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How a Mike Muscala 3-pointer domino effect got LeBron James to the 76ers
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- How a Mike Muscala 3-pointer domino effect got LeBron James to the 76ers
How a Mike Muscala 3-pointer domino effect got LeBron James to the 76ers originally appeared on The Sporting News . Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here .
A Mike Muscala 3-pointer is essentially the reason the Philadelphia 76ers got to draft Tyrese Maxey .
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Maxey is one of the main reasons the 76ers got to sign LeBron James on Friday.
So, if you trace the thread all the way through, a Muscala 3 led the Sixers to James.
It started in the NBA Bubble during the COVID-altered 2020 season.
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The Thunder owed their 2020 first-round pick to the 76ers as part of the 2016 Jerami Grant trade.
The pick was top-20 protected, but when Muscala hit a game-winning 3 with five seconds left to beat the Miami Heat in the Bubble, it knocked the pick out of its top-20 protection status.
The 76ers got to keep the pick that year, and they used it on Maxey.
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That resulted, more or less, in the momentum that eventually led to the Paul George signing, and then George was traded with picks for Jaylen Brown .
And now, LeBron has chosen to come play with Maxey and Brown in Philly.
This wonderful post on X explained it all:
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The 76ers should be sure to send Muscala a Christmas card for this one.
He played in 548 games as a second-round pick out of Bucknell. At the time, that 3-pointer might not have seemed too massively important.
But six years later, it turns out that was the biggest shot Muscala ever made.
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