The Sixers Have Become, the Exact Team The Process Wanted to Avoid
Right outside my house, there is a small wooded forestation with a ton of trees and brush. Living in Philadelphia, I appreciate what a rarity that view is, to look outside my living room window and see one giant tree smack dab in the middle and surrounded by many others. It’s a refreshing change of pace from concrete and pavement. I would look at it and it represented brightness, life, energy. Since the lantern fly infestation, the tree has become completely taken over. It’s disgusting to look at, covered in those horrid bugs as they continually rot the tree. Just like the tree outside my window, the Sixers are a once bright and energetic symbol that has been corrupted and is slowly decaying, a fate it should have never experienced until outsiders came in.
The Process is dead. Years of hard work were washed away. And a front office who should never had the opportunity to affect it, is completely to blame.
People will always point to the Markelle Fultz trade and the Al Horford contract as the two notorious defining moments of this front office post-Hinkie. That is fair and those moves were so detrimental to the growth of this team, they may never recover. But you actually can’t point to a SINGLE move for this front office, that did work.
Think about the Fultz trade. No, not moving up to get him. When they had to trade him away because he forgot how to shoot and got upset TJ McConnell was getting minutes over him. All they got in return for the #1 overall pick was four months of Jonathan Simmons. You look at a team like Denver, who took a chance on a high ceiling player like Bol Bol in the 2nd round. You know what the Sixers couldn’t do that? Because they had to sell of the contract of Jonthan Simmons in order to have the cap space to make this current roster plausible. They somehow lost the Fultz trade not once, but twice.
Let’s stay with Denver for a second. They not only had the assets to draft Bol Bol, but the year before they took Michael Porter Jr. The rangy small forward from Missouri was an option for the Sixers on draft day as well. Sixers brass ended up passing on MPJ, who has four 20+ point games in the bubble, is shooting 50% from the field and 42% from 3. He poured in 28 points in the Nuggets Game 1 win over the Jazz.
Now, Porter Jr did have a serious back injury coming out of Mizzou and maybe the Sixers were just mindful of drafting yet another injury risk. Which, would have been totally fair if they didn’t end up drafting a guy in Zhaire Smith who can’t even play for the team if the concession stand is selling peanuts that night.
But woah slow down, you may be saying to yourself hey, he left out an important part as to why the Sixers gave up Mikal Bridges that night and passed on Michael Porter Jr. It was all to get that coveted extra first round pick from the Heat! Yeah, you know that pick they traded to the Clippers after they already gave Landry Shamet up in return for Tobias Harris. How can a GM negotiate a trade deal and give up both of those assets in the pick and Shamet?! Why was the conversation not, “we have this talented rookie who is the best three point shooter in his class. We also have this coveted first round pick. Choose one”. The Sixers. Gave. Up. Both.
Then, they compounded the trade mistake by giving Tobias Harris 5 years, $180M despite never proving to the team that he exhibited the value of a max player.
Then there is the Jimmy Butler saga. Every few weeks, a story pops up about his tenure in Philly, and the moments that led to his departure to Miami. But let’s go back to the beginning of the Jimmy Butler era. Elton Brand’s first big move was getting his third star, Butler, in exchange for Dario Saric and Robert Covington. This week of the Lowe Post Podcast, Zach Lowe was raving about the acquisition of Covington by the Rockets and how it has added a toughness that the team lacked before. But, not to send like a Process cult member, the move would have been worth it if Butler signed the max and stayed. He didn’t. In the end, all Philly got back for Jimmy Butler was Josh Richardson. Butler is a top 25 player in the league and it’s hard to make a case Richardson is even top 50. In the end, all the Sixers did was got a lesser version of Jimmy Butler.
Trades for Tobias Harris or Jimmy Butler were the most notable moves, but the Sixers haven’t even won the minor deals. After months of deliberation on how to handle the Joel Embiid/Nerlens Noel/Jahlil Okafor log jam, they saw the value of two of those players careen off a cliff. All they got in return for Jahlil Okafor was an expiring Trevor Booker contract. Booker would later be released in the same season they traded for him, and he signed with the Indiana Pacers.
This blog focused solely on the trades they have made and how they’ve gotten pennies on the dollar in every single one of those moves. This doesn’t even focus on all the draft day blunders. Most horrific being Bryan Colangelo taking Furkan Korkmaz one pick before Pascal Siakam. Or Colangelo leaving us with the Anzejs Pasecniks ordeal.
There could be separate blogs done on those draft pick whiffs, and maybe even one done on free agency deals, which leads us to where we are today. Horford and Harris will always be the most infamous. But this team couldn’t even find reliable back up point guard play in a summer where 60% of the players in the league were free agents. Instead, we were left with Raul Neto getting playoff minutes.
The Philadelphia 76ers have lost on every SINGLE move they have made since Sam Hinkie left this organization. They put themselves at the salary cap ceiling. They stopped valuing draft picks and they obliterated any optionality or flexibility they may need to grow in the future. They chased away players the team’s star players gelled with on and off the court. They became so obsessed with star hunting, they ignored growing organically and talked themselves into players who shouldn’t have been valued as “stars”.
The Sixers have officially become the team that the Process hoped to avoid. Not good enough to ever compete for a championship and not bad enough to ever get high draft picks that will help grow the team. They are floating in a directionless abyss with no way out, leaving behind a trail of their own self-destruction.