The Sixers Must Re-Sign James Harden
Harden walking this summer would be a catastrophic event for this era of Sixers basketball
Mike O’Connor is the best O’Connor in basketball writing. Previously of The Athletic, you can find Mike on Twitter @MOConnor_NBA. Mike’s writing is brought to you by Body Bio, supplements based on science, focusing on your gut and brain health. Get 20% off E-Lyte, Gut+, and all Body Bio products with promo code RTRS20 at Body Bio’s website.
The rumors of James Harden returning to the Houston Rockets just won’t go away.
Last week, another report came out from The Athletic’s Kelly Iko and Sam Amick detailing how and why Harden could potentially return to Houston this offseason, and The Ringer’s Bill Simmons also mentioned on his podcast that there’s an awful lot of behind the scenes chatter about a potential Harden-Houston reunion.
Throughout this rollercoaster of a season, there are times when one could easily become annoyed with Harden; many of the things we find most frustrating about this team – namely the lack of focus on defense and the sheer lack of energy on certain nights – are things that Harden is guilty of. On his bad nights, you wouldn’t be illogical to wonder what life might be like without him, and how the Sixers could potentially pivot were Harden to walk in free agency.
But take a closer look at the landscape of this team and their assets, and you’ll quickly see why Harden walking this summer would be a catastrophic event for this era of Sixers basketball; they would be left with almost no shot of contending for a championship, and almost no means of improving their chances over the next couple of years.
To illustrate why it’s so crucial to keep Harden, let’s walk through three hypothetical scenarios of how this offseason could go, starting with the best-case scenario of Harden re-signing with the Sixers.
Harden re-signs for a near-max four-year deal
The most the Sixers can offer Harden is a four-year deal worth $210.1 million, with a starting salary of $46.9 million for next season. If Harden agrees to that deal, and Danuel House and Montrezl Harrell pick up their player options, that would put the Sixers at a payroll of around $171 million with just ten players under contract.
From this year’s roster, the Sixers have four other impending free agents in addition to Harden: Jalen McDaniels, Shake Milton, Georges Niang, and Paul Reed. We can argue later on about which of those players the Sixers should prioritize – for my money, it’s McDaniels and Reed – but if they devote approximately $10 million in next year’s salary to retaining two of those four guys, they would then find themselves with a payroll of $181 million, which would already be third highest in the league if compared to this year’s rosters.
They would also likely have a taxpayer mid-level exception of around $5 million to add another free agent, and outside of that, the roster would have to be rounded out with minimum contracts. Regardless, the Sixers would likely be looking at the richest payroll in the league outside of the Warriors and Clippers.
Essentially, re-signing Harden to a near-max would likely mean running back a very similar roster to this season. You could of course make an attempt to swing Harris for a player who better fits their needs. You’d also have the option of packaging House, Korkmaz, and a pick for a more useful player. In either of those scenarios, the Sixers would likely need to attach their 2029 first round pick to those players to bring anything of value back in a trade. But outside of that, options for a meaningful transformation are limited.
There is also the hope that Jaden Springer could break through and become a rotation player (I’ve watched some of his G-League film recently, and I must say, I was never a fan, but I was a little bit impressed!). The Sixers would have to hope that improvements from Maxey, Springer, Reed, and McDaniels would be enough to offset the losses of Niang and Milton.
Regardless, in this hypothetical scenario, one would envision re-signing Harden, keeping McDaniels and Reed, adding decent veterans with minimum deals and the MLE, and perhaps a little Morey Magic to package House, Korkmaz, and a pick for a quality bench contributor, similar to the Melton/Danny Green trade from last summer. In that event, the Sixers would have just as good of a chance at contending next year as they do this year.
Harden leaves, the Sixers try to remain competitive with this core
If Harden declines his player option and signs with Houston this summer, the Sixers’ payroll would already be right about at the projected salary cap for next season, before re-signing any of their other free agents (Niang, Reed, McDaniels, Milton).
Given that the Sixers have the bird rights of all four of those players, they could theoretically re-sign all of them if they wanted to. If the Sixers were to allot approximately $24 million (just guesstimating an average of $6 million per year per player) between the four of them, they would be just ~$8 million shy of the luxury tax.
The reason that this hypothetical scenario is so dire is that their degree of flexibility is just as limited as it would be if Harden were to re-sign; all it would mean is a worse team and a cheaper luxury tax bill for Joshua Harris.
The Sixers could theoretically try to package Harris, Springer, and a draft pick for a max-contract player that a team is simply looking to get off of – like, perhaps, Bradley Beal or Zach LaVine – but a trade like that would essentially mean taking this year’s roster, inserting a worse version of Harden, removing Harris, and punting on Springer and another draft pick. There is almost no world in which the Sixers aren’t drastically worse off next season if Harden walks.
They could, of course, keep Harris, trot out a starting lineup of Maxey-Melton-Tucker-Harris-Embiid, try to add some decent veterans to their bench, and win 47 games and lose in the second round next season.
From a long term perspective, it’s hard to see how the Sixers could make that a one-year blip and ascend right back into title contention the following season; in 2024-25, Maxey’s extension will kick in, and by the time you factor in the rest of the salary on the books as well as a modest Melton extension, the Sixers are already right about at the projected salary cap for that season.
There really is no other way to put it: Harden walking away puts this team into a different era, where one can no longer even delude themselves into being a contender. In every previous failed version of this team, there at least existed the hope of turning the ashes of that team into a new version of itself – Robert Covington and Dario Saric became Jimmy Butler, Jimmy Butler became Josh Richardson and cap space, and that stuff plus Ben Simmons’ implosion turned into James Harden. But this time, if Harden leaves for nothing, there is no other iteration of this team to be seen. The Embiid Sixers simply turn into the Eastern Conference version of the Lillard Blazers.
Harden walks, and the Sixers re-tool on the fly
I’m not ready to consider the possibility of trading Embiid in the event that Harden walks; I’d rather enjoy a couple years of the Maxey-Embiid show before entering into a rebuild, especially given that the Sixers have a couple of outgoing draft picks in upcoming seasons.
So, in this hypothetical, we are operating under the plan that the Sixers would look to shed some salary to open up some cap space. While it wouldn’t make them much better next season, it would make their future a bit more promising.
If Harden leaves, and the Sixers are somehow able to salary dump Harris to team like San Antonio, Charlotte, or Detroit, they could then have up to $39 million in cap space. Dump P.J. Tucker, as well, and that number jumps to $50 million.
I have to stress that it’s extremely unlikely that the Sixers would be able to do such a thing, but it can’t be ruled out. If they do, though, they would open themselves up to being able to sign max-level free agents. This year’s class is relatively weak – you’re looking at headliners like Khris Middleton or Fred VanVleet – but this hypothetical scenario would be more about adding multiple quality, young contributors than salvaging next season with another fringe All-Star.
Perhaps Cam Johnson is a name to consider. P.J. Washington is worth talking about. Josh Hart could be available.
It’s easy to sneer at the possibility of adding players like Johnson, Washington, and Hart, but the team would have a far brighter future with those three than they would with Harris and Tucker. If they could add three players of that caliber by salary-dumping Harris and Tucker, they should do it.
It remains a mystery, though, how you go from a Maxey-Melton-Johnson-Washington-Embiid team to a true contender; all of this tinkering around once again feels uncomfortably close to the past couple years in Portland.
That dynamic cuts at the underlying point I’m trying to make here – the Harden-Embiid duo is the final evolution of the Process Sixers. If Harden leaves for nothing, there really is nothing to discuss here in terms of winning a title with Embiid. The only true possibility would be by re-tooling the team over the course of a handful of years, hitting a whole bunch of singles with small trades and signings, and winning when Embiid is in his mid-thirties.
I’ve never been the biggest Harden fan, and I truly believe the last two years of a max contract would be a disaster, but out of the scenarios I’ve outlined here, the first one sounds the best by a country mile. We’ve spent a decade trying to get a championship out of this era of Sixers basketball, and to lose Harden for nothing would almost have to mean giving up on that goal in a way that I’m just not ready to accept.