Why LeBron wants to finish his NBA career in Philly

Alrighty, welcome back to Florida Live. Now with me here is Sean Green. Sean, there was a major sports announcement today. LeBron James is switching teams. Talk to me all about it. Yeah, he is. Thank you so much for having me. He is going to the Philadelphia 76ers on a two-year, $8 million contract with a player option after the first year. It was one of the more unexpected moves for him to make. A lot of people assumed he would be going to the Miami Heat. The Miami Heat made a little bit of an error trying to do a press conference or accidentally posting a press conference a couple days ago, assuming that he was gonna be there. And also, he had a couple other suitors. The Warriors were one of them that people thought, but he is ending up going to the Philadelphia 76ers. Yeah, and talk to me a little bit about, Miami Heat, they really kind of breadcrumbed this. So how big of a shock is this really to the sports world? I think it's a pretty big shock. You can also mention the Cleveland Cavaliers too. LeBron potentially going back home. The Cavs have a pretty good roster. But when you look at the Heat, they just got Giannis Antetokounmpo. I think Giannis has been pretty outspoken that he thought LeBron was gonna come here. Pat Riley in Giannis' press conference made a pretty big remark saying, oh, we have another move to make, kind of saying that LeBron, they're trying to get LeBron to go to Miami. But I think LeBron looked at the Philadelphia 76ers roster after Jalen Brown got traded there. And he said, that's a roster I think I can win a championship with. The Miami Heats roster, unfortunately, yes, they did get Giannis. That's a huge help. But Giannis and Bam just do not compare when you look at the 76ers with Jalen Brown, Vijay Edgecombe, Joel Embiid. The 76ers have the much better roster. And I think LeBron's looking at a championship to end his career. You know, he's been with the Lakers for quite some time now. I think that it's kind of hard for people, especially my age, to think of LeBron anything other than a Laker. Talk to me a little bit about just kind of his highlights, his history with the Lakers. Well, it's interesting you say that. I think a lot of NBA fans surprisingly might, when his career's all said and done, I think they're gonna really forget a lot of his years with the Lakers, right? You had the championship in 2020 in the bubble, which for the Lakers was huge for LeBron to go bring them a championship alongside Anthony Davis. But it's been a lot of, you know, kind of mediocre years, not a lot of deep playoff runs. A lot of people just remember LeBron older days where he was in Cleveland, in Miami, winning a championship with both of those places. I think people remember that more than the Lakers. He was with the Lakers for a long time, but I think the last, I don't know, four years, it's been kind of going downhill. The Lakers haven't really been able to put a really good roster around him. They have made some good moves by getting a guy like Luka Doncic and Anthony Davis at the time. But I think with LeBron's age and him aging up, his time with the Lakers will always be looked at as that, of winning a championship in 2020 and then slowly declining with his play. He's still an incredible player and he's going to make the 76ers better, but he's coming to the end of his career and his time with the Lakers kind of just showed that. An absolute generational talent. I mean, there's no discussion about that. I think for a lot of people as well, they may have anticipated that he was going to retire. I mean, a lot of people talked about, okay, he's going to play with his son and once he gets that opportunity, he's going to close the chapter. Well, that kind of came and went and now we are where we are. So you talked a little bit about wanting to end out with a bang. So you think that from your perspective, he's got to win a championship and then he's going to walk off or what do you think it's going to take for him to finally hang up those shoes? Yeah, to be honest, he tweeted out today and he said that he was pretty confident he was going to retire at the end of this past season and not really letting anybody know. I think when you look at it from this perspective, he really sat down and thought, do I still love the game? And he tweeted this out and he said he did. And I think he wants to end on a high note. He wants to end on a bang, like you said. And I think he looked at the Lakers roster, didn't think he could do it there, wasn't happy there. And then he had a lot of suitors, but he was looking at what's the best fit. I mentioned his contract, two years, $8 million. For LeBron James, that's $4 million a year. That is nothing compared to what he's made in the past. He wanted to go and end his career with a winner. He believes the 76ers were the best chance to do that. Do I think they have a good shot at winning the championship? Absolutely. Their roster is top to bottom, one of the best in the NBA after this edition. But again, there's a lot of good teams in the NBA now, a lot of parody, we'll see. But this was the decision he felt would give him the best chance to win at the end of his career. Now, I know you're not in his brain, and obviously you don't know what a place that would be, right? But you talked about Miami. You know, why do you think he maybe said no? You know, why do you think that he took this opportunity? I know you said, you know, the 76ers have a great shot, but talk to me about why maybe those teams he may not have thought was the best fit. Frankly, I do think Cleveland was the last one on the list. I think that the only positive for Cleveland was he'd be going back home. They do have a good roster, but they don't have a Giannis, and they don't have the roster the Philly does. I think him not choosing Miami was very simply like I mentioned earlier. The roster is not on par with some of the other teams in the East. The Miami Heat have not had a top six roster in the East for a good chunk of time now. And when you look at the roster, they just kind of added Giannis, but they gave up a lot. They gave up a lot of pieces. They gave up a lot of draft capital. So you look at Miami and you could say, okay, they have Bam out of Bayou, and they have Giannis onto the Kumpo. But when you kind of look around the rest of the board, their third best player might be Bobby Portis. So I think for LeBron, LeBron is always about creating a super team, creating the best team that he could possibly create to win. And I think when you look at the Heat, unfortunately, yes, they do have Giannis. But when you look at the team around Giannis, it's not something that I think LeBron looks at it and says, I can win a championship with this team. And it's the opposite with the 76ers. I think he looks at them as a championship contender, and that's why he's going there. You know, it's going to be interesting because he's been with the Lakers for so long. He's built a lot of community with that team. You know, how do you think it is going to be transitioning to where, I mean, he'll never be the new kid on the block. He's LeBron James, right? But he's going to be playing with people who he's not played with before. So what do you think that transition is going to look like for him in terms of, do you think we're going to still see him play the same amount of games? Do you think that he will still have the perks that he had with the Lakers? Will that carry over? I think it's really going to depend on his body, if we're being honest. I think over the last couple of years, you've seen his health kind of start to decline, you know, little injuries, little nooks and bruises there that kind of keep him out of games. Ultimately though, I think if you look at the 76ers, it might be the perfect team for him to go to. Obviously, Joel Embiid has had a lot of injury problems in his career. The 76ers just want to get their best players to play off basketball. I think if you're LeBron James, obviously in a perfect world, he'd love to play all 82 games, right? But I think if you're the 76ers, you just got to be good enough to get home court advantage in the playoffs. Get your best players to that time of the year and see what happens. I think you talked about community. LA loves LeBron. Obviously, he's been there a long time. When you move LeBron from LA to Philly or LeBron from LA to Miami, it doesn't matter what team he goes to. He kind of takes over that team. This is now LeBron James' team, regardless. Joel Embiid's been there his entire career, but LeBron James is going to be the leader of this team and guys will follow. Right, absolutely. Well, Sean Green, thank you so much for breaking down this incredibly breaking news in the sports world. We really appreciate you taking the time with us today. Thanks for having me.