Rich Paul believes Sixers guards will benefit from having LeBron James

[ASFN Admin]

There have been questions regarding LeBron James' presence with the Philadelphia 76ers. Obviously, he will make the Sixers a much better team, but he also distorts everything around him. The Sixers will need to adjust to him just as much as he needs to adjust to his new teammates and how they do things.

There has been a school of thought that James' presence will hinder the development of Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe, but James' agent, Rich Paul, dispelled that on an episode of the "Game Over" podcast as he stated on Maxey, first:

I think Tyrese is probably gonna benefit the most, in all ways, because he's not the youngest, but he's a perennial All-Star, and it's his team. The second most benefactor is VJ Edgecombe.

Edgecombe is entering his second season in the league and will be looking to give the Sixers similar production from his rookie season. He will have to make his own adjustments as there will be nights where he is the fifth option, and his scoring numbers will go down a bit, but as long as he is contributing to winning, then that's all that matters.

Paul stated on Edgecombe:

My thing with VJ is, the reason why I say he's going to benefit, is because it's almost like when Rockefeller was selling oil, right? Well, there's a substance that runs off of that oil that they don't use, which is kerosene. So in your game, you're being able to separate the two. Yes, VJ is ultra talented, athletic, can do it all, etc., but sometimes me being able to do it all can lead to, you know, maybe it's a bad shot attempt…when you think about it, the reason why I say he's going to benefit is because now he's going to be able to become such an efficient player...I told Tristan (Thompson) this when LeBron came back to Cleveland, I said, 'Tristan, there are five pockets in a pair of jeans. That little one, be right there because you're gonna benefit so much from there.' Tristan was averaging, like, eight points and eight rebounds, and got $82 million.

Rich Paul believes Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe will benefit the most with LeBron on the Sixers

Rich also doesn’t believe that VJ’s future money is affected by the additions of LeBron and Jaylen Brown

(Via Game Over) pic.twitter.com/DR8ES4Rh8w

— NBA Courtside (@NBA__Courtside) July 31, 2026

The Sixers will be looking to lean on Maxey and Edgecombe a lot in the upcoming season, but there is also the presence of Jaylen Brown and Joel Embiid that James and Co. will have to figure out as well. There is so much for coach Nick Nurse and the staff to have to figure out as time moves on. It will be interesting for the Sixers to have to work it all out in 2026-27.

This article originally appeared on Sixers Wire: Rich Paul believes Sixers guards will benefit from having LeBron James

Continue reading...