NBA Champion Says LeBron James Is No Longer in GOAT Conversation After Joining 76ers

LeBron James chose the Philadelphia 76ers over going home to Cleveland. Some voices called that the harder basketball path. Stephen Jackson is not one of them. The former champion says the decision takes James out of the NBA GOAT conversation with Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.

Jackson said he never saw Philadelphia coming.

“I thought everywhere in the world but Philly,” Jackson said on All the Smoke podcast (via DraftKings Network and Complex Sports) on X. “I did not think Philly. I’m sorry. I didn’t. I was one of those guys that thought he would go somewhere he was familiar to, even go to Cleveland.”

“All the talk you hear about, you know, the GOATs and him comparing him to Jordan and Kobe, for me, if he was thinking about it, which he probably never did, but Cleveland only thing that made sense for me to keep him in that conversation,” he added. "I don’t think that was a best player in the league move of what a guy that I respect as being the best player in the league would do.”

James is entering Year 24 on his fourth team. The Sixers added him to Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, Jaylen Brown and VJ Edgecombe after he left the Lakers. Jackson compared that against a third Cleveland chapter that would have carried the 2016 story forward instead of starting a new one in a team already packed with stars.

Why Cleveland Mattered More Than Talent

The argument is not that James cannot win in Philadelphia. It is that a title there would seem different. Jackson treats another championship in Northeast Ohio as unique due to hometown and a roster that still needed him to finish the job.

A title with a championship-ready Sixers group, in his view, looks like joining a machine that was already running.

That is why he framed the move as a challenge issue, not a talent issue. The “best player in the league,” as James described himself, should pick the tougher choice. Jackson did not see Philly as being tough. He saw a finished contender.

Stephen Jackson believes that LeBron James left the Jordan-Kobe conversation when he picked the 76ers instead of Cleveland. In his words, anywhere but Philly, and only home, would have kept the GOAT debate intact.