LeBron Crashed Into a Fan's Wine — Then Took a Sip Mid-Game

There are loose balls, and then there is whatever happened in the third quarter at Xfinity Mobile Arena on Monday night. Tyrese Maxey pushed the ball ahead on the break, and his hit-ahead pass sailed just beyond LeBron James's reach — out of bounds, behind the basket, as Sportsnet described the play. James, all momentum, kept going: past the stanchion, into the seats, and straight into Troy Clemons, a longtime 76ers season-ticket holder who was walking back to his seat carrying a cup of wine. The wine went everywhere. What happened next is why you are reading this.

James grabbed Clemons to steady him — "My bad," he said — and then, before jogging back to play defense, he took the cup, raised it, and took a sip of the man's wine. The section behind the basket erupted. The broadcast cameras caught all of it, from more than one angle, and by the time the 76ers finished off a 126–107 win over the Chicago Bulls, the clip was the moment of the night: a 41-year-old in his 24th NBA season, six games into his Philadelphia run, reviewing a courtside pour in the middle of a live game.

Clemons told the whole thing to ESPN's Kris Rhim, who tracked him down during the game. "LeBron crashed into me. He grabbed me, and he said, 'My bad.' My drink spilled everywhere. He took my drink from me, and he basically just took a sip of it, gave it back and ran back [on the court]." He was not mad about any of it. "I'm just glad for him to be here," Clemons said. "I'm not worried about the wine getting on me." And the cup itself — the cup LeBron James drank out of, mid-game, on camera, the kind of thing most fans would seal in plastic and keep forever? Clemons did not keep it. "At the end of the day, he's another man like me," he said. "He's LeBron, but at the end of the day, I threw that cup in the trash." He got himself a fresh drink.

After the game, Rhim put the question to James himself, and James did not pretend it was anything other than what it looked like. "I crashed into him, spilled some of his wine," James said. "So I wanted to see if it was worth it on my arm and how good it was. It was alright." There were laughs all around, the Associated Press reported. James's love of wine is well documented — it is a genuine off-court passion — and on Monday the game handed him a free tasting in the third quarter. The review was measured. It was alright.

The sip will live longer than the game, but the game underneath it was a statement of its own. Philadelphia's starting five — James alongside Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, VJ Edgecombe and Jaylen Brown — all scored in double figures. Maxey was the best player on the floor: 26 points and 11 assists, and it was his pass that started the whole sequence. Brown went for 25 points and 11 rebounds. Edgecombe scored 21, and the Sixers outscored Chicago by 31 while he played — the best mark in the game. Embiid had 15 points and eight rebounds. James finished with 15 points, seven rebounds and nine assists in 31 minutes, and Philadelphia was plus-30 with him on the floor, tied to everything, including the part where he left the court entirely. Chicago got 24 points from Caleb Wilson and a 13-point, 10-assist night from Josh Giddey, and briefly led in the second quarter. By the third — the quarter of the sip — Philadelphia had taken the game over. The full box score and play-by-play live on the game's Game Center page.

That is the split screen of this Sixers start. Maxey ran the game: the scoring, the tempo, the closing burst in the fourth quarter that put Chicago away for good. James ran the building. His line was the quieter one, and his fingerprints were on everything anyway — he opened Philadelphia's scoring with a fast-break dunk, the Sixers' first field goal of the night, and he spent the second half directing traffic on both ends while the lead grew. One of them produced the numbers. The other produced the night everybody will remember.

The Sports Desk's read: nobody is pretending a third-quarter sip changes a championship race — that is not the stake. The stake is what the league's oldest headliner looks like when a move works. Six games in, on the team with the East's best record, James is comfortable enough to turn a courtside accident into the clip of the night, and unbothered enough to review the wine while he is at it. Philadelphia did not just get LeBron James. It got the version of him that is having fun — and that version has always been a problem for everybody else.

This was James's sixth game as a 76er since he joined Philadelphia in the offseason, after eight seasons with the Los Angeles Lakers. Through his first five he averaged 16.4 points, 7.0 rebounds and 7.0 assists, and the loose, unbothered version of him is becoming the early story of the season — last week a pregame dance clip from the Pacers game made the rounds, and now this. The winning helps: Monday's victory was Philadelphia's fourth straight, and at 7–1 the Sixers lead the Eastern Conference. In the Previously Stats Hub, James still sits at No. 1 on the all-time scoring board, deep into a 24th season nobody else has ever had. His career numbers live on his Stats Hub player page.

He has been circling this moment for years, whether he knew it or not. In the 2017 playoffs against Toronto, James grabbed a beer bottle from a courtside server during a game and pretended to take a drink — then said afterward that if it had been red wine, he might actually have taken a sip. On Monday night, the universe finally sent him the right beverage. It was wine. He took the sip. Nine years later, the bit completed itself.

Rhim captioned his own courtside video of the moment with two words: "Year 24." James closed the night with the philosophy underneath it. "It's a long marathon," he told reporters, "and if you don't find ways to have fun throughout — even though you're working, even though you're locked in — it can wear on you." Philadelphia is off Tuesday and gets Detroit on Wednesday night. The rest of the league's night is rounded up on the NBA hub. Troy Clemons will presumably be back in his seat. One suggestion, for whoever is pouring: a lid.