LeBron James picked Philadelphia this summer and then made it clear he'd rather not sleep there.
On Tuesday, during the Sixers' first training camp practice, a helicopter could be heard lifting off outside the team's facility while Anfernee Simons was in the middle of talking to reporters. It was LeBron's, headed back to New York, where he's living during the season. That's the image the 2026-27 Sixers open camp with: their most famous new signing rising into the sky and away from the city on his jersey before the first practice is even cold.
What makes this land differently than a rich guy hating traffic is that James took a pay cut to come here. He signed a two-year deal worth around $8 million, with a first-year base near $3.9 million and a player option after that. By multiple accounts, part of what made Philadelphia appealing in the first place was that he could keep living in New York and commute by air. The job was the destination. The home stayed in New York, 95 miles away.
New York wasn't plan A on the court either. His camp reached out to the Knicks during free agency. New York wasn't interested, preferring to run back the roster that had just won a title. The city he actually wanted didn't want him as a player, and Philadelphia became the team that let him keep the address. He said as much at Media Day, telling everyone he plans to live "in both" cities, making the roughly 95-mile trip by air "when necessary."
Where a man sleeps on his own time is his business, and a 40-to-45-minute flight instead of a two-hour drive is efficient. Plenty of people commute to jobs in cities they don't live in. But most of them aren't the team's marquee addition, announcing on day one that the place isn't worth a lease.
Then there's the money, which nobody can actually pin down. Estimates for the season's flying range from north of $300,000 to somewhere approaching $900,000, depending on how often he goes. Those numbers are built on charter quotes rather than James's actual receipts, so treat them as a wide guess. Nobody knows the real figure, but it's a fortune at either end. This is the same guy who got teased for years over not wanting to pay ten bucks a month for ad-free music. The selective frugality is funny until you remember who's on the receiving end of it now.
The aircraft itself shouldn't get lost in the jokes. We're about two weeks removed from a news helicopter going down in Los Angeles, killing a reporter, a pilot, and a person on the ground. Kobe Bryant died in a crash. Nothing here proves James's choice is reckless, and he's a grown man who gets to weigh his own risk. It just makes the breezy tone around all of this sit worse.
Strip away the money and the risk and you're left with the simple thing Sixers fans are annoyed about: he chose the team but not the city. Every takeoff outside that practice facility is a small, expensive announcement that Philadelphia is where LeBron works and somewhere else is where he sleeps. He can be all-in on the floor and still be telling the fanbase exactly where they rank. He picked the team, kept his address elsewhere, and made sure the first thing his new fans heard at camp was the sound of him leaving.
