. The little things are the last bastion of managers, players, and fans when a team doesn’t do the big things very well. They are a coping mechanism. Often. But not always.

    We can’t ignore the little things anymore when it comes to the Phillies. The little things cost them dearly in losing two out of three to the Dodgers. You might write that off as happenstance, except that the Phillies are less than a year removed from a playoff loss to the Dodgers where the little things proved decisive.

    Last October, we saw Nick Castellanos get thrown out at third with no outs in the top of the ninth inning while representing the game-tying run. We saw Orion Kerkering react to a routine ground ball like he was an iPhone that had just been dropped in a toilet.

    These weren’t your average, everyday bad bounces and tough breaks. They were the kind of plays that leave you trembling at the heavens. You don’t expect to see something like that in a baseball game. You certainly don’t expect to see it again.

    And yet …

    The most disconcerting thing about the Phillies’ series loss to the Dodgers wasn’t the mistakes. It was that the mistakes looked remarkably similar to the ones they made while losing last year’s National League Division Series to the Dodgers.

    The lasting image from October was J.T. Realmuto with his mask off pointing toward first base as Kerkering’s brain prepares to betray him.

    J.T. Realmuto in action during the Phillies series against the Los Angeles Dodgers this week. Yong Kim / Staff Photographer

    The lasting image from this week’s series was Realmuto running from third base back to second base as everyone else stares in disbelief.

    Realmuto’s game-ending gaffe on the basepaths in the ninth inning on Tuesday was only the most iconic moment. Other consequential miscues included:

    • Bryson Stott running into a non-forceout at third base on a ground ball hit in front of him in Wednesday’s 9-5 loss.
    • Rafael Marchán popping up a sacrifice bunt attempt earlier in Wednesday’s game.
    • Trea Turner misplaying four balls in the series opener.

    Turner made up for his rough defensive showing by driving in five runs during the Phillies’ 10-7 win on Tuesday. But even that victory ended in inglorious fashion, with closer Jhoan Duran scrambling to get warm after the Dodgers halved a six-run deficit against Chase Shugart.

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    It’s bad enough to fail at the little things. It’s devastating when your opponent does the exact opposite. For all the bellyaching about the Dodgers’ payroll and the competitive behemoth that Andrew Friedman has built, the reality is they’d be an enviable organization even without their limitless capital.

    It’s true in the front office, where LA has made a habit of finding pitching like lefty Justin Wrobleski and is currently paying Max Muncy the same amount as the Phillies are paying Adolis Garcia. It’s also true in between the white lines.

    Trea Turner looks on as the Dodgers’ Freddie Freeman goes into second base on a double in the fifth inning of Wednesday’s game.Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer

    Baserunning? The Dodgers entered Thursday tied for second in the majors in extra bases taken and ranked fifth in efficiency. They also had the second-fewest outs on the basepaths. The Phillies rank 11th in extra bases but 24th in efficiency (credit where it’s due: They have the eighth-fewest outs on the basepaths).

    Situational hitting? The Dodgers rank 12th in productive out percentage (Phillies: 21st). They have 19 pinch hits compared with the Phillies’ nine.

    Phillies pitcher Alex McFarlane made his major league debut on Wednesday. He survived an All-Star-heavy order.

    Fielding? The Dodgers have committed just 37 errors, tied for the fewest in the majors. Advanced metrics rank them even further as one of the better fielding teams in the majors. Not so for the Phillies. The Phillies have committed 50, which ranks 14th.

    “If we play well, we’re capable of beating anybody,” manager Don Mattingly said after Wednesday’s 9-5 loss.

    That’s less of a boast than it probably reads on paper. The “if” is the point.

    The bigger the games, the bigger the little things become. It’s hard to blame Mattingly for a problem that predates him. That said, he is the one who needs to figure out a fix before another October arrives.

  • The Flyers’ rivalry with the Ducks might be the strangest part of a strange Philly sports summer

    The Flyers’ rivalry with the Ducks might be the strangest part of a strange Philly sports summer

    The Flyers’ schedule came out last week, and maybe I’m an exception in this regard, but I did not scan it immediately for games against the Penguins and Rangers and Capitals. My eyes fell on two dates: Saturday, Oct. 24, and Sunday, Jan. 3. A pair of unmissable matchups against the Flyers’ newest and most hated rivals: the … Anaheim Ducks?

    This has been an odd few months, in so many ways, for the Philadelphia sports scene. Think about some of the stories. The A.J. Brown trade watch. The reasons for that trade — i.e. his relationship, such as it was, with Jalen Hurts. The Phillies’ slow start. Their decision to fire Rob Thomson. Their inability to play reasonably intelligent baseball. The Sixers’ comeback over the Celtics. Their embarrassing sweep by the Knicks. Their decisions to fire Daryl Morey and hire Mike Gansey and trade for Jaylen Brown. Their nightly vigil for LeBron James.

    But none of those developments, none of them, compares to the sheer weirdness of the rising tensions between the Flyers and their Disneyland-adjacent counterparts. Imagine the Eagles and their fans hating the Jacksonville Jaguars or the Phillies and their fans being obsessed with beating the … Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, and you have a sense of just how strange it is that the Ducks have become mallard non grata around here.

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    It’s one thing to despise Sidney Crosby; the guy is one of the greatest players in hockey history, has won three Stanley Cups, has tormented the Flyers for years, plays exactly the tenacious, win-at-all-costs style that would make him a god if he wore orange and black, and is based just 300 miles west of the Xfinity Mobile Arena. It’s another to despise a franchise that has been in existence for just 33 years, has won just one Stanley Cup (almost 20 years ago), and was named after a children’s movie. But here we are.

    The origins of the bad blood are no secret, at least not to anyone who follows the Flyers closely. On Jan. 8, 2024, they traded Cutter Gauthier — the No. 4 pick in the 2022 NHL draft, the prospect who was presumed to be their top goal scorer and franchise centerpiece for the next decade or more — to the Ducks for Jamie Drysdale and a second-round pick. The deal was a shocker, and when Flyers president Keith Jones said during an NBC Sports Philadelphia interview that they traded Gauthier because “he didn’t want to be a Flyer,” Gauthier’s villain status was instantly established.

    The public sentiment here, with some exceptions, went from For chrissake, the Flyers let their future get away to Who the hell does that punk think he is? And Drysdale, whom the Flyers recently signed to a four-year contract extension and whom they consider an important member of their corps of defensemen, would forever be compared to the potential superstar the Flyers felt they had to give up.

    “The only thing that it does and will continue to do moving forward is just motivate me,” Drysdale said Monday. “I want to be the best player I can for the city, for the team, for the fans, for everything. I know I still have a lot more to give, and that’s exciting for me on my end.”

    Things have gotten only more intense since the Gauthier-Drysdale trade. It’s not just that the two franchises consummated another significant trade — and, for the Flyers, a so far highly successful one — 13 months ago, when Anaheim sent Trevor Zegras here for forward Ryan Poehling and two draft picks. It’s not just that the Flyers have beaten the Ducks all four times the clubs have faced each other over the last two seasons. It’s not just that the teams’ last matchup in Philadelphia, a 5-2 Flyers victory on Jan. 6, was loaded with checks and hits that sometimes crossed the line separating clean from dirty.

    Cutter Gauthier became an enemy for the Flyers’ fan base after his trade to Anaheim two years ago.Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer

    It’s this: Of all the possible maneuvers and gambits that Flyers general manager Danny Brière could have attempted this offseason to supercharge the team’s push toward Stanley Cup contention, he and his staff decided to target Leo Carlsson, maybe the Ducks’ most important player. On July 3, they sent him to a five-year, $90 million offer sheet, one that would have made Carlsson — 21 years old, nearly a point-per-game player last season, still improving — the highest-paid player in the league.

    The Ducks always had the right to match the Flyers’ offer, and as expected, they did, and Brière and the Flyers still have to figure out how to acquire (or somehow develop) a top-line center. A disappointing result, to be sure. But from the Ducks’ perspective, the outcome of the Carlsson situation wasn’t exactly seashells and balloons. Brière made a bold move at Anaheim’s expense, forcing Pat Verbeek, the Ducks’ GM and a notoriously tough and frugal executive, to pay a price that he never would have otherwise chosen to pay to keep Carlsson — who had made it clear he wouldn’t have minded playing somewhere else. Plus, though the NHL’s salary cap is rising and will likely continue to rise for a while, the Carlsson deal promises to limit the Ducks’ ability to add or re-sign other vital players, including Gauthier.

    Without Leo Carlsson, the Flyers’ hunt for their pot of gold just got harder and longer

    What we have now are two organizations that have squared off in some high-stakes competitions — on the ice, yes, but the boardroom battles between them have been even better. No, this coast-to-coast duel doesn’t immediately call to mind the fear and loathing that Philadelphia fans have had for the Cowboys, the Mets, and the Celtics. Yeah, it feels sort of silly to have a rivalry with a franchise whose spiritual forefathers are Emilio Estevez and the guy who played Pacey on Dawson’s Creek. But if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be … well, you know.