LeBron James will have his fair share of suitors if he opts out of his contract with the Cleveland Cavaliers in the coming days. The Los Angels Lakers are still the betting favorite to get King James’ services, but there are other teams out there that feel good about their chances of getting James to play for them.
One of those are the Philadelphia 76ers, who feel playing with their young core is an attractive way for James to enter the later stages of his career. The problem, if there is one for a Sixers team poised to be competitive in the East for years to come, is that they don’t have the cap space to sign James just yet.
Still, the Sixers are likely suitors for James in free agency because they can get the $35 million or so necessary to fit a max contract into their payroll without losing much of the team’s important pieces. And, indeed, it seems the Sixers are willing to do just that. According to Zach Rosenblatt of NJ.com, the Sixers are “doing everything” to get the cap space necessary to sign James this summer.
LeBron James will decide soon whether to exercise or decline a $35 million player option to remain with the Cavaliers. There’s an outside chance he does that and runs it back with Cleveland one more time, who could potentially try to flip Kevin Love elsehwere to improve the roster.
If he declines, the Sixers and Lakers come to the forefront of all James discussions, and the Sixers are doing everything they can to clear enough cap space to sign him outright to a max contract.
This isn’t exactly new information, but it does confirm what everyone believes about the Sixers’ plans this offseason. They have about $30 million in cap space right now if they renounce the rights to J.J. Redick, Marco Belinelli, Amir Johnson and Ersan Ilyasova, as it’s expected they do. They could also dump Jerryd Bayless’s $8.5 million contract in a trade, or waive a player like Bayless using the stretch provision to pay out his contract over three years to reduce his cap hit.
Compared to other teams who would need to clear cap space, this is relatively easy, but it’s no guarantee that James wants to come to the Sixers in the first place. You could argue that the Sixers have already made moves to attract James to the team, and I’m not talking about the various banners and billboards that fans have paid for over the last few months.
The team had a disaster on its hands with Bryan Colangelo’s burner Twitter account fiasco, something that James himself made fun of. Once James poked fun of the team’s president, he simply had to go. He’s gone now, and Brett Brown is running the show in the interim. James’ humor wasn’t the only reason Colangelo got the boot, of course, but this summer, keeping LeBron’s respect and interest is the top priority.
