Byron Scott, the veteran three-time NBA champion with the Lakers, recently sat down with Olden Polynice to record an episode of his podcast ‘Fast Break’ where Scott spoke about LeBron James and the Philadelphia 76ers in particular.
Scott feels that despite adding Jaylen Brown and LeBron James to the team this offseason, looking like championship contenders on paper does not guarantee that the 76ers will win a championship. He recalled the example of the 2004 Lakers team that was filled with All-Stars.
“I mean, we can go all the way back to the early parts in the 2000s. You got Karl Malone, Gary Payton, Kobe Bryant, Shaq, and you still got D-Fish, you know, you still got an unbelievable starting lineup. And on paper, everybody said, ‘Oh, they’re going to win a championship,'” said Scott.
“What happened? They played the Detroit Pistons, who were a much better team, a much better cohesive group of guys who wanted nothing more than to win. And you had friction on that Laker team with Gary Payton and some of the other guys.”
“And then you had the Peacemaker Karl Malone. And then Karl got hurt, which really killed their chances of winning the championship, and Detroit went through them four games to one. Right?” Scott added.
“So talent on paper doesn’t mean a whole lot. It means you got talent. That’s about all it means. It doesn’t mean or guarantee that you’re going to win the championship.”
Many superteams in the past, like the Nets superteams in 2013 and 2021 or the Rockets’ superteam in the late 1990s, have not yielded proper results due to the team’s inability to sacrifice and figure out a fixed pecking order on the team.
Scott feels that, just as the Miami Heat did in 2010, the Philadelphia 76ers should hand the reins to LeBron James and let him run the offense. That’s the only way this could potentially work.
“When they lost the first year, y’all remember they came out the next year and Dwyane Wade said, ‘Hey Bron, this your team.’ … Bron coming there, Chris Bosh coming there—that’s Dwyane’s city. This his town. This his organization. So they didn’t want to step on his toes.”
“When he finally came out and said, ‘Listen, LeBron, you the best player in the world. This your team, dog.’ They went on fire. It’s gotta be the same attitude in Philly.”
Subsequently, the Lakers legend also addressed LeBron James’ selflessness in game-winning moments and how it has cost him more respect than it has earned him in terms of having a killer mentality compared to Kobe Bryant.
“He’s been criticized in his career because he’s got two guys on him to hit the open guy who ends up missing the game-winner, and they blame it on LeBron for not taking game-winning shots.”
“You’re the alpha; you’re the man; you’re supposed to take those shots no matter what. Kobe, he shot it with three people on him; that’s that alpha mentality he had. LeBron’s not like that; he’s going to hit the open guy,” Scott concluded.
And as sour as this sounds, Scott, in fact, shares the concerns that Magic Johnson has also highlighted before. Moreover, he feels that the 76ers need to look at how superteams went south too soon in the past and what had to be done to build a successful superteam.
So, if anything, Scott is hoping that the 76ers can figure it out. But in the process, some players may need to keep their egos at the door and play completely different roles than what they usually do. Only then does he feel this roster can figure it out.
