PHILADELPHIA (AP) — LeBron James is heading to the Philadelphia 76ers.
The NBA’s all-time leading scorer made the announcement on social media Friday, saying it will be his “last decision” and that it comes after he strongly considered retirement.
“I believe I can help make the Philadelphia 76ers a championship team and I am so excited to energize a new fan base and start this incredible journey one last time,” James said.
A four-time NBA champion, James wrote he was “done” when his 23rd NBA season ended and that it was his last with the Los Angeles Lakers.
“I was pretty sure I played my last game. I was honest at that last press conference when I said I needed to look at myself and deicide if I still love this game," James wrote. “I still truly love this game, and I have more to give.”
The 41-year-old James is set to sign a modest $8-million, two-year contract with the Sixers, according to ESPN. He made nearly $53 million last season.
“I’m not going for money. I’m not going for family,” James wrote. “What am I really playing for at this point? I still want to sacrifice. I still want to work. I still want to grind. I still want to compete, to win and to have a chance at the feeling of winning.”
James celebrated his decision on Instagram with a career highlight reel set to Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill's “Dreams and Nightmares,” the adopted sports anthem of city sports teams.
The video ends with the lyric, “hold up, wait a minute. Y'all thought I was finished?” and cuts to a 76ers' logo.
Fanatics already had his No. 23 jersey on sale for $125 with delivery not expected until the end of August.
Much as James did for Cleveland when he ended a 56-year championship drought for the city by leading the Cavaliers to the title in 2016, he can snap a lengthy title drought for the Sixers.
The Sixers went 45-37 last season and were swept in the second round by the NBA champion New York Knicks.
Most betting sites had the Sixers as 9-1 favorites to win the championship behind the Oklahoma City Thunder, the San Antonio Spurs and the New York Knicks, as of Friday afternoon.
James joins a 76ers team that has not won an NBA championship since 1983 and has not advanced out of the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs since 2001.
The 76ers should boast one of the top starting fives in the NBA with fellow All-Stars Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and Jaylen Brown, the 2024 NBA Finals MVP, a five-time All-Star and the league’s fourth-leading scorer this past season acquired in a stunning offseason deal with the Celtics.
Maxey posted an Instagram story of him celebrating in a gym and yelling “what!? what?!” over the news while Brown wrote on X “#throwtheballup.” Brown wrote that in his introductory note to Philadelphia, and it has already been branded on billboards throughout the city.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro even proclaimed Friday as LeBron James Day in the state.
Turned out with the Brown deal, new 76ers team president Mike Gansey — an Ohio prep basketball star with James — was just getting started with his summer of surprises.
No move, of course, hits like James' arrival.
He won his four NBA championships in stops with Cleveland, Miami and the Los Angeles Lakers. James left the Lakers after an eight-season run highlighted by the 2020 NBA title.
James is the NBA’s oldest active player at 41 and the only player in league history to have a career spanning 23 seasons; this coming season will be his 24th. Speculation has been rampant for more than two months about his future, officially starting in May when the Lakers were eliminated from the NBA playoffs.
James’ resume is beyond compare in NBA history. He’s a 22-time All-Star, a 21-time All-NBA selection, a four-time Most Valuable Player, a four-time NBA Finals MVP, a three-time All-Star Game MVP, and was a member of the NBA’s 75th anniversary team.
He’s also coming off a season where he averaged 20.9 points, 6.1 rebounds and 7.2 assists per game. For his career, he’s averaged 26.8 points, 7.5 rebounds and 7.4 assists in more than 1,600 games.
James started his career in Cleveland in 2003 and spent seven seasons with the Cavaliers before heading to Miami for four seasons — where he won his first two NBA titles. He then returned to Cleveland for four more seasons, including that title run in 2016, and left in 2018 for the Lakers.
Cleveland and Miami were believed to be on James’ radar again as he weighed this decision.
“Thank you LA. Miami I’ll forever love and Northeast Ohio will always home!” James wrote.
For the next two seasons, James' professional home is in Philadelphia.
AP NBA: https://apnews.com/nba
Lebron James attends the Time100 Sports List at Pier Sixty Chelsea Piers on Thursday, July 16, 2026, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
WINDER, Ga. (AP) — A teenager has pleaded guilty to all 55 counts, including murder, in a shooting nearly two years ago at Apalachee High School in Georgia that killed two students and two teachers.
Colt Gray, 16, entered the plea Friday without having reached a deal with prosecutors. He had previously pleaded not guilty to charges in the Sept. 4, 2024, shooting that also left several others wounded, at the school of 1,900 students about 45 miles (73 kilometers) northeast of Atlanta.
Gray, who was 14 at the time of the shooting, was charged as an adult. His trial had been scheduled to start in mid-October.
A jury in March convicted his father, Colin Gray, on charges including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, and he is scheduled to be sentenced next week. Prosecutors said he gave his son the assault-style rifle used to open fire at the school.
Teachers Richard “Ricky” Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, and students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, died in the shooting. Another teacher and eight more students were wounded, seven of them hit by gunfire.
Barrow County Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm questioned Gray to ensure he understood the consequences of his plea and was entering it voluntarily. Gray responded, “Yes, your honor,” each time.
Murder carries a minimum sentence of life in prison. The judge must decide whether Gray should be eligible for parole after hearing victim statements, evidence and each side's summary of the case.
Gray sat next to his attorney at a table in the courtroom with his legs chained.
Family members of those killed and students who were shot gave statements, expressing anger and grief, with most asking the judge to sentence Gray to life without parole.
Breanna Schermerhorn, whose son Mason was killed, said she does not forgive Colt Gray. While adults around him missed warning signs, she said, he decided to bring the gun and to pull the trigger.
“Those decisions were his and his alone,” she said. “Mason deserved a future and we all deserved a future with Mason in it, and Colt took that from Mason and everyone who loved him."
Shayna Aspinwall, Richard Aspinwall's wife, lamented that the lives of their daughters, who were 2 and 5 when their father died, will be “forever marked by his absence.”
“It is a life sentence of grief and trauma for those left behind,” she said.
A teenage student who was shot recalled that day, telling the judge she remembered feeling “really scared and confused because I saw Colt standing in the door with a gun.” The Associated Press is not identifying the girl, who is a minor.
She said she realized she had been shot and asked a friend to hold her hand. She asked other friends to call her brother to let him know she'd been shot and didn't know if she'd make it. She had multiple surgeries and wasn't able to walk for about a year.
“After the shooting, I struggled with so much anxiety, and I felt like my life was over,” she said.
Apalachee High School Principal Jessica Rehberg said in court that Colt Gray’s “cruel actions” deserve “the harshest consequences.”
The hearing is expected to extend into next week, and Gray's defense attorney wrote in a court filing that he plans to call a psychologist, a counselor at the juvenile detention center where he has been held and his grandmother to testify.
Barrow County Sheriff’s Office Investigator Jason Smith testified about the timeline of the shooting based on video footage. Gray told his second period teacher just before 10 a.m. that he need to go see a crisis counselor but instead went to a bathroom to prepare for the shooting, Smith said.
He emerged from the bathroom at 10:21 a.m. and when he was unable to get back into his classroom, he went down the hall to another classroom, where he opened fire and then shot other people in the hallway. He ultimately surrendered to law enforcement officers.
Smith said he interviewed Gray at the school and again at the sheriff’s office.
“Colt indicated that it was spontaneous, that it was a last minute thing,” that he heard voices and on the way to the crisis counselor and “decided to do the shooting,” Smith said. But the investigation showed that the shooting had been planned in detail for some time, he said.
The investigator described pages of a notebook Gray had that included a detailed step-by-step plan to get himself ready in the bathroom that included notations like, “Don’t shoot anyone in the bathroom. You will alert people.”
On one page he wrote, “I’m not a killer,” and “I’m scared.” On several pages, the word “why” was written dozens of times. He also estimated the number of people he would kill and injure. In one place, he wrote, “Surprised if I make it.”
Sheriff’s deputies had previously interviewed Colt and Colin Gray in May 2023 about an online threat linked to the son. Colt Gray denied making the threat.
Investigators also found a shrine in Colt Gray's bedroom to Nikolas Cruz, the shooter in the 2018 massacre at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, prosecutors have said.
An investigator testified during Colin Gray's trial that he had been aware that his son's mental health had deteriorated and sought help from a counseling service weeks before the shooting. But the father never followed through on getting help for his son, the investigator said.
His mother, Marcee Gray, who was separated from Colin Gray, told investigators she had urged him weeks before the shooting to secure his guns and restrict their son’s access to them. Instead, over time, Colin Gray bought the boy ammunition, a gun sight and other shooting accessories, records show.
Judge Nicholas Primm holds a plea document for Colt Gray, the 16-year-old Apalachee High School shooting suspect, at Barrow County Superior Court in Winder, Ga., on Friday, July 24, 2026. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Colt Gray, left, the 16-year-old Apalachee High School shooting suspect, stands next to his attorney Charlton Allen and pleads guilty at Barrow County Superior Court in Winder, Ga., on Friday, July 24, 2026. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Colt Gray, the 16-year-old Apalachee High School shooting suspect, pleads guilty at Barrow County Superior Court in Winder, Ga., on Friday, July 24, 2026. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Colt Gray, the 16-year-old Apalachee High School shooting suspect, is led in by deputies for a plea hearing at Barrow County Superior Court in Winder, Ga., on Friday, July 24, 2026. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
FILE - School shooting suspect Colt Gray exits the Barrow County Courthouse, Dec. 9, 2025, in Winder, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, Pool, file)
