LeBron James goes back to Cleveland tonight, and he is not coming alone. He is bringing the best team in the East, a five-game win streak, and a reminder of the 29-point lead the Cavs blew the last time these teams met.
The Sixers are 8-1 and 7-0 when games enter clutch time. Maxey is third in the league in clutch points. ESPN has them languishing bottom-10 in offensive efficiency while sitting top-three defensively; Basketball-Reference has them 20th ORtg / 2nd DRtg. Cleveland, 7:30 ET, NBA Cup. Sample size still applies.
Nine games, 28.0 points, 37.0 minutes, 5.4 assists, and an 8-1 team. We went looking for the asterisk. Here's what we found.
The Sixers are 8-1 with a roster that includes LeBron James, Joel Embiid, Jaylen Brown and Tyrese Maxey. Their local TV booth finished 29th of 30 in Awful Announcing's reader poll for the third year in a row. The idea that Marc Zumoff was part of the game without becoming the game does not fully hold up in the record.
Joel Embiid, Jaylen Brown and Tyrese Maxey count $156,492,622 against the NBA's $164.961 million salary cap this season, 94.87 percent of it (Spotrac). Their deals all run through 2028-29, and Embiid's last year is a Spotrac-listed player option. On projected caps their share keeps climbing.
Jaylen Brown scored 30, LeBron James made his 16,000th field goal, and the Sixers are 4-0 on the road. Enjoy it. Then listen to LeBron, who says it's too early to talk about the Finals, and look at how they've been getting there.
The center wanted both ends of a back-to-back. The team said no, the foot is the stated reason, and the contract is the reason the argument matters.
The Sixers announced a multi-year deal Friday with Kalshi, which the team says makes them the first NBA team to name a prediction market partner. Financial terms of the Sixers-Kalshi partnership were not disclosed.
