LeBron James is a Sixer, and I have thoughts.

I'm not so much on the sports anymore because money and time and lack of each, but when the biggest basketball name in the world joins my team, commenting is required. So here goes.

> Props to the man for choosing discomfort.

James has, at the very end of his career, chosen to go to a tortured and torturing fanbase and media center that is going to demand a championship no matter what. He's doing this with a team that has limited rim protection due to Joel Embiid no longer being what he was, with three ball-dominant offensive identities, with the flux that is the arrival of a Finals MVP.

Candidly, this is not the choice I would have made if I were in his shoes. I'd have stayed in California, where the weather is nicer, people don't freak out if you don't win everything, and you never face the possibility of 15K+ fans from a division rival turning your home game into an embarrassment. But that's why he's him. He takes big swings.

> People who have hated James forever can stop or STFU.

Why did James choose Philadelphia, of all places? Because athletes *like* the way things used to be, where the road team gets booed and the home team gets a ton of attention. They don't like everyone in the room playing at being a GM, caring about their individual nerd bets (fantasy) or individual degenerate bets (actual gambling). They care about the Game and the Outcome, and so does this backwater and traditional town. Bryce Harper didn't choose Philadelphia because it's cyberpunk. Saquon Barkley didn't choose Philadelphia for the food. James didn't choose it for the weather. They all chose it because the fans mark out for the home laundry, and hiss at the road duds.

So if you've hated James his whole playing career? You were supposed to. He didn't play for your team and he made your team lose a lot. But now that he does? You get to be the baseball people who swallowed a decade of Pete Rose being the living definition of cringe and enjoy the World Series win. You get to re-frame your Michael Jordan worship (another guy who you were never supposed to root for, by the way, and also a complete killjoy who barked at every ref that ever didn't give him every call imaginable) into realizing that James, if he wins championships with four different franchises at times where they were irrelevant before him, has created a unique and fascinating legacy. You get to notice that his elite rebounding isn't indicative of a PR diva. You get to notice that his handle and passing vision makes him a joy to play with. You get to notice that unlike other dominant players of his era, his teams don't quit and get swept.

> If you are hung up on his team jockeying, it's more the times we live in than LeBron.

You want to know the least relevant common fact ever about Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Gordie Howe and Joe Lewis? None of them ever did steroids. Not because they were moral pillars of the community -- Cobb, I am reasonably certain, was a psychopath who would have been injecting into his eyeballs in the on-deck circle if it meant an edge was achieved -- but because the damn things just weren't available at the time. You don't get to pule for the past without realizing that the people in the past were, well, people, and would have been hyper-competitive as well.

Michael Jordan doesn't get to be considered dramatically "better" than James because he didn't hop teams as much. He played in a different era, where free agency was far less coordinated at the top levels, where teams were simply less willing or able to make their star a de facto GM. Had he been able to do that, he would have. Hell, the man made life miserable for any player he wanted gone in the first place, and tried to de facto GM anyway.

You can like the modern age or not; it's your choice. But you can not be fair to the modern players by denying that the game has changed. Babe Ruth was amazing. He also didn't face black players. Doesn't stop the fact that he was amazing. It just makes comparing him to Willie Mays a lot harder than it would have been otherwise. Besides, um, they were kind of Very Different Players. Same with James and Jordan.

> James chose Philadelphia for minimal money.

That speaks volumes, honestly. The Sixers no longer have a massive Joel Embiid money problem, because they have James to go with him for nearly nothing. The Sixers no longer have a massive Tyrese Maxey minutes problem, because they have James. The Sixers no longer have an auto loss in a playoff series where Embiid isn't 100%, because they have James. It's all transformative.

> It's probably not going to work.

There are 30 teams and only one gets to win. New York won the East by a lot last year and didn't break up the starting unit that did that. Detroit and Cleveland are far more cohesive. Boston has a dramatically better coach. The fan base and media in this town prefer drama and losing to competency and winning. They still don't protect the rim great, don't have a coach that develops and defines bench players, and Win Absolutely Now moves rarely work out.

> It's totally OK to mark out for the guy now.

You know who we used to hate in this town? Bryce Harper. Pete Rose. Jaylen Brown. Moses Malone. 

You know what we were when we cheered for them? Fans. Of the home team. You know, the way that sports has worked for, well, ever.

So if you now want to say James is better than Jordan?

You get to. (By the way, I've been saying that for a long time.)

And here's the moment, in a nutshell, that you can go to. James' signature play? The chasedown block against the Warriors. Massive effort, maximum impact, undeniably great. Jordan's signature play? A pushoff before scoring the dagger against the Jazz.

> Sixers fandom is so much better than where they were three months ago.

The bench makes sense now. They took useful pieces from their adversaries. You are excited to watch them again. And, if for no other reason, home games should become home games again, which I was fairly certain wasn't going to be the case for another decade or two. Which leads me to my final point...

> If you feel you have to pee on someone else's corn flakes about this, that says a lot more about you than the guy dreaming of parades.

Sports is about unrealistic hopes and dreams. It's about the chase, the dream being fulfilled, the enemies vanquished, the relief at something you've hope for actually coming true. What it is not about, or at least isn't to someone with a helpful outlook on life, is telling the people with fresh hope that they are idiots, hypocrites, sellouts, bandwagon jumpers and all of the rest.

James is a Sixer. If you aren't a James fan, but are a Sixers fan, you are now a James fan. Adjust or get new laundry. 

For the record, while I was driving around my area yesterday? I saw a kid with a pristine Ben Simmons Sixers jersey on a bike. And I imagined that the reason why it was pristine was because wearing that made you the object of ridicule forever, but for some reason, he kept it. And yesterday, he got to wear it, because LeBron James is a Sixer, and all of the past trauma of being a Sixers Fan might, just might, go away.

Let's ride.