LeBron James and the End of the Philly Shrug

LeBron James reacts during the first quarter of a Sixers preseason game against the Brooklyn Nets. / Photograph by Ishika Samant/Getty Images

And so it was that, upon the 250th anniversary of the world’s greatest civic experiment, LeBronism came to this most historic of birthplaces, and the people rejoiced.

The celebration was not for a mere basketball player, since LeBron James long ago transcended the sport that catapulted him to iconic cultural status.

He’d gone from the child prodigy I’d shadowed for GQ magazine 20 years ago as he competed in a Bubblicious bubble-blowing contest against a team of nine-year-olds to the Obama of basketball — a great player turned civic superhero who has used his power to essentially fire a racist team owner; reinvent the business model of his league; become an entertainment industry goliath; educate his hometown’s at-risk kids; and, most critically, transform himself into the defining athlete-activist of his generation. In doing so, he helped free the era’s mostly Black athletes from the suffocating expectation that they should simply “shut up and dribble,” and he did so without being pedantic or politically ideological.

“He chose us,” one accomplished civic leader marveled to me, his voice laced with wonder, when he heard that LeBron was leaving the Los Angeles Lakers after eight seasons to play for the Philadelphia 76ers, starting this month. Funny, because while LeBron remains a great player, the Sixers had actually acquired a younger, better one just weeks before — superstar Jaylen Brown. Yet outside of hoopheads, there was no comparable citywide jubilation. That’s because the LeBron celebration wasn’t really about basketball. All the memes and the high fives — grown men called me, their voices quavering, saying “I can’t believe it” — were really about something much deeper, something woven into Philadelphia’s DNA.

LeBron’s decision felt like validation. Here was living proof that our city had become a destination rather than a consolation prize, a tangible rebuttal to the long-suffering civic inferiority complex we’ve carried for generations.

It was no coincidence that James’s decision to take his talents to South Broad Street, at age 41, came on the heels of our World Cup triumph. Soccer, let the record show, is a stupid sport; there’s hardly any scoring and its athletes spend inordinate amounts of time rolling around on the pitch pretending to be hurt. Hosting the World Cup, however? That was a civic masterpiece.

Our streets were miraculously pristine. Wide-eyed visitors marveled at what Philadelphians too often overlook. For a few glorious weeks we saw ourselves through someone else’s eyes and liked what we saw. Moreover, the tournament gave us a common experience in divided times; in this town, sports punches well above its weight, and ever since “No one likes us; we don’t care” we’ve slowly begun shedding the defensive crouch from which we’ve so often introduced ourselves to the nation.

Just when the city seems to be whispering to itself, Maybe we really are worthy, here comes James. Could this finally be the beginning of the end of the Philly Shrug?

We all know the litany of our city’s negative mindset, forged by generations of disappointment. We lost our place as the nation’s political and financial capital to Washington and New York. We became, in the words of Progressive Era muckraker Lincoln Steffens, “corrupt and contented,” defined by industrial decline and lowered expectations. We inherited the trauma of the Phillies’ epic 1964 collapse (my father used to say the only time he’d felt a similar cloud over Philadelphia was after John F. Kennedy’s assassination). We even turned booing Santa into a defining civic myth. Then came MOVE — our city bombing itself — on the very day ground was broken for the first building ever to rise above William Penn’s hat atop City Hall, the promise of a skyline befitting a city that might finally refuse to play small. It was not to be; with few exceptions — the Rendell reforms come to mind — every step forward seemed tentative and, worse, incremental.

But now one can sense a new generation of Philadelphians, untethered from many of those inherited traumas, less interested in managing decline than in testing possibility. Dare I say momentum is in the air? Can it be related that we’re among the nation’s leaders in public safety gains or that, just days before James’s announcement swept social media, CNBC reported that Pennsylvania is among the nation’s leaders in cutting red tape and has the highest GDP growth of East Coast states?

It’s a little harder to shrug these days because LeBron’s imprimatur has the air of ratification: We are a city with problems, yes, but one that won’t shrink from them. So says the greatest competitor, sportsman, and civic light of our era. In that sense, the LeBron story is a metaphor for the possibility of Philadelphia’s next rise. Because no one has reinvented himself more completely than King James. He is always in the act of becoming.

Fatherless and impoverished in his Akron, Ohio, youth, James dreamed big and, long before the term became fashionable, practiced the art of manifestation. Those days I spent with him when he was 20? He was a wisecracking, fart-joking kid, high school buddies in tow. For the photo shoot, he requested just Fruity Pebbles cereal. Allen Iverson, the former Sixers guard about whom I’d just written a book, would have demanded a fountain of Cristal.

That day, LeBron wrestled with his friends, Rich Paul and Maverick Carter, on the floor, all of them giggling like teenagers intent on postponing adulthood for another day. Yet, when I finally broke through the juvenile hijinks, LeBron the kid morphed into LeBron the man. We were seated in New York’s Blue Fin restaurant, and he was scarfing down a stack of pancakes, a side of sausage, and a mound of sliced bananas. His eyes locked on mine and his voice took on a deep, serious tone once I asked about his game, which he referred to as “the special powers that I have been given.”

“Once I get comfortable with my surroundings out there, it seems like everything just slows down,” he told me. “I don’t want to sound cocky when I say this, but it’s like I see things before they happen. I kind of know where the defenders are gonna be. I kind of know where my teammates are gonna be, sometimes even before they know. My game is really played above time. I don’t say that like I’m saying I’m ahead of my time. I’m saying, like, if I’m on the court and I throw a pass, the ball that I’ve thrown will lead my teammate right where he needs to go, before he even knows that that’s the right place to go to. I just slow things down to a point where I can control what happens.”

He paused, shrugged. I was wondering if, some 230 years ago in Salzburg, Austria, an interlocutor like me was hearing similar sentiments sitting across from Mozart, without the tattoos.

“It’s a God-given talent,” James said.

Prodigies rarely age well. The pressure, the expectations, the early anointing — they have a way of freezing gifted children in place rather than propelling them forward. LeBron James could easily have become another cautionary tale, a transcendent teenager who peaked too soon. Instead, he became something far rarer: a prodigy who kept growing.

Baby Bron: Playing above the rim for his high school team in 2003 / Photograph by Al Tielemans/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images

That he managed to navigate perilous terrain and emerge as a mentor to a whole generation not only of basketball stars but of entrepreneurs and entertainers is a singular achievement. Those goofy childhood friends he wrestled with during my time with him 20 years ago? James propelled them to groundbreaking heights: Rich Paul has gone on to be the most powerful agent in sports (engaged to Adele!), and Maverick Carter is a Hollywood mogul.

Still, LeBron went through a period of being reviled. In 2010 he was sports’ public enemy number one, the embodiment of athlete narcissism and entitlement when he bolted his hometown Cavaliers for the Miami Heat, as Jeff Benedict so meticulously chronicled in his 2023 book ­LeBron. Writer Scott Rabb captured that version of LeBron brilliantly in The Whore of Akron, a book fueled by heartbreak over LeBron’s abandonment of the place that raised him.

But rather than remain comfortably ensconced atop the dynasty he built in Miami — two NBA titles in four years — James chose the far riskier path of returning home in 2014 to redeem himself and repair his relationship with the city that had burned his jersey in effigy. He later likened his four years in Miami to college — a necessary place to grow before coming home and leading the Cavs to the 2016 NBA title.

By then, all was forgiven. At the championship parade, James gave a 15-minute speech in which he talked in great, earnest detail not about himself, but about each of his teammates instead.

James has since become something no athlete before him ever truly was: a power broker whose influence extends well beyond the boundaries of his sport. Engage if you will the on-court GOAT debate (for me, it’s Michael Jordan); off-court, James has seen to the end of Jordan’s calculated “Republicans buy sneakers too” neutrality. James has become, if not political, a public moralist, and has given permission to a generation of athletes to freely speak their minds. Especially Black ones.

When Donald Sterling, then-owner of the L.A. Clippers, was caught making vile, racist remarks on audio, James didn’t waste time checking with NBA honchos before weighing in. Playing for Miami at the time, he marched before the cameras and essentially fired an owner of the league that employed him.

“There are only 30 owners and 400-plus of us,” he told a media throng. “I can only imagine if a player came out and said something of that stature what would happen to us as players. So I believe in [commissioner] Adam [Silver]. I believe in the NBA, and they have to do something very fast and quickly. … There is no room for Donald Sterling in our league. There it is.”

Shortly afterward, Sterling was booted from the NBA, for life.

When Barack Obama needed help getting folks to sign up for the Affordable Care Act, to whom did he turn? James, who took on the task even as Senator Mitch McConnell complained to NBA executives about James’s public endorsement. When Trayvon Martin was killed in Florida, James and his teammates donned hoodies in a viral social media photo. When Eric Garner was choked to death by New York police, it was James who, in violation of league policy, wore a T-shirt bearing Garner’s last words — “I can’t breathe” — on court.

How media-savvy is he? When Fox News’s Laura Ingraham had had enough of his social commentary and went on her now infamous “shut up and dribble” rant about James’s outspokenness, you could tell from his response how much he’d learned from the examples of shapers of public opinion ranging from Obama to Muhammad Ali to Jackie Robinson.

“The best thing she did is help me create more awareness,” he said of Ingraham during a press conference. “So I get to sit up here and talk about social injustice and equality. So thank you, whatever her name is. I don’t even know her name.”

Said Obama at the time, “We went through a long stretch there where, [with] well-paid athletes, the notion was, Just be quiet and get your endorsements and don’t make waves. LeBron is an example of a young man who has, in his own way and in a respectful way, tried to say, ‘I’m part of this society too,’ and focus attention.”

James has even taken on Obama’s successor. After Trump rescinded a White House invitation to Stephen Curry in 2017, James responded by tweeting: “U bum @realDonaldTrump going to White House was a great honor until you showed up!” James later criticized Trump for not understanding the power of his office to unite people.

Thing is, James has done more than just talk. In 2020, he started More Than A Vote, a minority voter registration and get-out-the-vote organization. In Akron, he opened House Three Thirty, a state-of-the-art reimagining of the old-school community center, complete with a consortium of advisers providing financial planning to low-income families, funded by the LeBron James Family Foundation and JPMorganChase. Also in Akron, his I Promise School gives underprivileged students free tuition, uniforms, transportation, breakfast and lunch and snacks, bikes and bike helmets, a GED program for parents, and free tuition to the University of Akron for all students.

After the murder of George Floyd and the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020, James went so far as to push for the cancellation of the NBA season in protest. Ultimately, he supported an NBA player wildcat strike, and the league agreed to use team arenas for mass voting and to establish a $300 million social justice fund.

The class clown I met 20 years ago has grown into a savvy activist, unafraid to speak out on issues other athletes shy away from. Which is why it’s so fitting that his career will conclude in Philly; more than any other franchise in the history of sports, the Sixers’ story through the years has shaped our racial and cultural conversation.

LeBron James repping the LeBron James Family Foundation at a Boys and Girls Club in Gretna, Louisiana, in 2014. / Photograph by Aaron Davidson/Getty Images

In the ’60s, we had Overbrook native Wilt Chamberlain, living in New York City, commuting to games, and — scandal! — dating white women. Then came the Philly Sound crossover era of Dr. J; he revolutionized the game by playing an inner-city style above the rim and by appealing to both Black and white fans. That was followed by Charles Barkley’s “I’m not a role model” heresy. In the ’90s, Allen Iverson — who made cornrows and tattoos mainstream in the NBA — was a Biggie Smalls rap lyric come to life. Most recently, there was former coach Doc Rivers, who had his own race story when he was playing in the league: In the ’80s, the KKK in Atlanta burned down his house.

Into all this swirling history steps James, a billionaire, an embodiment of his mentor Jay-Z’s famous line: “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man.”

It’s easy for fame to trap celebrities inside the gravitational pull of their own egos. That James has escaped that fate may end up being his greatest achievement. Like his hero Muhammad Ali, remembered more for his compassion and human rights work than for the beauty of his pugilism, James has never seemed satisfied with excellence alone. Every few years he asks himself a question: What does greatness require now?

In his teens, the answer was becoming the NBA’s next prodigy. At 28, it meant returning home to Cleveland. In his 30s, it meant giving athletes permission to become citizens again. Now, at 41, you sense he is searching for the next answer.

What will be James’s last, boldest act, and how might Philadelphia play a part in it? After all, here he comes, this six-foot-eight avatar of the American dream, to the city of our founding, where, for all our steps forward, said dream is still in jeopardy: the worst economic mobility in the nation, one of the poorest big cities in the country, a still-stubborn racial divide. LeBron James is one of this nation’s most creative, powerful innovators. Might we invite him to our civic problem-solving table?

It’s a lot to ask. But if James were just about collecting rings, he would never have left Miami. He’s a romantic at heart — it’s one of the traits that separate him from the coldness of Jordan. And Philly, for all its tough-guy posturing, falls hardest for those who choose us.

LeBron James, Sixer. / Photograph by Emilee Chinn/Getty Images

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Published as “Welcome to Philly, LeBron!” in the October 2026 issue of Philadelphia magazine.