Three Crucial Offseason Sixers Questions After Another Playoff Flameout
Time to get to the nitty gritty of how the team should approach the off-season, and discuss what this loss means for the big picture
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In the aftermath of the Game 6 loss to the Heat, I found myself in the opposite place of my colleague Andrew Unterberger — not only could I not live with that loss, I found myself feeling as pessimistic about the Sixers as I have in a long time. That team quit, plain and simple, and they left about as sour a taste in my mouth as they could possibly give the fact that they started the season with minimal expectations.
But now that some time has passed, and the Sixers are no longer the only team to have an embarrassing playoff flameout (thanks, Phoenix), I’m much more ready to get to the nitty gritty of how the team should approach the off-season, and discuss what this loss means for the big picture. Let’s dig in.
Does letting James Harden walk really make sense?
As I’ve had time to reflect, I’ve come to the conclusion that letting James Harden walk for nothing would be a terrible idea. As much as I’d love to kick him out of town on principle alone after that horrible, disgusting, pathetic quit job in Game 6, the Sixers are just not in a place where they can afford to do that, provided the intention is to contend now.
One of the many things that can be learned from the Sixers’ mistake of letting Jimmy Butler walk is that acquiring All-Star level talent is extremely difficult. After letting him go in 2019, it took 2.5 years for the Sixers to acquire another player who is even in the realm of being a suitable sidekick for Joel Embiid.
Let Harden walk now, and you risk throwing away another year or two of Embiid’s prime with no sidekick whatsoever. Harden has many bad qualities, but he indisputably raises their championship odds relative to spending the money you’d give to him on role players.
There are only two caveats here: A) if the Sixers can somehow acquire another All-Star player in his place (Beal, LaVine, etc.), they could then let him walk, and B) the Sixers should not give him the super max — if he demands that, he can walk.
I’m doubtful of A) happening, and B) seems unlikely as well given the reporting around the situation so far. If I had to guess, I’d say Harden is back on a four-year, $130M deal, or something in that range. If that comes to fruition, the Sixers should feel fine about that. They can pray that he shows up next year healthier and in better shape, that he’s motivated from the shellacking he’s taken in the media, and that they can round out the roster to further offset his weaknesses.
The fit with Harden is fine; as much as he exudes loser energy, it is Embiid’s job as well as the coaching staff’s job to set the culture here, and if this team once again gets out-toughed, it’s on them. Harden will be here, he will make the team better, and everyone in this city will hate him. That’s just how this is going to go.
How, exactly, can the team get tougher?
It is undeniably true that the Sixers lack toughness and cohesion. They mailed in the last 7 weeks of the regular season, they completely no-showed nearly half of their playoff games, and were simply a mentally and physically soft team.
They absolutely need to add hard-nosed players to the roster this season, but there needs to be an extreme level of caution to their approach here. Getting hung up on adding one particular quality is how you overcorrect and wind up making bad trades — the Mavericks, for example, left the 2020 season thinking they needed to get tougher, and wound up trading Seth Curry for Josh Richardson, and Delon Wright for James Johnson.
The lesson there is obvious: needing to get tougher doesn’t mean you should trade good players for bad players.
The other caveat I’d add is that the Sixers need a very particular type of toughness. I’ve seen some fans throw out names like Montrezl Harrell or Marcus Morris. Those players bring toughness in the sense that they will stand up for their teammates in a brawl, but they aren’t the connective, glue-guy types that this team needs. Marcus Morris is a mediocre rebounder, falls asleep on defense, and takes terrible shots. More so than him, the Sixers need a P.J. Tucker, who will get just as upset at an opponent for an elbow as he would at a teammate for missing a defensive rotation.
Enforcers are great, but culture setters are better, and that’s what this team needs — but they can’t overcorrect and start selling assets for pennies on the dollar to get them.
How much blame should fall on Embiid?
As we are all collectively spending time crushing this team and calling them all sorts of names, it’s raised an important question that I think many fans might not want to consider. How much of the blame falls on Embiid?
Of course, blaming a collective lack of toughness on the guy playing through multiple severe injuries would be insane. The crux of the blame for this year falls on those around him — James Harden, who has a history of these types of performances, Doc Rivers, who was brought here to implement a culture and has done nothing of the sort, and Daryl Morey, who filled out the roster with a devastating lack of physicality and toughness.
And yet, at some point, some portion of the blame for the never-ending stream of playoff disappointments just has to tie back to the best player on the team. This organization sorely lacks any type of culture, and while there are many components to that, culture in the NBA always stems from the personality of your best player. The Warriors’ free-flowing and selfless culture starts with Steph Curry. The Spurs’ mechanical, ego-free culture started with Tim Duncan. The Suns’ recent culture of ruthless precision and night-in night-out relentlessness began with Chris Paul. Even lower down the totem pole of success, the Blazers’ decade-long run of free-flowing play and zero locker room drama was just a function of having Damian Lillard.
It’s important to at least consider the possibility that the Sixers’ rudderless culture and never ending drama is a function of the fact that their best player has never taken the horns of that responsibility. Not only has Embiid never been the type of tone-setting on-court leader that other great players have been, he also hasn’t shown much of an interest in the behind the scenes endeavors that other players around the league tend to do. Embiid has never been the type to recruit other star players to come to Philly, and Yaron Weitzman of Fox Sports recently reported that Embiid never even made much of a campaign for the franchise to keep Jimmy Butler:
8. In terms of Embiid: he’s said multiple times that letting Butler go was a mistake. But my understanding is that at the time he was not insisting the team bring Butler back. This wasn’t an example of him demanding something and the front office ignoring it.
— Yaron Weitzman (@YaronWeitzman) May 13, 2022
When asked about personnel decisions, Embiid always churns out the same response: “I’m not the GM.” While that is true, it ignores the obvious reality of what goes on in the NBA. If Embiid truly felt as strongly as he seems to feel about Butler (not to mention JJ Redick), he should have communicated that to the front office at the time. His lack of interest in these types of things shows, for better or for worse, a lack of interest in taking ownership of the franchise in the way that he is, at the very least, entitled to.
With his GM adage as well as other comments, he generally seems to reflect the attitude that he shows up for work, plays hard when it’s game time, and lets everything off the floor unfold as it needs to. That is simply not how the NBA works, at least in today’s day and age. Superstars set the culture, and impact everything from who the coach is to who the team trades for.
Again, perhaps it is unreasonable to expect Embiid to do all of these things — play at an MVP level, set the culture of the organization, and influence personnel decisions in a favorable way behind the scenes. It is undeniably true that the organization has failed him in a multitude of ways, and that he wouldn’t have to have massive influence in all these other areas if the organization was more competent and more stable.
And yet, I can’t get to feeling that Embiid is completely blameless here. If he was the same type of culture-setter as the guys I previously mentioned, I can’t help but think that this organization would have avoided some of the drama and turnover that it has faced in the past five years. No one can ever question Embiid’s toughness, his competitive spirit, or his constant desire to improve. But as I watch this franchise be in a constant state of flux, one wonders if Embiid has the type of culture-setting quality and/or behind the scenes savvy that many of the all-time great players have. In a better, more stable organization, that would never be necessary, but here, it may be.
Leading up to and throughout the playoffs, I expressed more confidence in Embiid as a player than perhaps I ever have. I said, and still believe, that he is good enough to be the best player on a championship team. But after watching the total implosion of this team in the playoffs, and the general lack of ability to care throughout the regular season, I’m left wondering not whether Embiid is a good enough player, but if he has embraced enough of the tone-setting responsibilities that come with being a franchise centerpiece — or at least, being the centerpiece of this godforsaken franchise.
I’m hopeful that the Sixers can retain this core, establish some type of cohesive culture and identity, and contend for years to come. But if the next few years of Joel Embiid’s career are just like the last few years — constant chaos, in-fighting, and turnover, and playoff disappointment after playoff disappointment, a very real chunk of the blame will have to fall on him, and his inability to establish a culture here.