Last updated August 2026 — this is a living guide, updated as the story unfolds.
There has never been anything like The Process. Not in Philly. Not anywhere.
Other cities have rebuilds, but Sam Hinkie had a belief system (for better or worse). A front office that treated losing like an investment strategy, a fan base that turned a fired executive into a folk hero with his own billboard, a 7 foot franchise savior who spent his first two seasons on the bench and then adapted the nickname "The Process", and a thirteen year arc that runs from 10-72, the second worst season in NBA history, which we watched on purpose, all the way to LeBron James putting on a Sixers jersey in the summer of 2026.
If you lived it, this is your complete guide to relive the memories (sorry). If you didn't, pull up a stool. This is the whole story: every era, every heartbreak, every meme, and the honest answer to the only question that matters. Did it work?
What Was The Process? (The Short Version)
The Process was the Philadelphia 76ers' radical rebuilding strategy, launched in 2013 by general manager Sam Hinkie. The idea: in the NBA, the worst place to be is the middle (NBA purgatory). A 40 win team with no stars is a treadmill ,too good to draft a franchise player, too bad to win anything. So instead of pretending, the Sixers got deliberately, historically bad for three straight seasons, stockpiled draft picks, and bet everything on landing superstars through the lottery.
The phrase "Trust the Process" started as an internal front office mantra and became the rallying cry of an entire fan base, and eventually the literal nickname of Joel Embiid, the man that this entire gamble hinged on. The tank ran from 2013 to 2016. The consequences are still playing out today, with the most stacked Sixers roster of our lifetimes about to take the floor.
That's the short version. Here's the real one.
Era One: The Tank (2013–2016)
The handshake that started it
On May 14, 2013, the Sixers introduced a 35 year old former Houston Rockets executive named Sam Hinkie as their new president of basketball operations, and he said the sentence that named an era: "We talk a lot about process, not outcome."
Nobody fully understood what he meant. Six weeks later, everybody did.
On draft night 2013, Hinkie traded Jrue Holiday, our All-Star point guard and the best player on the team, to New Orleans for Nerlens Noel, a rookie shot blocker with a freshly torn ACL who wouldn't play for a year, plus a future first round pick. He drafted Michael Carter-Williams eleventh. He didn't hire a head coach until August, when Brett Brown, a Spurs assistant, signed up for the long haul.
The message was clear: this team was not trying to win basketball games. It was trying to win the draft. For years. On purpose. Nobody had ever said the quiet part this loud before.
How bad did it get? Historically bad.
Let's just lay the numbers out, because they're genuinely incredible:
- 2013-14: 19-63, including a 26 game losing streak that tied the NBA single-season record. (MCW won Rookie of the Year. Hinkie traded him nine months later. For a draft pick.)
- 2014-15: 18-64, after an 0-17 start.
- 2015-16: 10-72 — the second worst record in NBA history, after an 0-18 start that was part of a 28 game losing streak across two seasons, at the time the longest skid in major American pro sports.
- The full Hinkie era: 47-199.
The rosters were a conveyor belt of ten day contracts and guys you'd never heard of before and most you haven't heard from since. Hinkie absorbed other teams' bad salaries purely to extract draft picks as rent, he once took on JaVale McGee's contract just to buy a first rounder, then waived him. The Kings, in one of the great heists of the era, handed over Nik Stauskas, a future first and two pick swaps just to dump salary into our cap space. The cupboard was filling even as the win column starved.
June 26, 2014: The Pick
Everything about The Process — the philosophy, the pain, the payoff — lives inside one decision.
Joel Embiid was the best prospect in the 2014 draft, a 20 year-old from Cameroon who'd been playing basketball for about five years and was already drawing Hakeem comparisons. Then, six days before the draft, he had surgery on a broken navicular bone in his right foot, the scary injury, the big man career killer. Cleveland passed. Milwaukee passed. And Hinkie, holding the longest view in the room, took him third overall knowing he'd miss his entire rookie year.
He missed two. A second foot surgery in August 2015 wiped out a second season. For two full years, the most important player in franchise history was a rumor in a hoodie on the end of the bench, and "zero games played" was the punchline on every national broadcast.
Sitting here in 2026, with an MVP trophy in the case? It's the greatest draft pick in Philadelphia sports history. At the time, it looked like the moment the madness peaked.
The league takes Hinkie out
Here's the part casual fans forget: The Process didn't die because it failed. It died because it was working, and the NBA couldn't stand it.
The league tried to change the lottery rules in 2014 specifically because of us, but the reform vote failed. By December 2015, rival owners were leaning on commissioner Adam Silver, reportedly because our tanking was dragging down the league's revenue sharing math. Silver personally brokered the installation of 76 year old Jerry Colangelo as "chairman of basketball operations," a title that existed to take Hinkie's steering wheel away. Four months later, with ownership preparing to hire Colangelo's own son over him, Hinkie resigned.
He went out in the most Hinkie way imaginable: a 13 page resignation letter quoting Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Bill Belichick, and Abraham Lincoln. National media laughed at it. Philly did not (well, some of us didn't.) Nineteen days later, fans organized by The Rights To Ricky Sanchez podcast put up a billboard on I-95: HINKIE FOREVER.
Think about that. A fired executive. Of a ten win team. Got a billboard. That's what outsiders have never understood about The Process, we weren't tanking fans. We were believers. And six weeks after Hinkie walked, his ping pong balls won the No. 1 overall pick.
Era Two: The Rise (2016–2019)
The night the building shook
Ben Simmons arrived first, No. 1 overall in 2016, the franchise's first top pick since Iverson, and promptly broke his foot in training camp and missed the whole season, because Sixers stars apparently cannot debut on time.
But on October 26, 2016, 854 days after he was drafted, Joel Embiid finally played an NBA basketball game. Twenty points against Oklahoma City, "Trust the Process" chants rattling the Wells Fargo Center, grown adults getting emotional over a Wednesday game in October. Within a week, at Embiid's own request, the PA announcer (the legendary Matt Chord) was introducing him as "Joel The Process Embiid." The tank finally had a face, and the face was winking at us (and trolling, always.)
The rookie version of Embiid was a 31 game lightning storm, 20 a night on a minutes limit, Hakeem footwork, three point range, trash talk in his second language, before a torn meniscus ended it. The Sixers maxed him out anyway. Some bets you just keep pressing.
Fultz, and the one that still hurts
The 2017 draft is the scar tissue of this era. Bryan Colangelo traded up with Boston for the No. 1 pick and took Markelle Fultz, the smooth combo guard who was supposed to complete the core. The price included the pick that became Jayson Tatum. You already know, and yes, it still hurts to type.
What happened to Fultz remains the strangest saga in modern NBA history. Within weeks of his debut, his jump shot simply... left. The form collapsed into a hitching shot put; there's video of him nearly resting the ball on top of his own head at the free throw line. Shoulder injury? The yips? It took fourteen months to even get a physical diagnosis (thoracic outlet syndrome). He played 33 games as a Sixer and was gone by February 2019. No joke, it was a genuinely sad story about a good kid. But between Fultz over Tatum and Okafor over Porzingis, the great Process criticism was never the tanking. It was the picking.
52 wins, Meek's helicopter, and burner season
The 2017-18 season was the payoff arriving all at once. Simmons ran away with Rookie of the Year. Embiid made his first All-Star team. The team closed the year on a 16-game win streak, the longest season ending run in NBA history - won 52 games, and rolled Miami in round one.
And before the closeout game, we got the single most Philly moment of the entire era: Meek Mill, released from prison that afternoon, helicoptered to the arena by co-owner Michael Rubin, walking out in an Embiid jersey to ring the bell as the building lost its collective mind. You cannot script this city.
Then the front office face planted in the most 2018 way possible. That May, The Ringer published a story linking five anonymous Twitter burner accounts to GM Bryan Colangelo, accounts that had criticized Embiid and Fultz, leaked medical info, defended Colangelo's enormous shirt collars LOL), and trashed Sam Hinkie. The investigation concluded Colangelo's wife ran the accounts (and factory reset her iPhone before handing it over). He resigned in June. Sixers Twitter has never been more alive than burner week, and Embiid's real time tweet: "Joel told me that @samhinkie IS BETTER THAN YOU" - belongs in the Smithsonian.
Four bounces
New GM Elton Brand went star hunting, and in November 2018 he landed a real one: Jimmy Butler, pried out of Minnesota for Robert Covington and Dario Saric. Butler was everything the young core wasn't, a self-made, fourth quarter assassin who wanted the last shot and the responsibility that came with it. He took Simmons and Embiid under his wing, took the crunch time reins, and hit an absurd series of clutch shots all spring. Then Tobias Harris arrived at the 2019 deadline, and the starting five of Embiid–Simmons–Butler–Harris–Redick played all of ten regular season games together and might still be the most talented lineup of the era.
You know how it ends. Game 7 in Toronto, May 12, 2019. Tie game, 4.2 seconds left. Kawhi Leonard dribbles to the right corner, rises over Embiid's outstretched arm, and hangs a shot that hits the rim four times - bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce - before dropping with 0.0 on the clock. The first series ending Game 7 buzzer beater in NBA history, and it happened to us. Embiid cried on the floor. His dad hugged him in the tunnel. Toronto won the whole title, which somehow makes it both better and worse.
And here's what gets lost in the four bounces mythology: Butler was the guy in that Toronto series. When the offense seized up, he ran point. When Kawhi was carving us up, Butler answered. His game tying layup with 4.2 seconds left is the reason Leonard even needed a buzzer beater. In his lone playoff run as a Sixer, Jimmy Butler was exactly the player we'd spent six years tanking to find.
Every Philly fan has a personal Mount Rushmore of pain. The four bounces went straight on it. And then, that summer, the franchise made the decision that haunts this entire era: faced with paying Butler the full max, they let him walk to Miami in a sign-and-trade — and gave the money to Tobias Harris and Al Horford instead. Hold that thought. Jimmy certainly did.
Era Three: Contention & Chaos (2019–2023)
The wrong lessons, expensively learned
The money that could have kept Jimmy Butler went two directions instead, and both were disasters. Al Horford, Boston's designated Embiid-stopper, got $109 million to stand next to the guy he was built to stop, a fit so bad he was salary dumped with a first round pick attached seventeen months later. And Tobias Harris got five years, $180 million, franchise cornerstone money for a guy who never made an All-Star team - a contract that became the single most groaned about number in Philly. Ben got his max too, which aged even worse for reasons we're getting to. It went about how you'd guess. The COVID interrupted 2019-20 season ended with a bubble sweep at Boston's hands, and Brett Brown, seven years, 221 wins, 344 losses, all of them absorbed with dignity on behalf of an idea - was relieved of his duties.
The replacement hire completed the strangest full circle in sports: Daryl Morey, the Houston executive who had trained Sam Hinkie, took over the roster his apprentice's tank had built. Doc Rivers came in to coach. And with the 21st pick of the 2020 draft, Morey grabbed a Kentucky guard named Tyrese Maxey, file that name away, because he becomes the most important draft pick of the second half of this story.
The pass
The 2020-21 Sixers won the East's No. 1 seed. Embiid was MVP runner-up. And then came the Atlanta series, which Philly fans discuss the way other people discuss car accidents.
Game 4: blew an 18 point lead. Game 5, at home: led by 26 in the second half, lost. Game 7, three and a half minutes left, two point game: Ben Simmons, who was not shooting well from the line for the series and visibly terrified of being fouled, catches the ball under the rim with a runway to dunk on 6-foot-1 Trae Young. And passes it away.
Doc Rivers, asked postgame whether Simmons could run a championship team: "I don't know the answer to that right now." Embiid, unprompted, called the play "the turning point." Within days, Simmons' agent was asking for a trade, and the coldest standoff in modern NBA history was on: the holdout, the fines, the practice he got thrown out of for refusing a drill ("I don't care about that man", Joel Embiid, ice in his veins), the months of limbo. Simmons never played another game for the Sixers.
Harden: the summit and the crater
On February 10, 2022, Morey ended it with the biggest swing of the era: Simmons and change to Brooklyn for James Harden, the superstar Morey had built his Houston career around. The eighteen months that followed contained the highest high and lowest low of the whole thing, basically side by side.
But first, the bill for summer 2019 came due. The Harden-Embiid Sixers ran into Miami in the 2022 second round, and Miami was led by, who else, Jimmy Butler. With Embiid playing through a fractured face, a torn thumb ligament and a concussion, and Harden attempting zero fourth quarter shots in the closeout game, Butler hung 32 on us in Game 6 at the Wells Fargo Center to end our season. Then he walked off our own floor screaming it, so everyone could hear "Tobias Harris over me?!" He wasn't wrong, and that's what made it unbearable. The man we tanked six years to find, found, and let leave over money we spent worse, came back and put the receipt on the glass.
The high came on May 2, 2023: Joel Embiid, NBA MVP. After back-to-back runner-up finishes to Jokić, the broken footed kid Hinkie drafted in 2014, the guy who lost two full seasons before ever stepping on the court - was officially the best basketball player on Earth. If The Process has a single vindication date, that's it.
The crater came eleven days later: up 3-2 on Boston, the Sixers no-showed Game 6 at home, then got run out of Game 7 by 24 as Tatum hung an NBA Game 7-record 51. Doc Rivers was fired within 48 hours. And Harden, denied the max extension he wanted, picked up his option, demanded a trade, and then stood on a stage in China and said "Daryl Morey is a liar, and I will never be part of an organization that he's a part of." The league fined him $100K. On Halloween night 2023, he was a Clipper.
Star hunting through trades was dead. Which, in hindsight, is exactly what needed to happen.
Era Four: Reset & Resurgence (2023–2026)
Maxey time, and 70 for the big fella
With Harden gone, Tyrese Maxey went from sidekick to star overnight - 25.9 a game, Most Improved Player, first All-Star nod, and the most likable franchise player alive. Embiid, on an MVP repeat tear, gave us the greatest scoring night in franchise history on January 22, 2024: 70 points and 18 rebounds on Wembanyama's Spurs, breaking Wilt's team record of 68. Wilt to Joel. The lineage is real.
Then Jonathan Kuminga fell on his knee, the meniscus surgery followed, and the injury era of Embiid's story began all over again. The Sixers still pushed the Knicks to six in a first round series featuring (a) a Game 2 ending so badly officiated the league's own report admitted the refs missed a kicked ball and two fouls on Maxey in the final 27 seconds, and (b) Embiid scoring 50 with Bell's palsy, half his face paralyzed, dark glasses at the podium, "I'm not a quitter." The man played the most heroic basketball of his life while unable to blink.
The all-in that blew up — and Tank II
Summer 2024 was the all-in: Paul George on a four year, $211.6 million max, Embiid extended, "title or bust" everywhere. It was bust by Thanksgiving. Embiid's knee never came right (19 games all season), George's debut year dissolved, and rookie sensation Jared McCain, legitimately the best story of the fall, tore his meniscus in December. Facing a lost year, the franchise that invented the tank did the funniest thing imaginable: it re-tanked, shutting everyone down to protect a top six-protected pick owed to Oklahoma City.
And the old basketball gods delivered one more time. Lottery night 2025: the Sixers jumped to No. 3 and kept the pick. In June they took Baylor's VJ Edgecombe, who then opened his career in October 2025 by dropping 34 points at Boston, the third-biggest scoring debut in NBA history, behind only Wilt Chamberlain and Frank Selvy, with a first quarter that broke LeBron James' rookie debut record.
Hold that thought about LeBron.
The comeback
The 2025-26 season was a 21 win improvement earned the hard way, Paul George's stunning 25 game suspension in January, Embiid's availability battles, and, in April, an emergency appendectomy for the big man, because at this point of course. But this team was different: Maxey leveled up to All NBA (with a 54 point night in Milwaukee along the way), Edgecombe started every game and made All Rookie First Team, and the Sixers grabbed the 7 seed.
Then they went down 3-1 to Boston in round one and gave us the best two weeks of the entire era. Three straight wins. Game 7, on Boston's floor, May 2, 2026 — Sixers 109, Celtics 100. Embiid, three weeks removed from having his appendix removed, went for 34 and 12. It was the franchise's first series win over the Celtics since 1982, and just the 14th 3-1 comeback in league history. The eventual champ Knicks swept us in the next round and it barely dented the glow. We beat Boston. In a Game 7. In their house. Some wins are worth a decade of narrative.
Then everything changed in 24 days
The sweep cost Daryl Morey his job after six seasons, and the new regime, Bob Myers, the four ring Warriors architect, with new basketball boss Mike Gansey, moved like the roster was on fire. In one July:
July 1, 2026: The failed Paul George experiment gets flipped to Boston, for Jaylen Brown. The 2024 Finals MVP. From the Celtics. Wearing our laundry. A rivalry heist so clean the trade grade industry basically handed out an A+ in unison.
July 24, 2026: LeBron James, 41 years old, openly weighing retirement — announces that his "last decision" is Philadelphia. Recruited on calls by his Klutch little brother Tyrese Maxey, with Embiid and Brown piling on. A two year veteran minimum deal, roughly $8 million total. Wearing No. 23. His Sixers jersey set an all-time single-day sales record.
And if you want to know why this city short circuited: rookie Joel Embiid was tweeting recruiting pitches at LeBron in 2014, before he'd played a single NBA game. Fans put billboards up in Cleveland in 2018 begging him to "Complete The Process." Eight years later, at the very end of the road, he came. The longest running bit in Sixers history became real life.
So here we are. Embiid. Maxey. Jaylen Brown. VJ Edgecombe. LeBron James. The Process, thirteen seasons in, enters 2026-27 as the favorite in the East with one chapter left to write.
The Culture: How a Rebuild Became a Religion
You can't tell this story with transactions alone, because The Process was always at least half a fan phenomenon, arguably the greatest one in NBA history.
The phrase. "Trust the Process" went public on January 5, 2015, when guard Tony Wroten told ESPN: "They tell us every game, every day, 'Trust the Process.' Just continue to build." The internet did the rest. By 2016 Embiid had made it his name; by 2019 it was literally trademarked.
The pod. The Rights To Ricky Sanchez "Tortured since 2013", became the religion of Process fandom: annual Lottery Parties at Xfinity Live! where the crowd popped for Sam Hinkie slideshow photos, the HINKIE FOREVER billboard, and a whole liturgy of inside jokes. No fan community in basketball has ever organized itself this thoroughly around an idea.
The saint. Hinkie never coached a game, never spoke publicly during the collapse, resigned with a 13 page letter, and became bigger in exile than he ever was in office. "Hinkie Died For Our Sins" shirts still walk around South Philly. He's a Silicon Valley venture capitalist now, which is the most Hinkie possible retirement.
The showman. And Embiid gave the whole thing its personality: shooting his shot at Rihanna ("come back when you're an All Star," she allegedly said, so when he made his first All Star team in 2018: "on to the next one"), tweeting at Kim Kardashian as a rookie, trolling half the league, drinking Shirley Temples, recruiting LeBron for twelve years until it worked. The tank gave us picks. Joel gave us joy.
How The Process Changed the NBA Itself
Here's the legacy stat nobody can take away: the NBA has changed its own rules three times because of what Philadelphia started.
1. The 2017 lottery reform - flattening the worst teams' odds to identical 14% chances, passed 28-1-1 explicitly in response to Sixers style tanking.
2. The play-in tournament (permanent since 2022) was pitched partly as an anti-tanking device.
3. The "3-2-1 Lottery" overhaul approved in May 2026 - sixteen teams in the drawing, bans on repeat No. 1 picks - came just months after Adam Silver flat-out admitted existing anti-tank measures were "not working."
They weren't working because Hinkie won the argument. OKC stockpiled picks Process style and built a champion. The Spurs went 22-60 for Wembanyama. Utah, Detroit, Washington, Brooklyn all ran recognizable Process descendant rebuilds. The strategy that got one man run out of the league became the default behavior of every bad team in it. Hinkie lost his job and won the war.
So... Did The Process Work?
The honest answer, the Philly answer, is: ask us next June.
The case for yes: Hinkie took over the most hopeless situation in basketball and converted it into a homegrown MVP, two Rookies of the Year, a decade of contention, the best fan culture in the league, and an asset machine still paying out in 2026 (the picks in the Jaylen Brown deal trace their family tree straight back to the tank). The entire NBA copied the model. The commissioner spent ten years legislating against it. Imitation and prohibition are the two sincerest forms of flattery, and The Process got both.
The case for no: through 2026, zero championships and zero conference finals - a drought so notorious it became its own meme format. The tanks produced the picks, but the picking missed: Fultz over Tatum, Okafor over Porzingis, and injury bets whose tax kept compounding through Embiid's feet and knees.
The truth: The Process succeeded at everything a front office can control and hasn't yet cashed the only check that matters. And now, with Embiid, Maxey, Brown, Edgecombe, and LeBron James sharing a locker room, it has the best chance it's ever had. Thirteen years of trust, one season to pay it all off.
We've waited this long. What's one more year?
The Process Timeline: 28 Dates That Tell the Whole Story
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May 14, 2013 — Sam Hinkie hired: "Process, not outcome."
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June 27, 2013 — Jrue Holiday traded on draft night. The tank begins.
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June 26, 2014 — Joel Embiid drafted No. 3 with a broken foot.
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Jan 5, 2015 — Tony Wroten says "Trust the Process" out loud. A religion gets its name.
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Nov 2015 — 0-18 start; 28 straight losses; rock bottom at 10-72 pace.
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Dec 7, 2015 — The league installs Jerry Colangelo over Hinkie's head.
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April 6, 2016 — Hinkie resigns with the 13-page letter. HINKIE FOREVER billboard follows.
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June 23, 2016 — Ben Simmons drafted No. 1 with Hinkie's ping-pong balls.
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Oct 26, 2016 — Embiid's debut, 854 days after draft night.
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June 19, 2017 — Trade-up for Markelle Fultz; the pick becomes Jayson Tatum.
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April 24, 2018 — Meek Mill freed, helicopters in, rings the bell; Sixers win 52 that year.
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May 29, 2018 — The Ringer's burner-account story detonates; Colangelo resigns days later.
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Nov 12, 2018 — Jimmy Butler trade completed: a closer arrives; the famous starting five follows.
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May 12, 2019 — The Kawhi shot. Four bounces. First Game 7 series buzzer-beater ever. Weeks later, Butler walks to Miami — and Tobias Harris gets the five-year, $180M deal instead.
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Nov 2, 2020 — Daryl Morey — Hinkie's old mentor — takes over. Weeks later he drafts Tyrese Maxey 21st.
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June 20, 2021 — Ben Simmons passes up the dunk. Game 7 lost; the holdout follows.
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Feb 10, 2022 — Simmons traded for James Harden.
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May 12, 2022 — Butler's revenge: 32 points in Game 6 to end our season — "Tobias Harris over me?!"
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May 2, 2023 — Joel Embiid, NBA MVP.
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May 14, 2023 — Tatum's 51 in Game 7. Doc fired; Nick Nurse hired.
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Aug 14, 2023 — "Daryl Morey is a liar." Harden's a Clipper by Halloween.
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Jan 22, 2024 — Embiid drops 70, breaking Wilt's franchise record.
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April 25, 2024 — 50 points with Bell's palsy: "I'm not a quitter."
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May 12, 2025 — Tank II pays off: lottery leap to No. 3 → VJ Edgecombe.
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Oct 22, 2025 — Edgecombe's 34-point debut, third-best in NBA history.
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May 2, 2026 — Game 7 win at Boston, completing a 3-1 comeback. First series win over the Celtics since 1982.
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July 1, 2026 — Jaylen Brown acquired. From Boston. For Paul George.
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July 24, 2026 — LeBron James chooses Philadelphia for his final chapter.
Trust the Process FAQ
What does "Trust the Process" mean?
It began as the Sixers front office's internal mantra during the 2013–16 rebuild — focus on sound decisions (the process) rather than short-term wins (the outcome). Guard Tony Wroten quoted it publicly to ESPN in January 2015, fans adopted it as a rallying cry, and it now refers to the entire era of Sixers basketball from 2013 onward.
Who started The Process?
Sam Hinkie, hired as Sixers GM/president in May 2013. He resigned under league and ownership pressure in April 2016 — but the roster and draft assets he accumulated shaped the franchise for the next decade.
Why is Joel Embiid called "The Process"?
Embiid adopted the nickname himself in 2016, asking the Sixers' PA announcer to introduce him as "Joel 'The Process' Embiid" — a tribute to the rebuild (and to Hinkie) that drafted him. It stuck so hard he eventually trademarked it.
Did The Process work?
Depends what you count. It produced an MVP (Embiid, 2023), multiple All-Stars, forced three NBA rule changes, and built the asset base behind the 2026 roster of Embiid, Maxey, Jaylen Brown, VJ Edgecombe, and LeBron James. It has not yet produced a championship or even a conference finals berth. The 2026-27 season is the best shot yet.
How bad were the tanking years?
Historically bad: 47-199 across three seasons, including 10-72 in 2015-16 — the second-worst record in NBA history — plus a 26-game single-season losing streak, an 0-17 start, an 0-18 start, and a record 28 straight losses across two seasons.
Why did LeBron James sign with the Sixers?
In July 2026, at 41, LeBron chose Philadelphia as his final NBA stop — a two-year, veteran-minimum deal — recruited by close friend and fellow Klutch client Tyrese Maxey, with Embiid and Jaylen Brown joining the pitch. Sixers fans had campaigned for him since Embiid's recruiting tweets in 2014 and the famous "Complete The Process" billboards in Cleveland in 2018.
