👋 Good morning! Play the song!

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Welcome to a free, emergency edition of the Broad Street Bulletin.

I think this is the first newsletter that is not on our normal Monday through Friday morning schedule. But when one of the greatest athletes of all-time decides to call Philadelphia home — I could see LeBron pulling a JJ Redick and commuting from New York, but who cares? — you make an exception and give the people what they want.

Normally, I post around 20 of these newsletters per month. Every single weekday, I am catching you up on what you missed in Philly sports. I get incredibly detailed on all of the Eagles, Phillies, Flyers and Sixers. You might get a film or salary breakdown some days, you might get a whimsical trip down memory lane on other days, or you might get both. You will definitely get trivia on Thursdays.

Thank you for being a free subscriber, which gets you two of those 20 newsletters per month. But Eagles season is approaching and the Sixers just signed LeBron Freaking James. All four teams in the city are relatively interesting. The Sixers are stunningly interesting. Please consider upgrading your subscription for either $5 per month (so you can try it out) or $50 per year, so you can get the newsy every weekday.

I promise you, that is the price. I am not gonna raise the subscription costs for next year. I am not gonna offer a deal on Black Friday for 15 percent of the subscription fee in the first year. You can support this independent venture that I am having a whole lot of fun doing by upgrading here.

And in the words of the great Doc Halladay, it’s only gonna get funner.

Go ahead, listen to an hour of it.

As I am typing this, a random guy on the street outside of my apartment is yelling that voice. Keep it up, fella.

I am not sure that I have ever been happier to be wrong in my entire life.

Perhaps I was too scarred by ten years of the Sixers pulling the football on their fans like Lucy. Perhaps I was too scarred by the Sixers “coming in second” the last time that LeBron was a free agent, which amounted to getting a meeting that LeBron himself did not even attend. Perhaps I was too scarred by someone of LeBron’s caliber almost never picking Philadelphia, my home that I love dearly.

That last point is an important one. Off the top of my head… Bryce Harper picked Philadelphia. But John Middleton and the Phillies were hell-bent on spending “stupid money” in early 2019. Cliff Lee picked Philadelphia, and that one was sweet because he turned down more money from the Yankees. But Clifton Phifer got paid five years and $120 million, which goes a long way in Benton, Arkansas. There are probably some other examples that I am missing.

But LeBron? Look at the salary that Shams listed. It is not a surprise to read that number, since it was all the Sixers legally had to offer under the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement. But at $4 million per year, there is no mistaking that LeBron chose Philly.

What a feeling it is, to be chosen. For a bunch of reasons, I did not see the Sixers being chosen. Man, I am happy to be wrong.

Let me type that middle part out one more time, because I still do not believe it.

LeBron James is one of the greatest basketball players of all-time. He is one of the few athletes that is worthy of a “Last Dance.” And his Last Dance is in Philadelphia of all places! Wild times.

(And yes, is there a Negadelphian part of me that fears the LeBron Sixers era will be more in line with the Joe Montana Chiefs Era instead of the Tom Brady Bucs Era? Of course. And man, I have made way too many jokes about Patrick Ewing on the Magic and Hakeem Olajuwon on the Raptors in my lifetime. OK, enough negativity. Sixers fans have already been hurt a whole lot, what would a little more be? This is LeBron!)

This has to go down as the most surprising offseason in the history of Philadelphia sports. Maybe the Dream Team Eagles are up there? I do not think that one tops this.

Heading into this summer, everyone thought that the Sixers were in purgatory with the Joel Embiid and Paul George contracts. I thought it would be cost-prohibitive to move either of them, which would lead to an unsatisfying offseason in Mike Gansey’s first year running the ship. The Sixers would run back a decent team next year when healthy, but those two contracts were holding them hostage from making any major changes.

On The Ringer’s Philly Special earlier this week (#PhillySpecialBump), my friend Sheil Kapadia made a great point: Once Mike Gansey was introduced, he thought he was gonna be the most forgettable general manager in recent Philadelphia history. Gansey was a relative no-name that felt like a puppet for Bob Myers and who was hamstrung by those two massive contracts. Sheil thought we would look back at Gansey in ten years as, “Who was that guy here for two years before Myers took over? Remember he jinxed the one Phillies no-hitter on TV?”

Instead, Gansey has provided us with this. It looks like one of those bad, unrealistic photoshops that online Lakers fans used to dream up when they stunk. But this is actually the Sixers starting lineup. Dean Wade, welcome to the bench buddy.

GANSEY, YOU DOG!

Does anyone have a Mike Gansey Olmsted Falls throwback jersey? That would be a monster item for a stroll down the boardwalk over the next month.

What a win for the entire Sixers organization. Bob Myers went on that ridiculous Rich Paul-Max Kellerman podcast that I constantly made fun of… and it worked! That is President of Sports, Bob Myers to you.

If I were to guess, though, the biggest factor in this recruitment was Tyrese Maxey (who was quite excited by the news). Since the very beginning of his NBA career, Maxey signed with Klutch Sports and kept a close relationship with LeBron. They have worked out a bunch during the offseasons in Los Angeles, where LeBron has seen Maxey’s work ethic up close and been charmed by Maxey the person.

For the thousandth time, shoutout to Mike Muscala. Mikey Moose, you brought LeBron to Philly.

And 12 years later, Joel finally lands his man. Always playing the long game.

For a Sixers team that certainly deserved some good luck, we can acknowledge that they have finally gotten their fair share of it over the past 12 months. Maxey and Embiid have been here for a while, but my guess is that LeBron does not choose Philly if they do not have the other two members of the starting lineup. The Lottery Gods favored the Sixers and they got VJ Edgecombe. The Trade Gods favored the Sixers and they got Jaylen Brown for very little. From the Sixers’ perspective, I now consider the trade “Jaylen Brown and LeBron James for Paul George, a likely pick swap and unprotected first-round pick.”

(*Aldo Raine voice*: I’d make that deal.)

Both of those guys seem excited about the news.

I am not gonna get too much into the on-court fit, because I have a podcast to get to and we can do that all of next week. But you should know that LeBron making $4 million per year is a team-building cheat code. My former colleague John Hollinger, who I think is the best national basketball writer in the business, uses his own numbers to project player value. And while Hollinger listed LeBron as a $32 million player this offseason, even he admitted that the formula probably underrated LeBron because it does not know how to handle a 41-year-old player that averaged 21-6-7 last year.

Not only that, LeBron is the exact type of player that the Sixers needed. There is going to be plenty of “There’s only one ball!” skepticism, and that is fine. But the one position that the Sixers badly needed was another big wing that could play the 4. Well, they got the best 4 on the market.

LeBron’s minutes will have to managed, since he has played more of them than anyone in NBA history. He will probably go a full month while operating on cruise control on the defensive end, because he has played more minutes than anyone in NBA history. LeBron started last season on the shelf with sciatica. He might be the best-conditioned 41-year-old in the history of sports, but the man is still 41 years old.

In his post, LeBron mentioned “sacrifice.” Everyone on this Sixers team is gonna have to do that to a degree, but that is a problem that you want to have. Now, the Sixers have two apex predator wings who can hunt mismatches after having one of them for one season (Jimmy Butler) for the entire Process era. LeBron might be the NBA’s all-time greatest playoff half-court problem solver, one of the smartest players ever. At 41 years old, he can still win with his brain. Ask the Houston Rockets about that.

Is this gonna be a circus? You bet, even in the best-case scenario. The Sixers will be in the A-block of First Take and all of those morning talk shows for the entire year. The Sixers will be on national television a million times. I would be stunned if they are not the opponent on ring night at Madison Square Garden.

But I would much prefer a circus to the past three uninspiring regular seasons that the Sixers trudged through. Think about it this way: On January 15th, the Charlotte Hornets are in town… but the Sixers have LeBron. He will probably dunk a few times and hit a few step-back 3s to set The Artist Formerly Known as The Farg on fire. It will be awesome. There will be juice in the building every night that he plays.

(The happiest people today? The Sixers’ ticketing department. Rough few years for those people. Their phones will be ringing off the hook, if they are not already.)

I do not know if the Sixers will win a championship. That is hard to do, and they are partially relying on a 41-year-old and another guy who has had trouble staying healthy. But I do know that the Sixers will be interesting. For the better part of the last three years, that was not the case.

I wonder what Maureece Rice is up to? The Sixers should have him ring the bell on opening night.

Let’s make it a good one.