Think of the Flyers as an explorer who landed on a deserted island. On this island, deep within miles of thick jungle, is treasure. The explorer knows the treasure is there somewhere, and he aims to find it.
Leo Carlsson would have been a new machete: sharp, strong, capable of cutting through all those vines and branches and trunks to make the Flyers’ journey to those riches easier and faster. Now the explorer won’t have that tool. Now that the Anaheim Ducks have matched the five-year, $90-million offer sheet that Carlsson signed with the Flyers last week, the Flyers won’t have the steel blade that Carlsson represented as a 6-foot-3, 21-year-old, clear-cut first-line center just entering his prime.
So where does that leave them? It means that their trek to that treasure, to their first Stanley Cup since 1974-75, will likely be slower and less certain. They may get to it eventually, but it’s going to take more time and be more costly.
Had the Ducks declined to match the Flyers’ audacious offer — and make no mistake, this gambit by Danny Brière was bold and creative, as close to a Now youse can’t leave move as an NHL general manager can make — Anaheim would have received four first-round picks from the Flyers. That price would have been steep. But the Flyers would have added Carlsson, who averaged nearly a point a game last season, is an excellent player now, and has shown every sign that he will get even better.
They need a No. 1 center, not merely for the talent and scoring touch such a player would provide, but also so they can slot their other centers — Trevor Zegras, Christian Dvorak, and Sean Couturier — more appropriately. With Carlsson (or any center of similar caliber, for that matter), Zegras would have become the second-line guy. Dvorak would have become a terrific third-line guy. And Couturier would have remained in the role he played so well in last season’s playoffs, as an outstanding fourth-line checker, faceoff-taker, and leader.
What’s more, the Flyers have a roster and a farm system with plenty of promising young players, and if this move had come to fruition, they wouldn’t have had to sacrifice any of them to fill one of their biggest holes. That’s perhaps the most disappointing aspect of this result for them: That luxury of gaining an emerging superstar without having to give up valuable players and/or prospects already within the organization likely is no longer available to them.
With the Carlsson episode behind him, Flyers general manager Danny Brière must be practical about the team’s range of needs.
They’re interested in the Detroit Red Wings’ Dylan Larkin, for instance; though Larkin is 7½ years older than Carlsson, he still would fit the Flyers like a well-tailored suit. But assuming Larkin, who has a full no-movement clause, is even willing to join the Flyers, the trade package necessary to acquire him would probably have to include a player or two on their current roster. Would Larkin be worth the departure of, say, Owen Tippett and/or Denver Barkey?
Just because Brière made such a huge play for Carlsson doesn’t mean he has to answer that question, immediately or ever. The smartest thing he and the Flyers’ leadership team have done in the three years since he took over as GM has been to give themselves flexibility in improving the team. They didn’t have to shock the NHL by presenting that offer sheet to Carlsson — a proposal for a contract that has now made him the league’s highest-paid player. But they did. After years of running in place, after qualifying for the postseason for the first time since 2020, they declared that they were ready to spend again, but they made that declaration on their terms.
They have several choices for how they can proceed. They need not just a No. 1 center, but a top-pair defenseman, or at least one capable of quarterbacking a power play. They can act quickly to acquire one or both of those players, to find short-term and/or long-term answers to those lingering questions, or they can wait.
Remember: Even if they had won their duel with the Ducks for Carlsson, the Flyers wouldn’t have been considered a true contender this season for the Stanley Cup. Porter Martone, Matvei Michkov, Tyson Foerster, Jamie Drysdale, Alex Bump, Zegras: All of them have growth and development ahead of them. Yes, the Flyers’ hunt will take longer now that Leo Carlsson, that oh-so useful tool, will remain on the West Coast, but they can still find that chest of gold. They just have to take care not to get lost along the way.
Biblical references seem to find a home with the Philadelphia 76ers.
Moses Malone arrived in 1982 and immediately led the team to the promised land.
Allen Iverson arrived in 1996 and, five years later, took the Sixers to the NBA Finals. For fans of gospel music, his nickname, “The Answer,” recalled a 1970s hit by Andraé Crouch and the Disciples: “Jesus is the Answer.”
And, now, LeBron, who was nicknamed “King James” while still a princeling high school star in Akron, Ohio. His namesake, England’s James I, commissioned a translation of the Bible in the early 17th century, the one with all the “Thee’s” and “Ye’s” and my personal favorite, “believeth.”
But if, by some miracle, he does agree to a tiny free-agent contract this summer, LeBron surely would make the Sixers a favorite to win their first Larry O’Brien Trophy since Larry O’Brien actually was the NBA commissioner.
This has not been the case largely because the sole benefit of “The Process,” the disastrous, failed rebuilding strategy that began in 2013, is Joel Embiid. He has MVP talent, and he won the award just three years ago, but his rank unprofessionalism — a refusal to commit to fitness, too much energy focused on extracurriculars, an obsession with personal milestones — has kept Embiid and the Sixers from reaching their potential.
And, while King James might not save Embiid’s mortal soul, with his special brand of tough love, LeBron very well could save Embiid’s mortally afflicted career.
Come on, man
Before this goes any further, I don’t believe LeBron is interested in playing basketball for the Philadelphia 76ers. Yes, the Sixers somehow traded Paul George and picks for Jaylen Brown — Celtics president Brad Stevens must’ve lost either a bet or his mind — which instantly turned the Sixers into a viable Eastern Conference contender. Nevertheless, I think it’s likely that LeBron’s representatives are using this (feigned) interest as leverage to land the King elsewhere.
I don’t think he wants to be in Philadelphia, which is a much tougher city than anywhere else he’s played. I don’t think he wants to deal with an organization with an absentee owner and a first-time top executive. I don’t think he wants to be associated or represent one of the most dysfunctional organizations in major league sports over the past 14 years, and with the NFL’s Jets, Raiders, and Browns in that mix, that’s quite an accomplishment. I don’t think he wants to play for the NBA veteran minimum, which is all he’d get at this point.
Would LeBron James be willing to play for the veteran minimum?
There is a chance, though, that his desire to be worshipped will override his desire to give himself the best chance to win a fifth title, because nowhere would worship him the way Philadelphia fans would worship him, just as they worship Moses for leading them out of the wilderness.
LeBron already did that in Cleveland and Miami. And, as my colleague David Murphy pointed out on Monday, his agent, Rich Paul, said the Knicks disqualified themselves from the LeBron sweepstakes when they won a championship. Murphy’s logic: He could not end their drought, and therefore could not be seen as their savior, so why bother?
Now that Jalen Brunson did what Patrick Ewing failed to do, LeBron can’t do it. But he damn sure could help Embiid do what Embiid will be paid an average of $62.6 million a year to do over the next three seasons.
Winning a title, even with James on board, requires getting the most of whatever’s left out of Embiid, who has bad knees and a bad attitude. Getting the most out of Embiid is something that championship-winning coaches Doc Rivers and Nick Nurse abjectly failed to do, and they had three years apiece.
This is different.
LeBron, who is 41 with the body of a 32-year-old, is entering his 24th season. He has gotten the best out of his teammates everywhere he’s gone, whether it’s fellow Hall of Fame-caliber players like Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, and Kyrie Irving or lesser lights such as Kevin Love and Mo Williams. He has won four championships because of it. You think Austin Reaves — an undrafted tweener guard who averaged 10.8 points in four years of college — would have been offered $185 million by the Lakers for the next four years if LeBron hadn’t been his teammate for the past five years?
Injury issues have plagued Joel Embiid throughout his career.
Embiid, who is 32 with the body of a 42-year-old, is entering his 11th season since being drafted, though he missed the first two seasons with injuries. On the day the Sixers season ended in a playoff sweep (at the hands of those Knicks) he announced that the 2025-26 season had been a success for him. That’s because his left knee no longer impeded him to the degree it had him impeded him for the past several years.
Embiid then swore that, at the end of this summer, when training camp begins, since his body feels better, he will be better prepared than in recent years to finally get the Sixers … past the second round of the playoffs?
Talk about aiming low.
At any rate, no Sixers since Moses himself is better equipped to make sure Embiid follows through on his latest promises. It worked on “big-boned” Charles Barkley.
“If it wasn’t for Moses Malone, I’d be working at McDonald’s.”
Charles Barkley on how the late, great Moses got him to lose 50 pounds and changed the course of his NBA career. pic.twitter.com/eovRoU1E9w
— Podcast P with Paul George (@PodcastPShow) August 8, 2024
Filling a void
Since trading cornerstone All-Stars Andre Iguodala in 2012 and Jrue Holiday in 2013, the closest the thing the Sixers have had to a real leader was Jimmy Butler, whose headstrong attitude and routine insubordination were less an example of leadership than a display of self-aggrandizement. Embiid was in his third year of actually playing NBA basketball during the Season of Jimmy, and he certainly got that message.
Who’s the leader now?
Embiid blew his chance years ago when it became clear that he was less interested in chasing championships than he was in seeking MVP trophies, Olympic gold medals, milkshakes, and Shirley Temples.
I went to Chick-fil-A with Landry Shamet and (get ready for the sports radio style tease!) you WON'T BELIEVE the amount of Chick-fil-A calories Joel Embiid consumes during team flights https://t.co/yRGIMKFE6C
Tyrese Maxey is an ebullient, well-spoken workaholic, but he lacks the gravitas to lead a championship-caliber team, especially when the roster includes more accomplished players like Embiid and Brown.
As for Brown — well, he might find it hard to lead a bunch of dummies; last week, he called most pro athletes morons when compared to him after unnamed sources accused him of thinking he was the smartest person in the room: “Let’s keep it a buck [100] … The bar is f— low.”
James might not be a budding chess master like Brown, but he’s smart enough to know how to win a title and how to run a team. After all, the bar is low.
Do you think LeBron is going to let Joel make his teammates wait for 2½ hours to leave for the plane after road games? Do you think LeBron is going to sit around and wait for Embiid to come to meetings and shootarounds? No. The answer is, simply, no. If you’re James’s teammate, you will be professionalized or you will be marginalized.
If LeBron James comes to Philly, you will see a fitter, tougher, more committed Joel Embiid.
James’s habits aren’t contagious, they’re compulsory. It’s a trait he shares with Kobe Bryant. James is kinder than Kobe, and he’s more deferential, but compared to the typical laissez-faire NBA star, he’s neither kind nor deferential.
He is desperate to win, and if you can’t help him do that, then he doesn’t have time for you.
Again, I don’t think it’s a realistic outcome. But King James in Philly would be the best medicine for Embiid’s ailing legacy.
It wasn’t the first time Brad Stevens had heard the question. His story piques a natural curiosity. A man widely regarded as one of the world’s finest basketball coaches walked away from one of the world’s finest basketball coaching jobs at 44 years old. He did so to become a suit. Over the last five years, plenty of people have wondered aloud to the Celtics’ president of basketball operations.
So, do you miss coaching?
“I did this week,” Stevens said on Monday, recounting a conversation he had with an interrogator last week. “This is not for the faint of heart.”
Stevens’ news conference alongside Celtics majority owner Bill Chisholm earlier this week offered the world its first chance to inform its opinion on a trade that stunned the NBA like few before it. While the Sixers have yet to announce when they will field questions about their blockbuster acquisition of Boston superstar Jaylen Brown, the guys on the other side of the deal didn’t have the same luxury.
Rarely does an NBA team encounter such a universal and vociferous disagreement with a trade as the Celtics did to their decision to trade Brown to the Sixers for Paul George and a couple of first- and second- round picks. Here in Philly, the jubilation surrounding such a no-brainer decision was further enhanced by the opportunity to watch Bostonians engage in a collective public meltdown unlike any it has staged since at least the Revolutionary War. One local radio host called it the worst trade in Celtics history. Another said he felt physically ill. Bill Simmons said he woke up from a colonoscopy and assumed he’d died.
“I’m with you,” Stevens said. “That is a hard thing to trade a guy that you, first of all, care so much about and secondly have so much respect and admiration for, to a team that just beat you in the playoffs and that you’re literally going to play six times before the playoffs next year, with our two preseason games. But I do think that ultimately when you do a deal you need to think about you first and the optionality it creates for you. If I’m being honest, if that exact deal came from a team out west and you were comparing the two, then you’d probably take the team out west. But that’s not the way it was working.”
Whatever the immediate local reaction to Stevens’ defense of the decision, he and Chisholm offered a master class in how to handle blowback. You do it directly, immediately, and humbly. It helps when you believe in your decision-making process, which the Celtics clearly did. And, look, they were right to feel that way. Because, chances are, this ends up being a good decision for them.
That’s not the same as saying that the Sixers will regret their decision to trade for Brown. Nor is it the same as saying that the Celtics “won” the deal. None of those things are exclusive from one another. There is a scenario where the Celtics and Sixers both did what was best for them, and that the price was perfectly fair. Granted, things rarely align on all three of those fronts. But this is one of those deals where both sides made the most rational decision and where the market dictated the terms. A lot of the criticism currently being aimed at the Celtics would be better targeted at the 28 general managers who either couldn’t or wouldn’t beat the Sixers’ offer for Brown. If anything, the market was the irrational actor.
Jaylen Brown spent 10 seasons in Boston after getting selected third overall by the organization in 2016.
From the Sixers’ perspective, the argument remains largely as it did in the immediate wake of the deal. More than practically any other player in the NBA, Brown at least renders believable the idea that the Sixers can contend for a championship over the next two years, given both their smallish backcourt of Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe and their preexisting financial condition. Brown’s size, athleticism, explosiveness and shotmaking are a much better fit at about $60 million over three years than George was for essentially the same AAV over two years. That, at the very least, means the Sixers will be doing something other than treading water and praying for a miracle for the duration of Joel Embiid’s contract, which is as immovable — and limiting — as any in the NBA.
The Celtics were not bound by those constraints. Their desire to remain that way sits at the heart of the decision to trade Brown. Keeping his contract on their books could easily have led them to a fiscal and competitive cliff. A lot of the criticism of the Celtics seems to underestimate this reality.
The criticism doesn’t account for the idea that Payton Pritchard is worth the entire amount of the four-year, $100 million extension he is eligible to sign. Over the last two seasons, seven guards in the NBA have a .600-plus true shooting percentage while attempting at least 20 shots per 100 possessions. Those seven are Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Austin Reaves, Jamal Murray, Anthony Edwards, Luka Dončić, Desmond Bane, and … Pritchard.
The criticism doesn’t account for the contract that former second-round pick Jordan Walsh could command as a free agent next summer. It doesn’t account for Hugo González potentially hitting his option year at the same time Pritchard’s current deal is expiring. The Celtics could have made it work for the next couple of years, sure. But they wouldn’t be able to do it the two years after that. The teams that lose sight of those years are the ones who end up where the Sixers were.
The criticism of the Celtics also seems to under-assess the Celtics’ return. The 2028 draft pick they acquired is hugely valuable given the probability that it ends up as a maximum-odds lottery pick and the time-value aspect of its relative immediacy. The 2031 unprotected pick will be perfectly timed on a number of levels.
I don’t have room to show you all of the work. But you should at least be able to accept that a basketball mind as astute as Stevens’ and an organization as accomplished as the Celtics have done the work. In a weird way, all of the factors that have generated such outrage are also evidence of how strongly the Celtics believed in their decision.
Few teams have the stones to trade a player at the peak of his value. The Celtics’ skids were greased by Brown’s eligibility for a contract extension. More often than not, the word “No” is a first domino.
“They convinced me this was the best way for us to win, and I got there, I did, but it was hard,” Chisholm said. “It was really hard. And I recognize this is a big, big move.”
It is unquestionably a move that works in the Sixers’ favor. But that doesn’t mean it won’t work out for the Celtics, too.
If you didn’t believe it before, you need to understand it now: Donald Trump never should have picked up that phone, never should have put in that call to one of his toadies, FIFA president Gianni Infantino, and never should have tried to exert his icky influence in a sport rife with corruption.
The 4-1 loss by the U.S. men’s national team to Belgium on Monday night at Lumen Field in Seattle was a fitting result. It was an embarrassing end to the World Cup for the home country. It was cosmic payback for a club that hoped to benefit from a president who wanted to strongarm Team USA into the quarterfinals and found out that sports can resist even an autocrat’s attempts to stack the deck.
Sometimes, once you show you’re willing to wallow in the mud, you can never wash the stain away. The justifications for the Trump administration’s overtures to FIFA to wipe out the one-game suspension for Folarin Balogun — and for FIFA’s acquiescence — were oh-so easy and obvious: This is FIFA.
U.S. forward Folarin Balogun (20) was the center of attention against Belgium in the World Cup’s round of 16 on Monday.
This is an organization with a history of scandal and corruption so long and detailed that Robert Caro could only begin to chronicle it. This kind of back-scratching and deal-making is nothing new at soccer’s highest level. This is how things work, and everyone knows it and holds their nose against the stench, and all the complaints from Belgium and the other countries left in the World Cup were nothing but rank hypocrisy.
If another national team were in the same situation that the USMNT found itself after Balogun was hit with that questionable (at best) red card last Wednesday against Bosnia and Herzegovina, its president or prime minister would have done the same thing Trump did, right? Any means necessary in an every-country-for-itself system, right?
Wrong. The corrective to dishonor and dishonesty isn’t to do more dishonorable things. Yet that was the remedy that Trump sought and put Team USA in the position of accepting. No, Balogun never deserved a red card and the subsequent suspension. Yes, it was a terrible call. But terrible calls happen at all levels of sports, because sports — at least until the gamblers and robots take them over completely — are officiated and overseen by human beings, and errors and mistakes are part of the game.
Stuff happens, and you deal with it as best as you can, and no one gets a do-over days later just because Donald Trump says so. His actions wouldn’t have been appropriate in youth soccer — imagine a parent of a punished player pressuring a league’s commissioner to lift a suspension and the commissioner giving in — let alone in the biggest sporting event on the globe.
What’s more, Trump and those who supported or tolerated his interference in The Balogun Affair apparently never stopped to consider that he might be damaging his own national team’s chances. In that 2-0 victory over Bosnia, Balogun’s teammates not only survived the final 26-plus minutes of the match without him but also scored shorthanded to extend their lead.
They had become underdogs. They had acquired the momentum that comes with being a team that had to fight adversity and had given a strong indication that it could overcome it.
But once FIFA reversed its decision, that entire narrative — that sense that the USMNT might use Balogun’s suspension as inspiration and triumph in the face of an unjust call — disappeared. Now, the USMNT wasn’t the tough, resilient bunch that could withstand the absence of its best player. Now it was so out of its depth without Balogun that it needed the shady political boss to cut a deal in the smoke-filled room to bail it out.
Belgium players react after their team scored one of four goals against the United States in Monday’s round-of-16 World Cup match.
Well, the Americans fit that pathetic profile Monday night. They allowed Belgium to take an early lead, then gave up the winning goal just 61 seconds after Malik Tillman tied the game at 1, then conspired to commit a crushing gaffe when goalkeeper Matt Freese played the ball outside the box, burped it up, and watched Hans Vanaken roll a shot past him for a two-goal Belgium edge.
They were outplayed, outmatched, and outclassed, their performance all the more humiliating for the strings that their president had pulled for them, for the message that he had sent about their chances.
Donald Trump told the world that these athletes needed a man willing to act like a mob boss to make things easier for them, that the USMNT wasn’t strong enough to take home victory on its own and without his help. It turned out he was right. He treated them like losers, and on Monday night, they met his expectations.
In a world full of blowhard self-promoters who lack expertise in anything outside hat-backward bro-chat, it’s refreshing to hear smart guys talk about interesting stuff in plain words.
That’s what you’ll get when you find Episode 12 of the Negotiation Warriors podcast on YouTube. On the podcast, former Chicago Bears executive Cliff Stein spends 75 minutes discussing the evolution of NFL front-office practices with a certain former Eagles and Cleveland Browns executive.
The episode is titled “The Salary Cap Godfather with Joe Banner.”
This is not hyperbole.
Banner entered the NFL in 1994 as the salary cap and free agency became the league’s most important drivers of roster construction. Banner was, simply, smarter and braver than almost everybody else making those decisions. It was he who designed the template for salary-cap management, free-agent pursuit, and, to a degree, the maximization of early- and late-round draft pick evaluation.
Banner (with an assist from his then-administrative assistant, Lee Ann Hartley, who gets name-dropped in the episode), also invented Howie Roseman, who since has led the Eagles to three Super Bowls, two championships, and today generally is considered the NFL’s top executive.
But everybody has a godfather.
Banner served a similar role to Stein, a North Philly kid who played receiver for Ron Cohen at George Washington High School and rose from fringe-player agent to the role of senior vice president for 22 years with the Bears, until regime change in 2023 ended his tenure.
Stein, 59, then became a consultant for college programs dealing with NIL challenges, helped develop software called Front Office 360 to help schools manage their salary caps, and, of course, started the pod. He’s already hosted super-agents Drew Rosenhaus and Peter Schaffer, and he has about 30 more in the bank. None, he said, was as rewarding as the Banner pod.
“He’s not known as a very tall man, but he is a giant when it comes to negotiations,” Stein says, introducing Banner in anatomically and metaphorically appropriate terms.
Why Banner? Why now?
Because the business of the NFL was uncharted territory in the mid-’90s. Banner was Magellan. Now semiretired and semiforgotten by a generation that uses his methods but has no appreciation of their origins, it is important to Stein to shine light on Banner’s massive contribution, from negotiating stadium deals to navigating the cap to assigning values to players on the front and back ends of their careers.
“My biggest takeaway was the value of a negotiator in the role of a GM, and to show that’s what he was doing,” Stein said.
Banner’s one of the most respected sports executives, one of the most brilliant minds and canniest negotiators the NFL has ever seen. Some would even call him the Godfather.
From North Philly to the South Side
Stein got his business and law degrees at Temple, then began work as a union lawyer in 1994 when he also got his NFL agent’s license. Three years later he partnered with Jerrold Colton, continued his law practice, and acted as agent for a few low-level players such as former Eagles offensive lineman Jerry Crafts and kick returner Michael “Beer Man” Lewis, the 29-year-old Arena Football League speedster who delivered Budweiser but did not play college football. The Eagles cut Lewis in 2000, but he eventually reached the Pro Bowl with the Saints.
In 2002, the Bears solicited Stein’s application to be their contract negotiator. He spent much of the next 22 years in that role and several others as senior vice president and general counsel, a vital adviser for Bears executives and ownership, until Kevin Warren was hired as president in 2023 and dismissed him.
Banner was instrumental in nurturing Stein’s development.
The podcast is 75 minutes of two of the deepest sorts of sports insiders discussing not only the inner workings of the NFL’s well-cloaked business models and practices but also the origins of those practices in the salary-cap, free-agency world, the very creation of which they played a crucial role.
Detail-oriented pod
That’s the word that keeps popping up: detail. Banner’s philosophy in preparing to negotiate: be detailed. The key trait in every hire Banner makes or recommends: obsession with detail.
Stein learned from Banner, and the stories in the podcast episode are clinically detailed.
They discuss how, under Banner, the Eagles used principals of analytics years before the Moneyball revolution coalesced in the later 2000s.
The most poignant anecdote involves Roseman’s biggest hit. In 2004, as a low-level assistant — director of football administration — Roseman, in his fifth year with the organization, was eager to add a kid named Jason Peters. At that time, Peters not only was a rookie tight end, but he was on the Buffalo Bills’ practice squad. It would have cost the Eagles nothing to acquire him except a minimum salary. Coach Andy Reid didn’t want to use the roster spot for Peters.
Four years later, again at the insistence of Roseman, who now was vice president of player personnel, Banner traded three picks for Peters, gave him a six-year, $60 million contract, and watched him go to seven of the next eight Pro Bowls.
Joe Banner (center) and Jeffrey Lurie (left) came to the Eagles in 1994.
Banner had more stories Sunday afternoon, stories that didn’t make the pod. Such as:
Lurie bought the Birds in 1994, the same year Stein got into the agent game. As newcomers, Banner thought it would be wise to introduce himself and Lurie by entertaining the adversaries.
In October 1994, at the owners’ meetings in Chicago, Banner and Lurie hosted a cocktail hour for the Eagles’ agents at the time. This was tantamount to Abraham Lincoln, in 1863, inviting Jefferson Davis and his generals to Thanksgiving dinner. The other owners and league office were furious.
Banner claimed ignorance.
“We were flagrantly breaking the ‘rules,’” Banner said, “But we honestly didn’t realize how bad a line we were crossing.”
When Stein was with the Bears, they regularly crossed that line.
Later in the podcast, in addressing the number of front-office executives who began their careers under Banner, Stein recalled his introduction to Roseman.
For months, Hartley had received and rebuffed Roseman’s daily letters pleading to join the Eagles — a plea he sent to virtually every other team, too — in any capacity. Roseman’s persistence impressed her, which, Stein said, was key: “I knew that if someone like Lee Ann likes you, you’re going to get the respect of Joe Banner and Jeffrey Lurie.”
In 2000, after Jets GM Mike Tannenbaum met and vetted Roseman — a Fordham Law graduate, just like Stein — Banner finally relented and gave Howie an interview.
“I think I saw a little of me in him,” Banner said.
Banner then fired his current numbers guy and hired Roseman, who took up residency on the corner of Hartley’s desk outside of Banner’s office on the fourth floor of Veterans Stadium. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Fast forward
Stein says he’s content to continue his life in Chicago to be near his two grown children, unless some team comes at him with an offer he can’t refuse. For now, he’s eager to plumb the podcast depths. He says he’s gotten a commitment from an executive who said he’d never do a podcast but changed his mind after seeing the Rosenhaus pod.
Until then, Stein is positively giddy at the chance that the Eagles might make Hartley available for an episode. She now is the vice president and senior adviser to Lurie; essentially, the job she used to do for the president she now does for the owner.
Imagine the stories she could tell.
“I’m going to do a behind-the-scenes on someone who knows everything about the business, part of the NFL population that never gets credit,” Stein said. “To have her as a potential guest? I mean, she’s half the reason Howie got hired!”
As for Banner, he left the Eagles in 2012 to become Cleveland’s CEO, but he was out by 2014. He’s been an adjunct professor at Villanova, a role in which Stein, still in Illinois, now serves at Northwestern. Banner has acted as a consultant on dozens of NFL coach and executive searches; cofounded the 33rd Team group of football consultants with Tannenbaum; acted as an adviser during the 2021 NFL CBA negotiations; and has sat on the board of Patricof Co, a venture capital firm that caters to pro athletes.
In his dotage, Banner, like so many, splits time between Maine and Florida, enjoys his grandchildren, and hopes to stay relevant and appreciated.
The pod, and maybe this column, will serve that end.
“I gotta say, I feel like that 45-year-old golfer who’s leading the Masters after the first round,” Banner said with a chuckle.
Well, Jack Nicklaus won it at the age of 46. Banner might not be the Nicklaus of the NFL, but he’s at least the Fred Couples of the boardrooms.
Rich Paul said something the other day that is worth a little bit of reflection for anybody who rolls their eyes at the idea of LeBron James joining the Sixers.
Paul, the NBA superagent who was essentially created by James and who also hosts a podcast alongside former ESPN personality Max Kellerman, claimed that the Knicks would have been James’ clear first choice had they not won an NBA title this season.
“If the Knicks hadn’t have won, this wouldn’t even — there would be no board. He’d be going to the Knicks,” Paul said to Kellerman as he was breaking down James’ potential landing spots.
Rich Paul on LeBron James to the Knicks 😳
“If the Knicks hadn’t won, there would be no board. He’d be going to the Knicks…. Jalen Brunson would literally have to pick up the phone and say ‘hey man, there’s no issue with me.’ They (Knicks) have checked in.”
The comment was both surprising in its bluntness and unsurprising in its conclusion. To anybody who had followed James’ career and psychologically profiled him from afar, it would have made perfect sense if he decided to go where he would be the biggest fish in the biggest pond and also have a chance to write a story that ended up near the top of the local history books.
That probably sounds discouraging to anybody who had been holding out of picking Philadelphia from the list of 10-14 potential destinations Paul broke down for Kellerman. And let’s be clear, that’s probably the correct interpretation. Hey, we all love Philly. But it’s generally not a place for people who dream of places like New York, Los Angeles, and Miami.
Except, there’s another way to interpret Paul’s comments, at least as it pertains to James’ psyche heading into his 24th season in the NBA. While it is impossible to overlook his clear affinity for the bright lights and big city, James also clearly cares deeply about his legacy and his place in the historical record. Neither the Clippers nor the Nets are on his list, after all. His desire for the Knicks would have been as much about the story as the setting. Not only would he have had a chance to become the first player to win four NBA titles with four different teams, he would have won each of them in a place where they meant something.
Such motivation is perfectly reasonable. Inevitable, even. When a competitor spends two decades as the undisputed greatest player in his sport, he needs to find something else to compete against. For many of them, that something is history. James has accomplished more than almost all of the greatest of the greats, and thus needs to keep coming up with new historical challenges to overcome. Leading the Knicks to their first title in 50-plus years would have been the ultimate bucket list item. But Jalen Brunson did it first.
The Sixers aren’t to Philly what the Knicks are to New York. As far as I know, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce didn’t tour Xfinity Mobile Arena as a potential wedding venue. That being said, the Sixers do offer James a chance to do something novel. You can’t say that about many of his potential landing spots.
What could James accomplish in Denver, Golden State or Boston? All have won championships within the last decade led by stars who’ve spent their entire careers with the organizations. Each has a significant edge over Philly if James’ goal is basketball nirvana. Playing alongside Steph Curry or Nikola Jokic or Jayson Tatum would be a hell of a lot of fun, and any of the three could arguably offer James a better chance at winning a title. But none of them offer him a chance to prove something one last time.
In Miami and Cleveland, James has been there and done that. Miami would offer him a unique narrative symmetry along with a chance to play alongside Giannis Antetokounmpo. He went back to Cleveland and won a title with a totally different team from his first stint. Now, he can do the same in Miami. That’s almost as compelling as the prodigal son returning home to close out his career where his heart has always remained. The problem with both situations is the fit.
Look, James would fit pretty much anywhere, even at 42 years old, which he’ll turn Dec. 30. He averaged 20.9 points, 7.2 assists, and 6.1 rebounds last season. His efficiency remains elite. He led his team to a first-round upset of the Rockets before getting swept by the Thunder. The question is whether he would enjoy playing basketball with James Harden in Cleveland.
LeBron James averaged 20.9 points during the 2025-26 season.
In Miami, the trio of LeBron, Giannis and Bam Adebayo might be too clunky to get it done given the Heat’s deficiencies in the backcourt and in overall depth. One can argue the Sixers with LeBron have a chance to be a much more enjoyable experience, and potentially much better team than Cleveland and Miami. Going home again comes with the risk of undoing some of the good feelings you carried with your initial departure. Does LeBron really want to risk ending his career in either city with disappointment?
I’ll believe James is seriously considering joining the Sixers as soon as I see him shaking Mike Gansey’s hand in front of the cameras and fielding questions from reporters at the team’s practice facility in Camden. In the event he does not hold an introductory news conference this summer, I will believe he is joining the Sixers the moment I see him at training camp in a Sixers jersey. Even then, I might want to at least poke him with a finger to make sure my eyes do not deceive me.
We’ve done this dance before, haven’t we? Once upon a time Ben Simmons was the Klutch Sports mentee and Joel Embiid was the rising superstar. It was only eight years ago that Josh Harris and Brett Brown climbed aboard the Starchaser Enterprise and flew out to California with the hope that they could sway James to sign with the Sixers. Somehow, they managed to express these hopes with a straight face. The result was little more than a needlessly expanded carbon footprint. The Sixers didn’t even get face time with James himself, and the four-time MVP wound up signing with the Lakers, as everybody had long expected.
LeBron James and Tyrese Maxey are both members of Klutch Sports.
At this point, there is little reason to assume that things will play out any differently. The one commonality between all three of James’ free agencies is that they’ve all involved a level of protracted drama that, in hindsight, seemed at least partially contrived. In all three instances, James wound up in a place that looked like the most obvious option, at least in hindsight. The first time he left Cleveland, and went to a place where he could build his own superteam in America’s premier locale for the young, rich and famous. His return to Cleveland both rebuilt and burnished his standing as a hometown legend. The Lakers are the Lakers.
No offense to James, and no offense to Gansey or Bob Myers or Tyrese Maxey or whoever else thinks their personal connection to the King is strong enough to convince him to spend what could be the last season or seasons of his career in a city that offers a tiny fraction of the prestige or narrative value of several of the other potential destinations he is allegedly considering after opting out of his Lakers contract.
I’m not suggesting that anybody on the Sixers side is deluding themselves, and I’m not suggesting that James or Paul is feeding those delusions in bad faith. I’m sure Paul would be thrilled to see James team up with Maxey, another one of his clients at Klutch Sports. I’m sure James loves Maxey, who is impossible not to love, and it’s more than possible that he feels a genuine connection to Gansey, a fellow former Ohio schoolboy star who began climbing up the ranks of the Cavaliers front office around the same time James returned to Cleveland after his four seasons with the Heat. I’m far from sure that any of that will matter in the end.
The Heat and Cavaliers make the most sense from an end-of-career narrative standpoint. The Warriors and Nuggets make the most sense from a pure basketball bliss standpoint. For James to choose the Sixers, he’d need sentiment, basketball bliss, a setting to take a backseat to his desire to put his singular imprint on a new city and a new organization, and to potentially leave both of those entities better off after he is gone than they were before he arrived.
As long as the Sixers can offer him that, you can’t rule him out.
The Flyers announced they have reached the end of their rebuild on Friday, when they tendered an offer sheet to Anaheim Ducks center Leo Carlsson for five years and $90 million. The average annual value would be an NHL-record $18 million, at least for a while. Carlsson is a restricted free agent, so Anaheim has a week to match the offer. If they do not, the Flyers would send them their next four first-round draft picks as compensation.
Carlsson would fill the massive hole in the Flyers’ lineup at the first-line center spot that has existed since they traded Claude Giroux in March 2022 and announced the first real rebuild in franchise history. Coincidentally, Giroux, now a 38-year-old free agent, apparently is the consolation prize if the Ducks match the Carlsson offer.
This is a marked departure from the Flyers’ behavior since Danny Brière became general manager in March 2023. His moves have been conservative. His strategy has been patience. Brière, president Keith Jones, and governor Dan Hilferty have resisted adding pricey veterans and have moved on from aging players to allow younger players the ice time to blossom.
However, with every move, Brière has said:
“If something makes too much sense for the future of this organization, we’re going to take it.”
They took it.
They had to after this past season.
They discovered a franchise goalie, they saw their young core overachieve under first-year coach Rick Tocchet, they saw defenseman Travis Sanheim, 30, round into one of the best blueliners in the game, and they realized that their window was opening a year or two earlier than they expected.
They dabbled in discussions to add other completion pieces, but in the end, going all-in for a 21-year-old budding star in Carlsson just made too much sense.
They made the playoffs on the backs of some of those younger players, such as 21-year-old winger Matvei Michkov, in his second season, and 19-year-old winger Porter Martone, who joined the team straight from the NCAA Tournament, as well as the emergence of late-bloomer goalie Dan Vladař.
Then they beat the Pittsburgh Penguins on the backs of some of those same players and, again, Vladař. He just agreed to a five-year extension and will be under contract for the next six seasons. Tyson Foerster, a 24-year-old winger, also had a year left on his contract when, on Wednesday, he signed an eight-year, $56.8 million extension.
Leo Carlsson, 21, is one of the NHL’s top rising stars. Last year, he averaged just under a point per game for the Anaheim Ducks.
Now, the Flyers have offered Carlsson the moon.
Rebuild over.
This comes on the back of the Sixers’ surprise trade with the Celtics, in which Boston sent star swingman Jaylen Brown, 29, to Philly in exchange for broken-down Paul George, 36, and the crippling contract he carries, as well as two first-round picks and two second-round picks.
And don’t forget that the Eagles traded disgruntled franchise receiver A.J. Brown to the New England Patriots last month.
Oh, yeah: LeBron James is considering signing with the Sixers, too.
Perplexingly, the news about Carlsson might have a larger impact than any of the others — and it could have the least impact as well.
Four firsts and $90 million is a massive overpayment for a player who, after three seasons, sits firmly in the second tier of NHL stars. But prying a restricted free agent from his team always requires overpayment, and that’s why it happens so seldom.
That said, Carlsson’s goals and points totals have steadily increased, though his 67 points last season were tied with three other players, including potential new teammate Trevor Zegras, for 57th in the league. The Flyers are banking on the ever-improving Carlsson, who possesses a tantalizing combination of size (6-foot-3, 208 pounds), speed, skill, and goal-scoring ability, growing into one of the league’s top players.
This (pending) move is sort of a bookend to the trade of Giroux to the Florida Panthers. Part of the return from that deal was cornerstone winger Owen Tippett and a third-round pick that became promising forward Denver Barkey.
More than anything, though, this move is a recognition that the Flyers believe they are much closer to winning their first title in five decades than they’d previously advertised.
Flyers general manager Danny Briere’s offer sheet sends a clear signal that he believes the Flyers can win now.
Between Vladař, Sanheim, 29-year-old All-Star wing Travis Konecny, and 33-year-old captain Sean Couturier, a former first-line center now serving as a fourth-line defensive specialist, the Flyers have a productive veteran core. Couturier has four years left on his deal. Konecny has seven years left.
What that means is there is a five- or six-year window in which the Flyers, scanning the landscape of the NHL, believe they can win it all. And, apparently, it just made too much sense to add Carlsson to this roster, regardless of the absurd price.
Jaylen Brown loves attention, which is why he went on Twitch to talk about his feelings just hours after releasing a statement on social media expressing his feelings about being traded from the Celtics to the Sixers for a PED cheat and four speculative draft picks.
While Twitch-ing, or whatever it’s called, Brown got a phone call from the coworker who probably is happiest to have him aboard: VJ Edgecombe.
It was just 30 seconds of Gen Z acknowledgment and ego stroking, but there was a real vibe of Thank God you’re on my team so now I don’t have to play every minute of every game.
V.J. Edgecombe calls into Jaylen Brown’s stream. 🤣🤣🤣
"You on stream gang, it's JB…I know it's JB bruh. I got your number."
Call it Process 2.0, and understand that Edgecombe, properly nurtured, will be as important to its success as anyone.
That nurturing process got a lot smoother when the Celtics gave Brown away on Wednesday.
It could get even smoother if King James arrives.
On Thursday, LeBron James’ camp let it be known that he would consider playing next season in Philadelphia now that Brown has joined Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, and Edgecombe. The King, now 41, is hunting a fifth NBA title, and Philly has become a viable contender within the last few days, even though the Sixers currently can pay him only the veteran minimum, just under $4 million. This would be a $48 million pay cut from last season with the Lakers.
Don’t hold your breath.
As insane as landing LeBron would be, shedding a bad contract and landing a superstar is even nuttier. And fishier.
Something is amiss when the smartest organization in basketball gives away a top-10 player and asks in return for a broken-down PED cheater and two first-round picks that probably aren’t going to be that good anyway.
At any rate, the Celtics on Wednesday traded Brown, a five-time All-Star, who is 29, to the Sixers for Paul George, who is 36, and who has had just one good season since he was 29. The Sixers also sent first-round picks in 2028 and 2031 and two second-round picks to Boston. The most significant aspect of the deal is that it erased the worst contract in the history of the franchise; George has two more seasons left on a four-year, $211 million deal, and he hasn’t been worth one-tenth of it.
The move also made the Sixers an immediate NBA title contender, since Brown is everything the Sixers wanted George to be: a shot-creating athlete at all three levels who can play and defend multiple positions.
The deal also delivers an invaluable byproduct.
It gives Edgecombe time.
Time to develop.
Time to learn.
Time to rest.
Edgecombe not only led rookies at 35 minutes per game, he ranked 11th in the entire league and averaged the eighth-most minutes for a rookie guard in the last 17 seasons. As the Sixers dealt with injury absences of Joel Embiid as well as the early load-management strategies and the late PED suspension of George, Edgecombe proved himself too good to not protect.
“VJ is going to be a lot better in the long run with J.B. around,” said an NBA source who is intimately familiar with the 76ers. “At the end of last season, he was pretty worn out.”
Outside of a diminished three-point shooting percentage, the wear and tear didn’t really show up in his other raw stats. They dipped in the playoffs, but then, Embiid and George were back on the court for much of the late season and postseason. But his decision-making became errant, his shot selection more questionable, and he tended to disappear. He needed help that his big-money vets were not there to provide.
The absence of Paul George (8) had a trickle-down effect at times on VJ Edgecombe.
Combined, they missed 89 of 164 games, more than half. This has been the norm for both of them for the past few seasons.
Brown plays about 20 more games a season than Embiid and George.
That means that when Embiid misses his 30 or 35 games this season, Brown will be there to carry the load, whereas George was not.
That also means that when Embiid plays, Edgecombe will not have to serve as the second or third offensive option, using moves he shouldn’t be making and taking shots he shouldn’t be taking for at least another season or two. When the Sixers drafted him third overall, most projections cast him as a superior athlete with unlimited defensive potential but with limited plug-and-play offensive ability. He learned fast, averaged 16 points per game, and made the All-Rookie team, but, man, there were some ugly nights and some ugly shots.
Brown will also help Maxey get off his feet a little more. Maxey led the NBA at 38.0 minutes per game in an MVP-caliber season, but he wore down, too. Both were affected by the early injury absence of Jared McCain, and then by McCain’s exit at the trade deadline, as well as the lack of consistent contributions from guard Quentin Grimes.
Edgecombe and Brown don’t play the same position, exactly, but they will combine with Maxey, and possibly rookie Labaron Philon Jr., to manage the primary backcourt duties.
Brown will arrive motivated to make the best impression possible.
He’s in line for a two-year, $140 million extension that will put him under contract for the next five seasons. He will be a more focused defender and rebounder, play-make with more alacrity, and, inevitably, he will assume the role of mentor to Edgecombe that George served last year.
He said in Thursday‘s social media post that he was “Excited and disappointed at the same time” to be leaving Boston, where he won a title, and coming to the Sixers, who bounced him from the playoffs this spring.
It was delivered with Brown’s typical class and polish.
The Twitch stuff? Less classy, less polished, but just as real.
The Celtics, meanwhile, immediately started planting narratives about how zero-time All-Star guard Derrick White is a more valuable player than Brown. ESPN insider Brian Windhorst also reported that the Celtics, after consulting their analytics, considered it imperative to get backup center Mitchell Robinson off the court when they played the Knicks. Then, on Wednesday, they signed Robinson to a three-year, $47.4 million deal.
No wonder the Sixers knocked them out in the first round.
There is always the possibility that this trade is not as lopsided as it seems. The Celtics certainly didn’t see the value in retaining a guy who can make more than $320 million if he’s offered an extension.
The pocket protector crowd loves to cite and manipulate undependable metrics that diminish Brown’s obvious talent, skill, value, and performance. They insist that his playmaking fluctuates, his defense is overrated, and his shot diet doesn’t regularly generate the most efficient looks for him or his teammates.
Remember, analytics is an industry, and it has to feed itself and convince its consumers of its necessity.
Therein lies an irony. As much as analytics have torpedoed the Sixers’ plans, execution, and hopes over the past 14 years of “The Process,” it appears that analytics now have delivered an unexpected reward — in the form of Jaylen Brown.
If we’ve learned anything lately from smallish Flyers GM Danny Brière, it’s that size matters.
The Flyers were swept out of the second round of the playoffs by the fast, physical, slightly bigger Carolina Hurricanes, and often struggled against bigger, heavier teams. Their defensemen were particularly unimposing, and Brière has been on teams where the bigger, the better. His teams as a young player in Buffalo brought the beef and laid the wood. The 2010 Flyers made their Stanley Cup runs with 6-foot-6, 220-pound Chris Pronger and 6-5, 224-pound Braydon Coburn lying in wait for unsuspecting forwards.
The Flyers’ most promising prospect is 5-10, 172-pound wing Matvei Michkov. Brière, who was 5-9 and 174 pounds as a player, knows little guys need big guys to protect them.
For all the beautiful hockey witnessed in South Philly, physicality is part of the Flyers’ DNA. The franchise’s two best players, Bobby Clarke and Eric Lindros, were known as much for their guts as their skill.
Brière recognizes this.
His two, er, biggest pieces last offseason were 6-5 veteran goalie Dan Vladař and 6-3 first-rounder Porter Martone, both of whom pushed the Flyers into the playoffs and past the Penguins in the first round.
Darnell Nurse, Donovan McNabb’s nephew and a defenseman who asked for a trade out of Edmonton, landed with San Jose but the Flyers were in the mix. He’s 6-4, 215, and he would have been the second-biggest skater on the roster if he came to Philadelphia.
Porter Martone’s late-season addition to the Flyers helped push them to the playoffs and to a series win over the Penguins.
Vladař also signed an extension, for five years and $27.5 million. Only four other full-time starters are as big as he is; his nickname, “Darth Vladař,” certainly fits.
Retaining Foerster and Vladař underscored the club’s commitment to heft. The most significant move before those deals included trading talented defenseman Emil Andrae, who, at 5-9, was the shortest of a legion of Lilliputian blueliners. Cam York, the overtime hero who eliminated the Penguins in Game 6 of their first-round playoff series, is listed at 6-foot, perhaps measured while wearing his helmet. Jamie Drysdale, the No. 2 scoring defenseman last season, is 5-11 … ish.
“It did make our defense a little small at times,” Brière said when Andrae was dealt. “We have Jamie and Yorky there, so the three of them — it wasn’t ideal.”
It’s notable that Brière recently has traded sizable wingers Garnet Hathaway, who is part wolverine, and Nic Deslauriers, who is not. And Brière will always choose exceptional skill in a smaller package over modest skill in XXL.
But XXL occupies more space on the ice and carries a lot more punishment in the corners than small/medium. These Flyers are growing by leaps and bounds in performance, expectation, and laundry bills.
Team Canada defenseman Travis Sanheim, the Flyers’ best player at 6-4 and 222 pounds, is the biggest skater on the roster, and he’s under contract for five more years. The back end of that deal could see the back end of the hockey team grow like Jack’s beanstalk.
The Flyers used their first-round pick on Maksim Sokolovskii, a 6-7, 240-pound bulldozer with the attitude of that bulldog you see on the grills of Mack dump trucks. Properly fed, he could occupy most of the defensive zone by himself. He doesn’t even turn 18 until July 12.
Apparently, neither his speed nor his skill warrants a first-round grade, but, as Brière noted, speed and skill can be developed.
“He was also a big defenseman, something we don’t have a lot of. We don’t expect him to be the next big point producer. We see him as a big physical force, a defenseman that’s going to be tough to face,” Brière said. “The way our development has worked the last few years, we feel confident that it’s going to come. We know there’s a lot of work to be done, but there are things that you can’t teach.”
Things like size. Things like grit.
The Flyers selected 6-foot-7 defenseman Maksim Sokolovskii in the first round of the NHL draft last week.
“He’s still going to be 6-foot-7 two years from now,” Brière said, “and that internal physicalness is something you can’t really teach.”
That was true when 6-6 Kjell Samuelsson and 6-5 Chris Therien helped the Flyers to the 1997 Stanley Cup Final.
It was true when — in a different era, when a 200-pound defenseman was imposing — the Broad Street Bullies went to three straight Cup finals from 1974-76, and won twice.
Will Brière’s strategy revive the Broad Street Bully ethic and swagger?
No. Nothing will ever do that. The NHL has grown softer than playoff ice, and won’t allow it.
Not only did the Sixers come from out of nowhere to stun the NBA by acquiring Celtics superstar Jaylen Brown, and not only did they do it for a criminally cheap price, but they also somehow managed to ship out the remaining two years and $110 million remaining on Paul George’s contract.
And, just like that, a new window of title contention has arrived.
That’s the most important takeaway for Sixers fans. Brown transforms the Sixers in both the short and long term. The 2024 NBA Finals MVP and a sixth-place finisher in regular-season voting this year, the longtime Celtics wing is basically the exact player you would create in a lab if you were dreaming up the perfect star to maximize a team with Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe in the backcourt. He has the size, versatility, and defensive chops to help make up for however much of that they give away at the guard position. He is a straight-line player who can get to the rim through traffic with or without the ball in his hands. He is an adequate and willing three-point shooter who showed signs of being much more than that earlier in his career. He can alternate seamlessly between primary and secondary scoring roles. Basically, he is the exact player the Sixers would have been crossing their fingers to have a chance to draft at some point in order to make the Maxey-Edgecombe pairing a legitimate contender.
Even if only half of that was true, the Sixers would have still been justified in making this deal. The unprocessable thing about this deal is the mind-bogglingly low price Gansey somehow managed to finagle from a Celtics team that doesn’t make many bad decisions.
Sixers president of basketball operations Mike Gansey has gotten off to a strong start in Philly.
Consider a deal that the Lakers and Jazz struck earlier in the day on Wednesday. In exchange for the right to sign restricted free agent center Walker Kessler, a zero-time All-Star who played just five games last season before undergoing shoulder surgery, the Lakers agreed to pay:
a 2031 unprotected first-round pick
a 2033 unprotected first-round pick
two first-round pick swaps
That’s what the Lakers gave up for the right to sign Kessler to a four-year, $130 million deal.
Here is what the Sixers will reportedly give up to acquire Brown:
a 2031 unprotected first-round pick
an additional first-round pick, TBD (initial reports suggest it will either be the Clippers’ unprotected 2028 first-rounder or the Sixers’ 2028 first-rounder, whichever is more favorable).
two second-round picks, one in 2028 and the other in 2030
(It’s worth noting that the Kessler deal was struck by Jazz CEO Danny Ainge, the former Celtics president who once upon a time acquired Brown and Tatum while fleecing teams in the process.)
Jaylen Brown will partner with Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe to lead a revamped Sixers roster.
But the real coup de grace is the inclusion of George, whose contract many believed was under water to the point that the Sixers would’ve needed to attach a first-round pick just for some other team to take it onto their books. Maybe that was errant thinking about the rest of the league’s willingness to spend $110 million over two years on a 36-year-old who has played in 78 games over the last two regular seasons and has played in more than 56 games just once since 2019. Whatever the case, the Sixers should be thrilled.
George is a tidy anchor for such a mind-blowing deal. The Sixers basically traded him for a much better player who is 6½ years younger. The cost for the move was less than what the Raptors traded for 35-year-old Kawhi Leonard (Brandon Ingram, Gradey Dick, two unprotected firsts, a pick swap, and change), who is in the last year of his contract and will be able to walk away if the Raptors don’t give him a huge contract extension into his late 30s.
Even if the Celtics and the rest of the NBA knows or suspects something that the Sixers don’t, even if the trade doesn’t prove to be a game changer, it still doesn’t leave them a whole heck of a lot worse off than they would’ve been over the next couple of years with George.
Heading into the offseason, it sure looked like the Sixers would need to be in a mode of making the best of things and preparing for the day when George would move on and free up some payroll maneuverability. Instead, they’ve vaulted themselves into the realm of top-end contenders for the next three seasons.
On Wednesday evening, FanDuel had the Sixers tied as the fifth favorite for the NBA title at 22-to-1, trailing the Spurs (2.4-to-1), Thunder (2.5-to-1), Knicks (8.5-to-1), and Celtics (14-to-1).
Their immediate title hopes still hinge largely on the availability of Joel Embiid. The difference now is that they will not need Embiid to be anything close to his MVP prime in order to be taken seriously. Even if he is some lesser form of who he was last postseason, the Sixers can make an argument for having the edge in top-end talent regardless of matchup. Even if Embiid is absent entirely, they almost certainly should be expected to challenge for a top-four playoff seed.
Are there ways this could go wrong? Sure. The loss of the 2028 pick would be particularly acute for a team that was presumed to need two or three solid drafts to get itself ready for the post-Embiid era. The Sixers’ depth is still a major question mark. They have a conspicuous lack of volume-capable three-point shooting on the wing. We have yet to hear Brown’s thoughts at having been traded to a place like Philadelphia, on a team with two young ball-dominant scorers and Embiid. At the same time, they can always pivot if it doesn’t work.
There is always risk. The question is the price of it. For the Sixers, there wasn’t much to decide.
