Report: 76ers going ‘all in’ to clear cap space for LeBron James

NBA: Playoffs-Cleveland Cavaliers at Boston Celtics

As the 2018 NBA free agency approaches, the hot pursuit for LeBron James will heat up. It is still unclear who will be ‘The Chosen One’ for LeBron James, but teams like Philly, LA, Houston, and Cleveland will be tantalized (as Woj says) with landing LeBron. There has also been reports LeBron has been leaning towards Cleveland and not LA  so everything is in play. According to NJ.com, the 76ers are going to do anything they can for LeBron to come to Philadelphia.

 “the Sixers are doing everything they can to clear enough cap space to sign him outright to a max contract.”

The Numbers:

Getting to max money for James (around $35 million) will require some clever bookkeeping from the Sixers. According to Spotrac.com, the team currently has $30.5 million in practical cap space, which is the money they’ll have free once they renounce the rights to free agents J.J. Redick, Amir Johnson, Marco Belinelli and Ersan Ilyasova. 

Getting LeBron James to join ‘The City of Brotherly Love’ will send them to the top of the Eastern Conference instantly. But, key players like JJ Redick, Marco Belinelli, and Ilyasova would have to leave. The 76ers got a lot of meaningful production from those guys and even with them they struggled to shoot threes in the Boston series.

To top it off, Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, and Markelle Fultz still cannot escape their injury history, so the risk for LeBron is pretty high if he goes that route.

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