LeBron James joining the Philadelphia 76ers caused a shift in the hierarchy of the Eastern Conference, but there’s reason to think the newly built 76ers won’t hit the ground running in the regular season.
While the 76ers are third or fourth in the odds to win the NBA Finals next year, depending on the sportsbook, the outlook for the regular season is a touch less positive. The 76ers win total line currently sits at only 50.5 on various sportsbooks, and is even as low as 48.5 on FanDuel. That puts Philly not only behind the Western Conference powerhouses of the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs, but also behind the New York Knicks and Boston Celtics in the East.The Thunder and Spurs are the clear favorites to win the NBA Finals in 2027 and have projected win totals hovering around 60. The Knicks have the top number in the East at 52.5 (53.5 on DraftKings), and the Celtics come in next at 51.5.
This variance, as senior director of basketball trading at Fanatics Josh Byrne explains, is due to a different philosophical view when it comes to the regular season as opposed to the playoffs.
“We project Philly’s ceiling to be higher, but Boston’s floor is stronger,” Byrne said. “The win total market prices 82 games, not a playoff series. Boston’s core is younger and healthier, while Philly’s number carries real games-played risk on both (Joel) Embiid and a 41-year-old LeBron, plus the integration cost from bolting two stars onto a new roster. If Philly’s stars all play 70-plus games, they blow past 50.5 — but that’s a big if.”
The 76ers also added 2024 NBA Finals MVP Jaylen Brown to a roster with future Hall of Famer Joel Embiid, All-Star Tyrese Maxey and first-team all-rookie guard VJ Edgecombe. They were at 48.5 wins on BetMGM and DraftKings before signing LeBron, which bumped that number to 50.5.
“There’s certainly upside beyond that number, but we also have to account for the realities of an 82-game season, including LeBron’s age and Embiid’s injury history,” said Johnny Avello, the director of sports operations at DraftKings. “Come playoff time, though, Philadelphia’s star power gives them a championship ceiling that’s reflected in the Finals odds.”
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At Fanatics, James was worth three wins, moving Philly from 47.5 to 50.5.
“We believe LeBron’s worth is three games for two reasons: his on-court value for the 55-60 games that we project him to play and the lineup insurance he provides,” Byrne said. “With Embiid’s availability risk, LeBron is the difference between a lost stretch and a treading-water stretch. Even at 41, he’s a top-tier offensive organizer, and slotting him next to Maxey, Brown and Edgecombe means Philly almost never fields a bad five.”
So that’s what the sportsbooks think, but what has history told us about how LeBron’s teams do in his first year after making a move? NBA staff writer Law Murray has the breakdown on what to expect from Philly this season:
The 76ers have been incredibly up-and-down in Nick Nurse’s three seasons as 76ers head coach. Last season, the 76ers won 45 games and survived the Play-In Tournament. In Nurse’s first season, the 76ers won 47 games and had to survive the Play-In Tournament. In between was the worst-case scenario, a team that tanked aggressively after the All-Star break to a 24-58 record. The 76ers haven’t cleared 50 wins since Doc Rivers was coaching James Harden in 2022-23, and Nurse hasn’t coached a 50-win team since the 2019-20 season in Toronto.
Now, James’ teams in Los Angeles increased their win total each of James’ last four years, from an awful 33-49 2021-22 season to a 53-win 2025-26 season, the second-best win percentage of a Lakers team with James on it in his eight seasons there. But the Lakers got better without James as well. Last year, the Lakers went 14-8 without James, a win percentage of .636. In the previous three seasons, the Lakers went 25-25 without James. In Frank Vogel’s final season as Lakers head coach in 2021-22, the Lakers were a paltry 8-18 without James.
All of the talent that the 76ers have accrued should raise the floor. But the key to winning a lot of regular season games will be navigating what is always a slow start for a new LeBron James team, actually getting a respectable number of games from the powerful five-man lineup James will play with, and that lineup clicking sustainably before the playoffs.
This will be James’ fifth time joining a team. The 2003-04 Cavaliers started 6-19 and finished 35-47. The 2010-11 Heat started 9-8 before a 12-game win streak. The 2014-15 Cavaliers were 19-20 before a 12-game win streak. The 2018-19 Lakers started 2-5 and finished 37-45. Again, for the first time, James is joining a team that won a playoff series, so the floor should be higher. But history says that a slow start is likely.
Finally, here are the three-year averages of total games played for James, Embiid, Brown, and Maxey, respectively: 67, 32, 68, 64. Edgecombe played in 75 games last year. I would expect the 76ers to play Edgecombe as much as possible while being particularly aggressive about not playing James and Embiid at less than full strength. That will limit regular season wins for a team aiming for a deep postseason run. Compare that to the Celtics, a team that may not have to load-manage Jayson Tatum and otherwise has shown that they are consistently good at exceeding regular-season expectations.
