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LeBron James drove into the paint, found himself at the rim against the Chicago Bulls and realized he was surrounded by a thicket of long arms and spry athletes.

Maybe in the past, he would have tried to power through and finish. But on this Sunday afternoon, with a sellout crowd at the United Center screaming for their home team to get a defensive stop, James’ options dwindled.

The Philadelphia 76ers power forward whipped a bullet pass to the wing, the kind few players not named Nikola Jokić or Magic Johnson could make. It hit Tyrese Maxey directly in his shooting pocket. And Maxey, knowing he’d just received one of those special passes, paid it off, hitting the dagger 3-pointer that helped the 76ers escape with a 127-121 win.

“Honestly, I was about to go and try to get a rebound,” Maxey said. “I thought he was about to shoot a layup. But once I got the pass, it was my job to make it.”

James, sitting a few feet away at his locker, let out an audible laugh.

“He didn’t think I saw him,” James said.

The exchange offered a glimpse into why the Sixers have been one of the NBA’s biggest surprises.

On Tuesday night, they will bring a 9-2 record into a matchup with the Boston Celtics at Xfinity Mobile Arena. But while most of the attention will be on the reunion between Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum — once a championship duo for Boston — Philadelphia’s early-season success deserves attention of its own.

The Sixers have won nine of their first 11 games against an opening schedule that’s included multiple matchups against the defending champion New York Knicks, Cleveland Cavaliers and Detroit Pistons. They’ve beaten the two Eastern Conference finalists from a year ago and the team that won 60 games in the regular season.

This has the makings of some history. The last time the Sixers started a season 9-2, Allen Iverson led that 2000-2001 team to the NBA Finals. The last time it happened before that? Philly won a title in 1983.

So how good can these Sixers be? Are they truly championship contenders? And why have they had so few growing pains thus far?

“You don’t think we have growing pains?” Brown asked, looking directly at me with a curious look when I asked him that question.

He turned the question into a conversation. I told him I thought the team had shown some offensive stagnation. But overall, the team has looked cohesive.

Brown pondered my response for a split second. Then, he rendered his opinion.

“I mean, from our perspective, I think there have been some growing pains for sure,” Brown said. “Even though we have been able to win, we still have a lot to get better at. We have a lot more to improve on.

“So the result? We’re not so much fixated on the result. It’s more so about the process. We have to improve our process and our mentality to create a winning environment. We’ve been winning games, but some of that stuff will catch up to you. So, you know, we have to nip it in the bud.”

Brown is looking at things many don’t see on every play. The offense has been stagnant at times. The Sixers have struggled to rebound throughout the season. The scoring off the bench outside of Anfernee Simons has been scarce. There’s also a backup center issue.

Dean Wade and many of the Sixers have had the same answer for this: They feel they haven’t played their best basketball yet. Not even close.

This team was supposed to struggle with overlapping skill sets. It was supposed to struggle to establish a hierarchy among star-level players and figure out how to move the ball. And it was supposed to struggle from a chemistry perspective, at least early on.

So far, it hasn’t. And that’s gone a long way toward masking the things the Sixers need to work on. More importantly, their willingness to play team ball allowed their games to come down to talent level. Few, if any teams in the league, have their talent.

“I’m not sure I expected this,” Sixers coach Nick Nurse said. “I know this may be a little boring, but I’m just really trying to get the team better every day and take the game that’s in front of us. I do see improvement. I do think there’s lots to improve on yet, and we have to keep that going.

“One of our main goals that we have is to keep getting better. What we watch on film, we have to take it to the practice court. And then, can we translate it to the game?”

The road to this season began over the summer and spilled into training camp and the preseason. The Sixers prioritized being together as much as possible. There have been team dinners. There have been hangouts at houses. Teammates get online with each other and play NBA 2K or Call of Duty. Their relationships have extended beyond the floor.

That, combined with the willingness of the team’s biggest star to adjust, has helped significantly. The Sixers have all but handed the keys to Maxey, and the star guard has more 25-point games, nine, than anyone in the league. VJ Edgecombe, who is capable of much more offensively, has accepted the role of being an elite defender who runs the floor and finishes whatever his teammates start.

James has realized that his passing and playmaking are needed more than his scoring on this roster. He ranks top 10 in the league in assists per game and has just two 20-point games this season. Joel Embiid has been a significantly better defender than he was last season.

Brown and Maxey are the two players who have similar roles to what they played last season. And that tracks, because they are the two players who made All-NBA teams last season. The rest of the roster has conformed around them.

“I’ve said this a lot,” Nurse said. “I just think that everybody’s intent from day one has been to play the right way, and I think that means that if people are open, you get off the ball and get it to the open man. I think Joel and LeBron have had a willingness to pass the ball often, and I think that has set a tone and been kind of infectious to the other guys.”

Indeed, the unselfishness of the group has been surprising to some. But if you look deeper, is it all that surprising?

James, for the first time in his career, left a team, the Los Angeles Lakers, that didn’t exactly beg him to stay. Brown, after being traded to the Sixers, had to listen to multiple detractors pick apart his game. Embiid and Maxey, for all of their talent, have not yet been past the second round of the playoffs in their respective careers.

Maybe more people should have seen this coming. The urgency of this roster to win at a high level, no matter who takes the shots or what it looks like, is high.

The Sixers have morphed into one of the best defensive teams in the league. That’s been a bit of a surprise, and it’s allowed them to succeed through the bumps and bruises they have gone through offensively.

Kentavious Caldwell-Pope has a lot left in the gas tank. That’s been a surprise, given how much he struggled in his stops with the Orlando Magic and Memphis Grizzlies. But it goes to show that sometimes a veteran just needs to be in a winning situation.

Most importantly, these Sixers know they are playing for something beyond themselves. And they genuinely like each other. That’s allowed them to absorb their growing pains without letting those struggles define their fast start.

“We’re competitive as hell,” Maxey said. “We’ve been playing hard defensively and playing together. This is who we are. That’s not fluff. On Day 1 of camp, we were moving the ball, and I looked at Joel and I said, ‘All the ego stuff and the one-ball stuff that we hear, it’s going to be OK, because LeBron’s here and he has made everybody willing passers.’ And if LeBron can be a willing passer, the rest of us can be too.”

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Tony Jones is a Staff Writer at The Athletic covering the Philadelphia 76ers and the NBA. A native of the East Coast and a journalism brat as a child, he has an addiction to hip-hop music and pickup basketball, and his Twitter page has been used for occasional debates concerning Biggie and Tupac. You can follow Tony on X @Tjonesonthenba