John Krysinsky

Your Hounds tonight. 👊

LeBron will make $4M a year from the Sixers. Living in Manhattan and helicoptering to Philadelphia could cost him over $1M of it. He'd be spending a quarter of his salary to avoid living in the city he plays for. Run the numbers. Shams says the flight is 45 minutes from Manhattan. Twin-engine charter rates run $3,000 to $5,000 an hour, so call it $8,000 a round trip. With 41 home games plus practices, that's 100+ commuting days. $800K a season, minimum. Then taxes. A New York City resident pays up to 14.8% combined state and city income tax. Pennsylvania is a 3.07% flat tax. On a $4M salary, choosing Manhattan over Philly adds $300K+ a year, and New York taxes residents on everything they earn everywhere. So why does a man who just took a $48M pay cut spend seven figures on a commute? Because the paycheck stopped mattering years ago. LeBron earns roughly $80M a year off the court. His entire Sixers salary equals about 18 days of being LeBron. The vet minimum was a gift of cap room to the front office so Embiid, Maxey, and Jaylen Brown get surrounded with actual depth. And when your day job pays 5% of your income, you arrange the day job around your life. His family, his media company, and his business all run better out of the biggest market in America. Kobe ran this exact math two decades ago, flying from Newport Beach to Staples every day. What he was actually purchasing was hours with his daughters. LeBron at 41, on possibly his last contract, is buying the same thing.