LeBron James is emerging as Philadelphia’s main playmaker.
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NEW YORK — Music blared in the visitors’ locker room at Barclays Center, with multiple heads nodding approvingly. The unmistakable sound of hip-hop superstar Future made it next to impossible to have a conversation with someone — unless you were standing next to the person.
The Philadelphia 76ers were within an hour of facing the Brooklyn Nets in Thursday’s preseason game, and LeBron James stood in the middle of the tight quarters, going through a litany of stretches and plyometrics. As James prepared his 41-year-old body for his preseason Philadelphia debut, his phone rang and interrupted his playlist.
He took the call. He had the conversation.
“You’re the only person I would answer the phone for,” James said to the mystery caller.
And then he went back to preparing.
With Philadelphia’s regular-season opener a little more than a week away, James is slowly integrating with his new surroundings. As he said on media day, he’s someone who, when on the floor, is able to adjust to almost any surrounding. He’s seen everything, every situation the league has to offer.
At the same time, his 76ers stint comes on the heels of eight seasons with the Los Angeles Lakers. It comes with the cost of learning a new roster’s worth of teammates for the first time since 2018. But you can see his personality bubbling to the surface. In past years, a 76ers pregame locker room would never have been filled with Future’s melodic rap on full blast. James is acclimating.
“Every day is getting better, and obviously … some days will be better than others,” James said. “But when I get to the facility, and when I get around these guys, it definitely helps. We have good energy and good spirit. Obviously, the basketball game, what it brings to all of us, is a sense of like togetherness and fun.
“It’s fun to go to work.”
LeBron James 2026 Media Day Press Conference
LeBron James speaks to the media at 2026 Philadelphia 76ers Media Day.
That is becoming apparent. In James’ short time with the Sixers, he’s played temporary babysitter to point guard Tyrese Maxey’s baby daughter Marvel during an intrasquad scrimmage, shared grapes with Maxey in the second half (the two didn’t play in the second half) of Philadelphia’s loss to the Nets, debuted new handshakes with Jaylen Brown and Joel Embiid and took on media responsibilities after the loss to Brooklyn, sparing Maxey from having to do the same.
For James, who has talked about missing his family, basketball remains his happy place. In an otherwise routine pregame locker room, it was easy to see how much he still loves to be in that space.
Training camp and the preseason have represented a slow ramp-up for James. Adjusting to the Sixers also means the Sixers are adjusting to him. The team’s chemistry experiment is a complicated one because the 76ers are also integrating Brown and Dean Wade and Anfernee Simons and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. Imagine trying to find room for a magnetic personality like James within a team setting, then adding several other veterans with loud personalities of their own. That’s life with the 76ers.
James has gone about his business in the manner that’s made him consistently one of the best players in the league for close to a quarter-century. Teammates have spoken about coming to practice and seeing James already in a full lather, having completed a workout. Almost as much as the talent, James being with the Sixers introduces standards that Philadelphia hopes translate into a championship run.
“Obviously, this has been a small sample size for us, and we’re still trying to learn each other on the floor,” James said. “We’re still trying to put each other in a position to be successful and complement each other the best way we can. … It’s going to take some time, and we know that.”
The balance for James isn’t so much emerging as a team leader, or even integrating from a basketball sense. The latter, ironically, may be one of the easiest parts of the job. It’s convincing his younger teammates that he’s just another teammate. In a camp scrimmage, rookie point guard Labaron Philon got into the lane and had a window to shoot. He passed it to James.
On the next dead ball, James called Philon over and told him he needed to shoot the ball. James thought he needed to be aggressive.
“He told me that I had to be myself,” Philon said. “I had a floater that was available to me, and I didn’t take it. I needed to take it.”
James’ potential role with the 76ers was evident in the loss in Brooklyn. He initiated offense for most of his time on the floor, setting his Sixers teammates up for easy baskets. He had five first-quarter assists, and that undersold his playmaking.
On Philadelphia’s second possession, James caught VJ Edgecombe streaking up the court after a made basket, hitting him for a layup. A few possessions later, while probing the middle off the dribble, he caught Edgecombe cutting to the basket and hit him for a dunk. He saw Maxey open, coming off a flare screen, then hit him in his shooting pocket, and the All-Star point guard splashed a 3-pointer. He hit Jabari Walker cutting to the basket for a dunk. He hit Wade for a 3-pointer. And on and on.
“I think it’s always important just to be able to attack offensively before the defense is set,” James said. “So, any time we can get some early transition points or early attacks against defenses, we want to be able to do that. You have VJ, you have Tyrese, you have Jaylen; we’re able to punch gaps, especially if they have a numbers advantage, or even a one-on-one advantage. Other guys are not going to really be able to stay in front of them. So, it’s great that we’ve been able to connect on a couple of them.”
The Sixers have multiple dynamic scorers. Maxey and Brown are both capable of averaging more than 25 points per game. Philadelphia doesn’t have a dynamic playmaker elsewhere on the roster, and James remains one of the very best in basketball, even at his advanced age.
He averaged 20.9 points per game last season with the Lakers. He’s No. 1 in career points, but he’s probably lost some of his scoring juice. He hasn’t lost his passing ability, though, and that’s just fine for the 76ers. Maxey and Brown are in their primes. Last season, they were two of the best offensive engines in basketball. They haven’t shown anything this preseason that suggests they cannot excel together at similar levels.
“The key is getting the ball up the floor and kicking it ahead and playing the game the right way,” Brown said. “We want to run and fill the corners, and do the basic stuff. It seems like we have a really good group. We don’t want to overcomplicate things. But the simple details are the most effective. We want to sprint to the corner and get our spacing and play the game the right way.”
If players are in the right spots, there are few in the world you want making decisions more than James.
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Tony Jones is a Staff Writer at The Athletic covering the Philadelphia 76ers and the NBA. A native of the East Coast and a journalism brat as a child, he has an addiction to hip-hop music and pickup basketball, and his Twitter page has been used for occasional debates concerning Biggie and Tupac. You can follow Tony on X @Tjonesonthenba.
