How The Sixers Can Make This Year A Stealth Tank
Fans are thirsty for a break from the madness, and they also could use a fresh dose of hope that would come along with a one-year re-tooling.
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 and all Body Bio products with promo code RTRS20 at Body Bio’s website.
After getting off to an 8-2 start to the season, it felt like the Sixers’ season was headed in a feel-good direction -- a scrappy team with a mix of young and prime talent exceeding expectations. Fans were just hoping to have a fun, competitive, drama-free basketball team this year, and that’s exactly what the first 10 games of the season brought.
Since then, the Sixers have lost 9 out of 12 games, and with it, some of their charm. Injuries and COVID problems have been the bulk of the reason for this subpar stretch, but the Sixers have also looked like a team with more flaws than previously expected. The Tyrese Maxey explosion may have been unsustainable. Tobias Harris is falling back into his worst habits. The team has a hideous lack of speed on the perimeter. What used to be a league-leading offense has slid back down to 10th, and the team is even more unexceptional on defense.
Let’s be real: the Sixers lack the talent to win a championship right now, and they face a difficult path towards acquiring it if they continue down this same path. Throw in the fact that the past six months have been a nonstop circus, and it’s not hard to see why some Sixers fans are craving a stealth tank season. Fans are thirsty for a break from the madness, and they also could use a fresh dose of hope that would come along with a one-year re-tooling.
I’m not saying that a re-tool would be without cost -- man, it would suck to punt on a year of Joel Embiid’s prime, and it would be interesting to see if the Sixers could win 47 games and perhaps a playoff series. That is certainly well within the realm of possibility, and I’m not saying that this Sixers’ season is by any means doomed to turn into a tankfest. But if the end goal is a championship, the stealth tank may be the move that best helps you achieve that goal. Here’s what I think the benefits would be, and how I’m envisioning it would go.
If the Sixers hover around .500 for the next 25 games or so, that would leave them at a natural pivot point to a stealth tank with the trade deadline right around the corner. They could sell off some of their veterans in exchange for some useful assets on the margins -- they could surely get something for Danny Green, and another team might want Furkan Korkmaz or Georges Niang, as well.
With the door closed on contending this year, that would also mean that they could make some bigger picture changes. For one thing, it widens the number of possibilities on the Ben Simmons front, perhaps making a package centered around picks more enticing. But also, it may mean that trading Tobias Harris becomes justifiable.
The Tobias for Kevin Love suggestions have been thrown out there by yours truly dating back to last year, but I think that it makes much more sense now than it did then. For one thing, Harris’ value has gone up a tad over the past year, while Love’s has gone down -- meaning that the Cavs may have to sweeten the deal more so than they would have a year ago. Also, the Cavs are looking more and more like a competitive team these days, so trading for a veteran in his prime like Harris makes a bit more sense for them now.
From the Sixers’ perspective, Love’s contract expires after next season, so he could be easily re-routed this upcoming offseason if needed. They would free themselves from the disastrous Harris contract, and if they trade Simmons without taking on long term salary, as well, they would open themselves up to have two max contract slots in 2023.
From the Cavs’ perspective, getting Harris makes them better, and helps fill a bit of a hole on that team in terms of their lack of scoring on the wing. His contract is also less toxic on a team with a bunch of players on rookie deals, and who is never competitive in free agency to begin with.
If the stealth tank happens, this trade is a no-brainer for the Sixers. Harris is absolutely positively not a core player on a championship team, and his contract prevents them from getting players who can be. By trading him they could get back a great deal of long term flexibility and potentially get a draft pick, as well.
With Harris and others gone, all the Sixers would have to do to complete the stealth tank is to sit Embiid with a couple of phony injuries. They could let Tyrese Maxey cut his teeth as the lead scoring option, where he’d put up monster stats, hasten his development, and increase his trade value. They could see if Isaiah Joe, Charles Bassey, and others are cut out for the NBA. And most importantly, they could go a smooth 8-20 in the post-deadline part of the season.
That would likely leave the Sixers with a mid-to-late lottery pick in this upcoming draft, which they could either keep or use as a package for the next star that becomes available this summer. With Maxey, that pick, whatever comes back for Simmons, and all of the cap flexibility moving forward, the Sixers would be extremely well positioned to acquire another superstar to pair with Embiid within the next 18 months -- certainly, they would be better positioned than they are now.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a bit scary to gut the team to this degree when the hope is to go back to contention after this year. But you’d be hard pressed to tell me that this isn’t the Sixers’ best path towards a championship in the next 3-5 years. Ridding themselves of Harris, regaining salary flexibility, and significantly adding to their draft pick collection -- both by trading veterans and by grabbing a lottery pick this year -- makes them far more suited to build a championship contender around Embiid than they are now. I’d much rather get to see what Daryl Morey can do with a ton of flexibility and assets, than I would try to watch him build a contending roster with Tobias Harris as the second best player.
As was the case during the process years, I am sympathetic to anyone who just wants to sit down after a hard day of work and watch a 47-win team, rather than a team that’s punting on the season. After following along through the entire process, I can hardly stomach the thought of it myself. But that being said, I see this as the best long term option, and it doesn’t appear as if this team is all that fun to watch, anyway. I wouldn’t throw a fit if we get to watch a 47 win season and a second round loss to the Bucks, but I’d also probably look back in five years and say that opting not to stealth tank and re-tool this season was the final nail in the coffin of the process-era championship hopes.