Four Major Offseason Questions For The Sixers
Contracts, trades, and… Ben.
Mike O’Connor is the best O’Connor in basketball writing. Previously of The Athletic, you can find Mike on Twitter @MOConnor_NBA.
Regardless of who will be calling the shots once the offseason officially rolls around, it’s clear that the Sixers have many questions to answer as they figure out the next steps of their franchise.
In the process of restoring the Sixers to a normal, functioning, modern basketball team, there are many choices that need to be sifted through before you can decide on which trades or acquisitions to be made. Here, I’ll outline a handful of them and give my thoughts on each.
1: Are you willing to pay Josh Richardson’s next contract?
I haven’t seen a ton of discussion on this issue, but it’s a major decision that has loomed over the Sixers since the moment they acquired Richardson. His contract expires after next season (he has a player option but it’s unlikely he’d opt in), and even without a potential Richardson extension on the books for the 2021-2022 season, the Sixers would be $26.4 million over the projected cap and just $4 million shy of the luxury tax. Signing Richardson to, say, a 4-year, $52 million contract would be a massive, massive financial commitment that would leave the Sixers with a major luxury tax bill for at least two years, provided they can’t offload Horford and/or Harris before that season.
That is to say: the stage is very much set for the Sixers to let him walk after next season -- and if that is their intention, they need to trade him this offseason to avoid losing him for nothing. As much as I’d be interested in seeing the type of impact Richardson could make next season with a clean bill of health and under a new coach, he will always be an imperfect fit for this team’s needs, and with their ever-dwindling pool of assets, they need to ensure that they don’t lose him for nothing.
The market for Richardson wouldn’t be extensive, but I do think he could be flipped for a useful player of a different archetype (Seth Curry, anyone?), or used as a sweetener in a potential Al Horford or Tobias Harris trade.
If the Sixers are willing to eat the massive luxury tax bill that would accompany paying Richardson his next deal, then by all means, keep him on board and see what he can bring next season. But I’m dubious of the Sixers’ owners willingly forking over that money. If the presumptive plan is to let him walk for nothing next offseason, then they should do everything in their power to trade him this offseason.
2: How willing are you to part with (distant) future firsts?
Regardless of the type of trade that the Sixers eventually make involving Al Horford, there is almost no way that they could get a deal done without including extra assets to sweeten the deal for whoever takes him on -- barring taking on an even more toxic contract, like Andrew Wiggins, or… well, that’s about it.
Given that the Sixers don’t exactly have a bevy of assets to accomplish that, their only real options for sweeteners are Richardson (who equally capped out teams might not want), Matisse Thybulle and/or Shake Milton (more on them in a bit), or their own future first round draft picks.
Regardless of if I’m a winning team looking to swap unwanted contracts or a losing team with plenty of cap space, I’d have lots of interest in taking on Horford if he comes with a couple of unprotected first round picks from the Sixers in the 2024-2026 range. More than anything, it’d be a bet that organizational incompetence plummets the Sixers back into lottery territory by that time -- which, in my mind, is a pretty safe bet!
It’s quite possible that the model for a Horford trade is similar to the one that sent Chris Paul from Houston to OKC -- one overpriced contract and a couple of distant picks for a slightly more tolerable overpriced contract.
It’s a tough calculation for the Sixers to make. On one hand, they’re completely desperate to get off of Horford. On the other hand, betting on their own long term competence is quite risky.
Personally, I would exhaust every alternative that doesn’t involve sending out unprotected future first round picks before arriving at that point; I would trade Horford and, say, the OKC pick for Eric Gordon before I would trade Horford and a couple of unprotected 2024 and 2025 first rounders for Chris Paul. The only price I would absolutely not pay is offloading multiple first round picks simply to dump Horford onto a bad team with cap space -- they should only be willing to fork over major draft assets if they have a useful (albeit overpaid) player coming back in return.
Of course, they could instead try to use their young players as sweeteners rather than/in addition to draft picks, which brings us to…
3: Could Matisse Thybulle or Shake Milton be used as sweeteners?
I’ll keep this part short, since the answer is pretty simple in my mind: yes. Neither player should be untouchable. I’m a believer in both players, but if there’s a team that views Thybulle or Milton as a valuable enough sweetener to take on Horford’s contract, it should be a done deal.
Thybulle and Milton each have long careers ahead of them and are on excellent contracts, but are also fairly replaceable. It’d be a brutal pill to swallow to have to use them to offload Horford, but it may be what’s necessary, and it may even carry less long term risk than giving away a couple of unprotected 2024 and 2025 first rounders.
4: Ben Simmons is not a point guard. Can they accept it?
Enough is enough. Ben Simmons is not a point guard. He needs to accept it, and the team needs to accept that they need to build the team with that in mind.
Follow this train of logic with me: if Simmons refuses to shoot jump shots, and also refuses to share the court with an on-ball, volume scoring guard, then it is impossible for the Sixers to contend for a championship. Because without shooting jump shots, Simmons will never be able to be the fulcrum of a half court offense of a championship contender. And if he also refuses to play alongside that type of player, then the Sixers will never have the type of offense that allows them to make it deep in the playoffs. Simmons’ stubbornness on both fronts effectively wipes out any hope of the Sixers taking a leap.
Theoretically, the Sixers should absolutely be willing to flip Horford-plus-assets for Chris Paul. But I imagine that this would be a recipe for disaster without full buy-in from Simmons, which is extremely unlikely. Paul’s propensity to pound the rock and play floor general would not mesh well with Simmons, to say the least.
There’s an argument to be made that at this point, the Sixers are better off not pissing off Simmons, allowing him to remain nominal point guard, and not bringing in anyone who would threaten his status as lead ball handler. They could have a few more 50-win seasons, and the locker room dynamic would remain unthreatened.
But to me, that outcome just isn’t interesting anymore. There are only so many 50-ish win seasons and first or second round playoff exits a franchise can take before things become stale. The Sixers need to give Simmons a choice: either you are going to make a concerted effort to shoot jumpers and become the anchor of the halfcourt offense, or we’re going to bring in a player who does those things. If he refuses to do the former, and pouts in the event of the latter, then how valuable is he in the pursuit of winning a championship, anyway?