Inside LeBron’s Philadelphia Decision: Why pretty much everyone was completely in the dark

A skeptic might look at LeBron James joining the Philadelphia 76ers on July 24 as a scheme that was planned all along.

Announced on the 24th day of the month, for his 24th NBA season. A two-year, $8 million deal. One of his idols growing up, Philadelphia native Kobe Bryant, wore Nos. 8 and 24. Any numerologist would eat this stuff up.

The news broke simultaneously through social media posts by James; ESPN’s Shams Charania, who is close, it’s no secret, to James’ agent Rich Paul; and from Topps, the sporting card company with which James has an exclusive trading card and autograph deal. Topps is owned by Fanatics, which hosted James (and others) last week in New York for a fan fest in which James repeatedly sat on stage and teased his decision.

In fact, during one of his appearances at Fanatics Fest, James referred to “trust the process,” the old 76ers’ slogan from star center Joel Embiid’s younger days.

He knew, James knew, all along, right? It was always going to be Philadelphia? He dragged out one of the longest free agencies for a star in NBA history just because he could, stringing along the four franchises — and fan bases — who weren’t going to get his talents, poking commissioner Adam Silver along the way for demanding an answer so the league could finish the 2026-27 NBA schedule on time. This has to be what happened, no?

Well, if it was all a conspiracy, there was one key partner left out of the loop.

The 76ers. They didn’t know.

For the entirety of James’ free agency, which lasted 25 days, The Athletic spoke to dozens of sources across the NBA. To the business associates closest to James. To executives who run the teams angling for his services. To those teams’ coaches. To team executives who were not in the running. To rival agents. One thing was clear after each conversation — no one knew what LeBron was going to do up until Friday. They might have thought they knew from time to time, but it played out as a winding mystery.

Within the last week, two sources close to James said, he instructed his tight circle of advisers that, when he made a decision, he would inform Paul to call the team he picked and tell them the good news. Paul informed the Sixers of his choice — James was basically going to be paid a veteran’s minimum salary, regardless of where he played, so there was no negotiation to be had — late Friday morning, shortly before those simultaneous social posts went live.

“He wasn’t worried about the theater,” one of the sources close to James told The Athletic. “This was a critical decision for him, the first time he had an opportunity to ask himself these questions — Where do I want to play? Where can I win? — without money being a factor and with nothing left to prove, nothing owed to anyone. There was no plan. There is no press conference planned in Philadelphia. This was just about LeBron deciding where he would feel most comfortable and where he would win.”

Maybe for LeBron, it was about those things. For the Sixers, it means the window to win their first championship since 1983 is both wide open and with the heat of pressure blowing through it. No NBA player has won four championships with four different teams, which is what James will attempt to do in Philadelphia. With Embiid, Jaylen Brown, Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe on the roster, anything short of a championship will mean LeBron’s storied career ends in a failed attempt to chase rings.

In Cleveland, it means a third time in which his hometown team has been jilted by James. Twice, he left the Cavaliers through free agency. This time, with the money teams could offer him being equal and the roster stocked with four current and former All-Stars, LeBron again told the shores of Lake Erie thanks but no thanks. Northeast Ohio, where his life and career started, where he won the title that forever cemented his legacy, will not be the place of a storybook ending.

In San Francisco, where the Golden State Warriors reside, there will be no splashy team-up with his former rivals Stephen Curry, Steve Kerr and Draymond Green. The Warriors’ fading dynasty will have to try to relight its lamp without James.

In Miami, there will be no triumphant return to South Beach for a reunion with Pat Riley and Erik Spoelstra. Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bam Adebayo can still form one of the NBA’s most fearsome frontcourts, but serious roster questions remain.

And in Minnesota, there is no surprise winter sunset to James’ career, where he could have wowed the league playing alongside Anthony Edwards and LaMelo Ball, with Rudy Gobert and Jaden McDaniels defending behind him.

Here’s how James came to the final free-agency decision he will make in his illustrious career, based on numerous conversations with those sources, who were granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations inside James’ team and the organizations he realistically could have picked.

“The last few weeks have really been special,” James said on social media shortly after Friday’s announcement. “I’ve never been able to have no clue what to do and take real time to just think. I’ve had an incredible few months with all the people I love trying to figure it all out.

“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,” James concluded, as he thanked Los Angeles and said he’ll “forever love” Miami and Northeast Ohio “will always (be) home.”

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So, how did the Sixers win the latest, and last, LeBron sweepstakes?

According to at least three sources, everything changed in Philadelphia when first-year president of basketball operations Mike Gansey pulled off the bombshell acquisition of Brown, the 2024 NBA Finals MVP, from the Boston Celtics for Paul George and four future picks — two firsts and two seconds — on July 1, after James had already announced his decision to leave the Lakers. Before that trade, the 76ers, internally, considered themselves longshots for James. Afterward, though, they were all in.

“Now, we’ve got a pretty interesting roster,” said a team source with knowledge of the franchise’s pursuit of James, who was speaking after the Brown trade but before James picked Philadelphia.

The 76ers leaned into their advantages. Maxey has Paul as his agent, and thus had a relationship with James that preceded James’ decision to leave the Lakers and finish his career elsewhere. The two players worked out together in past summers. James and Embiid were teammates on Team USA for the Paris Olympics and won gold together. Maxey and Embiid, league sources said, were dogged in their recruitment of James, calling him multiple times.

Gansey has a deep, longstanding history with James, too. Before playing Division I basketball for St. Bonaventure and West Virginia, he was a pretty fair player in high school, at Olmsted Falls, which is about 15 miles to the southwest of Cleveland and about 40 miles away from James’ hometown of Akron.

In 2001, as a senior at Olmsted Falls, Gansey averaged 27.2 points, 10.5 rebounds, 3.2 assists, 3.3 steals and 1.6 blocked shots per game, making all-state for the second straight season. He was runner-up that year for Ohio’s coveted Mr. Basketball award, honoring the top boys’ high school player in the state.

The winner of the award in 2001 played at St. Vincent-St. Mary’s. He was a sophomore forward named LeBron James.

A photo taken by the Cleveland Plain Dealer of Gansey and James, Gansey’s hand on James’ shoulder, taken a year earlier in 2000, along with other top basketball players in the state, went viral after the Brown trade. The two never played against each other in high school, and Gansey, who was two years older, went on to his college career that didn’t end until James was three years deep into his NBA career.

Gansey and James didn’t know each other well when they were young adults, but they reunited when LeBron returned to Cleveland from the Heat. Gansey was in the Cavaliers front office, spending the first three years of James’ second Cleveland stint overseeing Cleveland’s minor-league affiliate in Canton. He was promoted to assistant general manager of the Cavs in 2017, before James’ final season there.

But Gansey didn’t hard-sell James on coming to Philly — he couldn’t. James wasn’t talking to any team executives about official business. Sixers governor Josh Harris saw James briefly at a VIP event at Fanatics Fest, and the two spoke for five to 10 minutes, a team source said, describing the encounter as “cordial.” Harris said James would be welcomed in Philly with open arms; James was polite but didn’t tip his hand.

The only overtly public appeal to James from the team, of course, came from Bob Myers, president of sports for Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment (HBSE), the parent company that oversees all of Harris’ sports teams that he owns with his longtime business partner David Blitzer. Myers, who had previously been the general manager of the Warriors from 2012 to 2023 throughout their dynastic run, appeared on Paul’s podcast with co-host Max Kellerman earlier in July and made his pitch.

“If (James) was here, I’d say, ‘I honestly believe this is your best chance to win,’” Myers told Paul and Kellerman.

Paul told The Athletic he had been trying to get Myers to come on the podcast for months; the invitation was not specifically tied to addressing James’ free agency. The 76ers, team sources said, had thought about the potential downside of Myers’ pitch being viewed as groveling publicly. But the upside of Myers — and his four rings from Golden State — speaking directly to Paul outweighed the potential minuses.

“Bob Myers going on Rich Paul’s podcast was brilliant,” a coach for one of the other teams pursuing James told The Athletic.

Myers’ appearance with Paul happened July 8 — 16 days before James made the final call. James had already spent the July 4 holiday in Akron, partying with friends and family. Among the attendees at James’ parties was Cavs assistant general manager Brandon Weems, a childhood friend of James and former high school teammate. While Weems is the only executive of any team James spent real time with during his free agency, other Cavs basketball officials indicated to The Athletic they were unsure that LeBron ever really wanted to return to Cleveland.

Those officials stayed in constant contact with Aaron Turner, Jonathan Kuminga’s agent, about coming to Cleveland if James ultimately went elsewhere. The team’s business side prepared for the best, pausing season-ticket sales to see what happened in free agency, as a LeBron return would be a financial boon the organization could easily take advantage of with higher prices.

But president of basketball operations Koby Altman was one of two chief basketball executives noticeably absent from the public discourse over James’ free agency. The other was Warriors general manager Mike Dunleavy. In addition to Myers, Tim Connelly of the Timberwolves and Riley of the Heat both made public appeals to the all-time great.

While there was initially some optimism within the Warriors organization that the dream partnership between Curry and James would become a reality, team sources said the Warriors soon understood that their chances of actually landing LeBron were small. They held out hope that he would decide to spend his last year or two playing in the Bay with some of his basketball friends, but they were never banking on it.

The hope was that James’ strong relationship with Green and longtime relationship with Curry would be enough to sway him. They knew they had the type of organization that could handle a star with the type of interest that James still generates each day. The problem for the Warriors, especially with Jimmy Butler still rehabbing an ACL injury, is that they just couldn’t sell a realistic path back toward championship contention.

In the end, as much as the idea of playing with Curry may have been appealing, the lack of realistic contention likely hurt the Warriors more than anything else. Green even opted out of his contract at the 11th hour to give the Warriors maximum flexibility to sign James and to perhaps trade Butler for Anthony Davis, but “it happened without any indication that it would happen,” a team source said. The Warriors are now expected to re-sign Green to roughly the same dollar amount — nearly $28 million — of the player’s option he declined last month.

“James is such an enigma,” a league source close to the Warriors told The Athletic.

Riley was unafraid to speak about Miami’s pursuit at the introductory news conference of Antetokounmpo on July 16. Without any prodding, Riley, who once had an icy relationship with James after he bolted the Heat to return to Cleveland in 2014, volunteered a quick allusion to James in a comment about landing another plane after landing the first plane by getting Antetokounmpo, one of their longtime targets.

The Heat took the James pursuit seriously, and Riley even told Dan Le Batard that he believed the frosty feeling Riley had toward James after he left Miami had thawed over time, which felt like the opening of a door for the Heat to build a new big three of Adebayo, Antetokounmpo and James if the four-time NBA MVP once again took his talents to South Beach.

Prediction markets were already excited about the possibility of James going to the Heat before Tuesday evening, when it was discovered that a link for a James introductory news conference on July 27 was added to the Heat’s YouTube page. The link, taken down and described by team spokespeople as a mistake, sent speculation through the roof that LeBron and Riley would work together again.

But the Heat had never been given an indication from James’ camp that he was leaning in their direction.

“Yeah, but based on what?” one top Miami official told The Athletic during the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas earlier this month, when it was suggested to him that speculation had grown in favor of the Heat. “We can’t talk to him. How would we know?”

The Timberwolves and Connelly, their team president, knew they entered the proceedings as a long shot. Their cold winters and lack of championship pedigree would be difficult barriers to entry into the James sweepstakes. But they also thought they had a few things working in their favor.

First, James was a well-known believer in Edwards, the Timberwolves’ resident star. The veteran has gushed over Edwards’ game, his charisma, his attitude over the years, including during their run to gold together at the Paris Olympics. Edwards and Ball connected with James over the phone as part of the recruiting efforts.

The Wolves also have an ownership group that includes Alex Rodriguez, one of the few people on the planet who can fully understand the microscope, the demands and the scrutiny that come with LeBron’s kind of star power. Rodriguez worked quietly behind the scenes to ensure James’ camp that the Wolves would know how to support him and connect with him if he came to Minnesota.

The Wolves’ pitch also appealed to James’s well-known affinity for the history of the game. If he came to a team that has never won, in a market without a title in the four major men’s pro sports since 1991, and played on a minimum deal to lead a young nucleus to a title, they told him, it could be the closing argument for James’ claim to the throne as the best player to ever do it.

There were moments throughout the chase in which the Wolves truly believed James would pick them, including during a flurry of conversations with his representatives leading into the Fourth of July weekend. But as the saga dragged on, the Wolves grew pessimistic.

“We have a 4-percent chance, but we have every bit of that 4 percent,” a Wolves team official told The Athletic in the days leading up to James’ choosing the Sixers.

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In the grand scheme, the choice James made Friday is about much more, to many, many people, than simply where he can win.

Foremost, there is the “James Gang,” the name he’s given his family. James had already made the decision to leave the Lakers, where his son Bronny is under contract as a player. Choosing Philadelphia, about 2,400 miles east of Los Angeles, where his wife, Savannah, and 12-year-old daughter Zhuri are comfortable, only adds to the complexity of his decision. James had said during his Fanatics Fest appearances that Zhuri “pulled a lot of weight” on where he might play, but having picked the Sixers on the opposite coast, it is not immediately clear how it will affect his nuclear family. A source close to James said it would be better for LeBron to address it himself.

“I’m not going for money. I’m not going for family,” James said in his social media post. “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.”

It’s too soon to know if this decision has shifted the balance of power in the NBA. James will be 42 in December, and Embiid has missed most of the last two seasons with injuries. The New York Knicks are returning most of their championship roster; the league runner-up, the San Antonio Spurs, only got stronger over the offseason; and the Oklahoma City Thunder remained positioned to be a major factor in deciding championships for years to come.

But if Embiid is healthy and James can continue to suit up and play at the levels he showed with the Lakers last season, the Sixers are indeed a threat.

When all was said and done, LeBron had decided, apparently without telling anyone beforehand, that Philadelphia was the best place for him to chase that feeling of winning one more.

— Nick Friedell, Tony Jones, Jon Krawczynski, Eric Nehm, Brooks Peck and Dan Woike contributed to this story.