LeBron James made his home debut for the 76ers Friday night by catching a Tyrese Maxey alley-oop off a half-court heave, and somehow the team that should be sweating about it isn’t the Celtics, it’s my Knicks.
A random alley-oop in a preseason finale doesn’t normally mean anything beyond a nice clip for the local news. This one’s different. It’s the first real evidence that Maxey and a 41-year-old LeBron can read each other at live NBA speed after four months together, and the first team forced to find out if that chemistry survives actual stakes is the Knicks, in four days, at the Garden, with a championship banner going up on one end of the floor.
Start with the pageantry, because Philly made sure you couldn’t miss it. LeBron did his signature chalk toss in Philadelphia for the first time Friday night, same ritual he’s been running since Cleveland, and the sellout crowd lost it before a single possession. This wasn’t totally new. He’d already gotten his first, lower-key debut in a public scrimmage and made his actual preseason debut on the road in Brooklyn the week before. But Friday was the home crowd’s first look, with fans flying in from around the world just for it.
Then, in the first quarter, Maxey pushed the pace and lobbed a pass from half court that had no business connecting with anything. LeBron caught it in stride and slammed it home with two hands, and the building came apart. Afterward Maxey made it sound like no big deal, like something they’d been doing for years instead of months: “This is a connection that we have. Some of the best things for us offensively is going to be to get up the floor.” Four months of practice reps and one preseason game, and he’s already talking about it like muscle memory.
The clip was everywhere within minutes, and not just from the people who caught it live.
https://twitter.com/WITNESSKJ/status/2111282665085411337
The highlight comes with an asterisk, though. Philly lost this game, 125-120 in overtime, preseason finale, box score irrelevant to anyone except the people hunting for a reason not to panic about this roster in six months. LeBron finished with 8 points, 8 rebounds, and 7 assists in 25 minutes, a very LeBron stat line for a guy in his 24th season, efficient, unbothered, there to make reads instead of chase numbers in a game that didn’t matter. The lob was the moment. The result wasn’t, and Philly fans should enjoy that gap between the two while it’s still available to them, because starting Tuesday it stops being optional.
That’s the real story here.
The Knicks open the regular season Tuesday at the Garden, defending champions, getting their rings before tipoff on a nationally televised opening night, and the opponent standing across the jump circle just showed the whole East a two-man action nobody has an answer for yet. The Knicks’ title banner already has a LeBron problem, and nobody saw that scheduling coincidence coming back in July when this free-agent signing happened.
My dad texted me the clip forty seconds after it happened with no caption, just the video, which in our family is the universal signal for you need to see this and also start worrying. I watched it four times before I let myself admit it was impressive.
Enjoy the rings Tuesday. Try not to think too hard about who’s standing on the other bench.
