July 24, 2026
No, you are not dreaming.
The Sixers have reportedly convinced LeBron James – the NBA's all-time leading scorer – to join their ranks, as James' 24th NBA season will come in Philadelphia. James has played for three franchises in his professional career, and he has won a championship with all three of them. Can he make it four?
Once James' signing is made official, the Sixers will have a full, 15-player standard roster. But two players, Jabari Walker and Dalen Terry, do not have guaranteed salaries. One of them will have to be waived to create enough room for James below the Sixers' hard cap at the first apron.
Terry's entire salary is non-guaranteed; the four-year veteran swingman became well-liked within a new locker room late in the 2025-26 campaign but has not shown enough to have a firm grasp of his roster spot. Walker was on the fringes of the rotation for much of the season; he has a clearer path to minutes than Terry.
Now that the Sixers have arguably the greatest player of all time on board, their full focus has shifted towards winning. That means every roster spot must be maximized. Can the Sixers find a better 15th man than Terry? Exploring the options:
The obvious option has to be mentioned first. James' son, Bronny, has played 556 minutes across 69 games in two seasons with the Los Angeles Lakers. A late second-round pick in 2024, Bronny made history joining his father as teammates in the NBA. At times during his rookie season, Bronny looked overwhelmed and overmatched – including a nightmarish performance in Philadelphia – but looked noticeably more comfortable as a sophomore.
Dan Woike of The Athletic reported earlier this month that the Lakers genuinely value Bronny and it is not a given that he will follow his father to a new team. This idea should not be treated as an inevitability whatsoever, but it is a possibility worth addressing.
If Bronny has a long-term NBA future, it will be as a role-playing guard capable of organizing an offense, defending at the point of attack and knocking down open three-point shots. He remains a ways away from being a full-blown rotation regular in the NBA, but in 2025-26 was a viable plug-and-play option for the Lakers when needed.
Bronny shot 22-for-57 (38.6 percent) from beyond the arc last season and, for the second year in a row, excelled in the G League. In two years with the South Bay Lakers, Bronny has averaged 22.0 points, 5.3 assists, 4.8 rebounds and 1.8 blocks per 36 minutes, shooting 49.6 percent from the field and 41.3 percent from three-point range on 7.7 attempts per 36 minutes.
While Bronny is far from a finished product, there is enough of a proof of concept there that trading for him – the cost, one would assume, would be minimal – would be far from indefensible.
If James' son begins to chart his own path with the Lakers moving forward, there are two players still on the market with longstanding connections to James – and they are tied to Sixers President of Basketball Operations Mike Gansey's time with the Cleveland Cavaliers. But there are also many quality free agents still on the board.
MORE: LeBron James is joining the Sixers
None of these players can sign right now, as the Sixers will not have enough room below their hard cap to sign them after officially putting pen to paper on James' deal. James will carry a cap hit of just under $3.9 million; if they waive Terry and sign him they will have about $2.1 million in room. Unless they waive Walker to get down to 13 players, that room does not even fit an extremely inexpensive player like Bronny.
The Sixers could either cut costs somewhere via trade or simply decide to cut Terry, sign James and enter the season at 14 players, with enough room to sign someone to that last spot pretty early on in the year.
Candidates already familiar with James:
• Kevin Love is very close with James; the two were involved in many viral clips last month as the 2016 Cavaliers enjoyed their 10-year reunion memorializing their championship run. Love, one of the most respected teammates in the NBA, played just over 600 minutes with the Utah Jazz last season as he mentored many of the young players there. He is still big, he is still strong and he can still shoot. There is likely not a case that he is even close to being among the best players available, but he should provide more on-court value than 2025-26 Kyle Lowry did, for example.
• Another one of the league's most decorated teammates: Jeff Green, whose stint in Cleveland was surprisingly successful late in the 2010s. Green has much more athleticism left than any soon-to-be 40-year-old should.
MORE: Projecting Nurse's rotation with LeBron and Jaylen Brown
There are other players available, and while those options do not come in with experience playing alongside the most polaziring player of a generation, they largely have better chances of being trustworthy rotation pieces for Nurse:
• The Sixers now have the absolute best version of the high-IQ, connective forward they needed, but the Sixers should always have room for Nic Batum if he is willing to return. Given the Los Angeles Clippers' ongoing youth movement, perhaps the allure of one more run at a title could draw Batum back to Philadelphia.
• The weakest point of this roster is the backup center spot, where Adem Bona, Ariel Hukporti and Johni Broome are Nurse's options to back up Joel Embiid. One superior option on the market is Nick Richards, an innings-eater of sorts. Richards is not a special player, but he is a more stable option than what the Sixers currently have available to them. Drew Eubanks fits a similar mold but has not managed quite as much NBA production. Xavier Tillman Sr. was once a promising prospect, but has not paid off the anticipation that he could be a two-way big across multiple positions.
• James' arrival should mark even less room for a mid-range maestro like DeMar DeRozan to operate, but talent is talent, and perhaps the Sixers see a role for DeRozan under a coach he is very familiar with. Other high-profile names still out there: Khris Middleton, a sensible positional fit for the Sixers but a questionable stylistic fit, and Bradley Beal, a longtime friend of Embiid coming off a year lost to injury.
• Should the Sixers want more wing depth, they could look to a player Gansey helped draft in the lottery: Ochai Agbaji, whose makeup suggests the potential of a two-way perimeter player. While Bruce Brown had a disappointment return to the Denver Nuggets, the do-it-all veteran has been a key cog of high-level teams before. He could provide a bit of everything.
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