Hall of Famer Magic Johnson still has the New York Knicks as his top dog in the Eastern Conference after the Philadelphia 76ers signed LeBron James.<\/p>\n
Johnson believes the Sixers are now the “biggest threat” to New York with James joining Jaylen Brown, Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey. He believes the quartet will be dynamic offensively but has some qualms.<\/p>\n
“All four are used to having the ball in their hands, so I’m interested to see what type of offense Coach Nurse draws up,” Johnson said. “I have two big questions for Philly: one is on the defensive end, and two is their team chemistry. If they answer those two\u2026 watch out!”<\/p>\n
The Los Angeles Lakers legend is backing the Knicks to make a second straight NBA Finals appearance.<\/p>\n
It’s hard to find the fault in Johnson’s logic.<\/p>\n
Philly will have maybe the best starting five in the league when you throw VJ Edgecombe into the mix. The Sixers aren’t the obviously championship pick, though.<\/p>\n
The health of Embiid will be very important. The roster has more top-end talent around him to compensate for when he misses time, but it will be a major problem if he’s once again dogged by injuries in the playoffs.<\/p>\n
Then there’s the challenge of keeping James, Brown, Embiid and Maxey happy in the same offense together. All four will have to sacrifice to some degree.<\/p>\n
The opportunities to get James and Brown were too good to turn down, especially when the franchise appeared to hit a wall with the axis of Embiid, Maxey and Paul George.<\/p>\n
Still, the experiment has the chance to backfire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hall of Famer Magic Johnson still has the New York Knicks as his top dog in the Eastern…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":827028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-827027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/827028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}