Ariel Hukporti, the free agent they signed this offseason to serve as Joel Embiid's primary backup, tore his Achilles in the preseason opener this week and will now miss the 2026-27 season. Adem Bona remains, and Dominick Barlow, typically a power forward, could also slide up to center, but remember, we're dealing with an Embiid team here. When your starting center has played 96 games in the past three seasons, you need to be prepared to spend substantial time without him, and as promising as the Bona-Barlow pair looked at points last season, they probably won't be enough on their own should Embiid suffer any notable injuries.
Conveniently, the 76ers accidentally addressed this problem in late July, when they signed the most versatile player in NBA history for the minimum. There are few more useful gap-fillers in basketball than LeBron James. "The luxury of my game is that I can do everything," James said at media day.
"Literally, I can do everything." 76ers head coach Nick Nurse seemed to agree with that statement, listing James as an option to play some backup center now that Hukporti is out. "I think LeBron is another candidate. I think he's played some small-ball five as well," Nurse said.
James, who is set to make his preseason 76ers debut on Thursday night, has indeed played some small-ball five, but that has been a mostly recent phenomenon. Despite spending his career as one of the few players in league history anyone would argue could play all five positions at an elite level, James didn't really take on the fifth of those positions until five years ago, when necessity became the mother of invention for a similarly star-studded yet far thinner Los Angeles Lakers roster. So, what can we learn from LeBron's recent forays into playing center?
Here's what the numbers say, according to Cleaning the Glass' lineup data. A few things stand out immediately. Most of James' experience as a center came in a single season, the 2021-22 campaign.
In fact, James played nearly as many possessions there as Embiid played all of last season (2,481). Similarly, you'll notice that the offense was almost always at least good and often great, while the defense was usually bad and often miserable. This holds true for all of the reasons you'd expect.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
