Daryl Was Right (Basically)
It doesn't show in the team's record -- and may not end up showing in their playoff performance -- but this regular season, Daryl Morey made a lot of big bets, and they (nearly) all paid off.
The playoffs start for the Philadelphia 76ers tomorrow, which means we are about to be in the thick of Relitigation Season. Every little thing that goes wrong for the Sixers -- and certainly all of the big things -- will require accountability at their root. The coaching staff, the medical staff, probably even Franklin will all have some explaining to do as to why the decisions they made at key points in the regular season brought us to where we are about to be in the postseason. And of course, the majority of the questions will be laid at the feet of Daryl Morey, as all the moves he made or didn't make last summer and at the trade deadline will invariably be interrogated for their part in every moment when the Sixers end up falling short.
So in the last day possible before Relitigation Season takes the court, I wanted to get ahead of the second-guessing to make sure one thing about Daryl Morey's 2023-24 season gets on the official If Not Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders record. And that is to say: Basically, he was right. About everything really.
This season certainly will not go down in the record books as one in which all the Sixers' moves paid off handsomely -- not when they ended the regular season 47-35, with their worst winning percentage since Joel Embiid's rookie year, not when they ended up in the play-in tournament as the East's seven seed, and certainly not when they have to face one of the hardest roads to the finals that an ostensible contending team has ever faced. But the team's record and playoff standing mask a team that was built around a lot of risky bets that pretty much all landed, before being undone by a couple shit-happens injuries that derailed the entire season. This was probably Daryl's wildest year as Sixers GM, but it also ended up being his most validating.
Obviously, the main bet -- the one the rest of the season kinda fell into place from -- was his holding out for the package he wanted in the James Harden deal. As the messiness with Harden dragged on all summer, into training camp and pre-season and even into the start of the regular season, with the "Daryl Morey Is a Liar" catchphrase sweeping the nation just like "Where's the Beef?" did 40 years earlier, a lot of us wanted Daryl Morey to fold. Just accept whatever was out there, get Harden off the team and start the Sixers' season in earnest. A lot of us gave up on getting anything real back for Uno, maybe just some expirings and a Nerlens Noel-style fake first to save face. A lot of us were also starting to wonder if Daryl would ultimately cost himself his job in his resistance to pulling the trigger on any deal south of his standards.
But Daryl held the line like his name was David Paich, and was rewarded with a return of Actual Stuff. Not just the two first-rounders, two second-rounders and a pick swap, all ensuring we once again had buy-in at the table for when big players became available for trade -- and not just the opportunity to jettison P.J. Tucker, who we have missed zero percent, who has been mostly out of the rotation for the Clippers, and who has an $11.5 million (!!) player option for next year. But also actual live rotation players: Marcus Morris Sr., who ate up valuable minutes and even hit a game-winner for us before being shipped out at the trade deadline, KJ Martin, who has been a useful and promising fringe rotation guy in the season's second half, Nicolas Batum, who is simply one of the best role players the Process Sixers have ever had, and Robert Covington, who we'll love forever regardless of how many operative knees he has moving forward. The deal helped both our future and our present, and even the one part we did have to compromise on -- that being the ever-elusive Terance Mann, who remained in L.A. -- was for a guy who might not have even been guaranteed a rotation spot for the Sixers in these playoffs.
The Harden holdout was a real gamble, but it was arguably predicated on an even bigger one. If we were going to move on from Harden -- and we'll never know how much Daryl ever actually wanted to do that, but he ultimately did do it -- it would mean we would need Tyrese Maxey, the team's overachieving 23-year-old third banana, to not only grow into a true No. 2 option alongside Joel Embiid, but a primary playmaker and ball-handler essentially trusted with running the team in the half-court. And not to become that player *eventually*, but to do it all right away, this season, before his rookie contract was even up. And that's exactly what he did: He upped his scoring and his distribution without sacrificing his efficiency or his energy, he emerged as an All-Star in the season's opening weeks and still somehow improved dramatically by season's end. Now not only is Tyrese an acceptable Harden replacement as the team's lead guard, he's likely the best offensive partner Joel has ever entered the playoffs with.
Then, at the trade deadline, Daryl made one roll of the dice after another. His two most seemingly questionable moves came in the waning hours of that deadline Thursday, when he sent fan favorite ass-belter Patrick Beverley to the Bucks for Cam Payne and a second-rounder, and then kicked Jaden Springer to the Celtics for another second. We probably won't know about any long-term ramifications for the latter move until a couple years from now -- though Springer has seen predictably little floor time in Boston, and he would have been out of the rotation for us almost entirely about a week after the deadline's passing -- but the Beverley deal now looks like a heist. Not only did Kyle Lowry end up filling Beverley's veteran point guard spot in fairly spectacular, team-solidifying fashion as a buyout guy -- and has not, as of yet, cost us any additional second-rounders in Adam Silver Only Hates Tampering When We Do It taxes -- but Payne has arguably been more useful since the deadline than PatBev, with his hot shooting helping us steal a couple big games we might've otherwise dropped, as Beverley puts up middling numbers for the disintegrating Bucks.
The list goes on. Doc Rivers has outlived his usefulness and Nick Nurse is the right guy to inject a little creativity, adaptability and dickishness into our on-court product? Check. Joel Embiid can be a world-beating offensive force even without Harden spoonfeeding him buckets -- and can even help shoulder a little more of the playmaking load himself? Check. Kelly Oubre Jr. can translate his bargain-basement production to an actual winning team, and basically do it for free? CHEEEEEEEEEEECK. Daryl has done a whole lot of splitting 10s and doubling down on 14s this season, and he hasn't busted once.
Well, hasn't busted once yet, anyway. The jury is very much still out on the Buddy Hield trade, which while low cost -- just three second-rounders, two of which we essentially got back in those subsequent deadline deals -- has also pretty been low return thus far. After a strong start to his Sixers tenure, Buddy has still largely gotten his numbers, but he's looked tentative and slow, and has not particularly risen to the occasion in our biggest games -- including an 0-fer from the field in our most recent game against the Heat team we're basically playing for the season tomorrow. But there's still more than enough time for Buddy to redeem himself, and as his third-quarter-closing, game-sealing, nine-points-in-51-seconds outburst against the Nets on Sunday showed, he doesn't need a ton of time or opportunity to be a difference-maker. One big Hield performance in a playoff contest the Sixers would otherwise not have won, and suddenly that's one more pot's worth of chips for Daryl to add to his stack for the season.
All this said, you could ask if Daryl's biggest gamble of all this season was the one he didn't take. At the deadline, he played it conservative, with a low-stakes bet on Hield rather than an all-in move for Pascal Siakam or OG Anunoby or who even knows who else might've been available at the right price. Beyond those two players, no one else who changed teams this season has yet demonstrated themselves to be a true difference-maker -- and Bojan Bogdanovic, considered by many the best player moved at the deadline, has been mostly blah since arriving in New York -- so it certainly doesn't seem like there were a ton of opportunities that Daryl missed out on by not being more aggressive. But if the Sixers do prove undermanned in one of their playoff matchups -- and especially if it's not by a particularly huge margin -- it won't be unfair to ask if Daryl wasted a golden opportunity in a weaker East by not pushing his hand to the limit.
But for now, for this regular season, and for the start of these playoffs, we've got a team we can feel more confident in than any other of the Joel Embiid era, and that's largely the result of Morey's offseason and mid-season wagers all proving Doyle Brunson-esque so far. If not for an injury that cost Joel two months of the season -- one catastrophe we can't really lay at the GM's feet, though give us an hour and a messy Sixers playoff exit and we'll probably find a way -- we'd be entering the playoffs with the two seed, the most regular-season wins of the Process era, and a significantly easier path to a Celtics showdown in the conference finals. Instead, we'll have to make do simply entering the playoffs with the best Sixers team in over 20 years, while Daryl enjoys his precious final seconds of having been right all regular season -- before the first bad Sixers loss of the postseason immediately renders it all irrelevant.
Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the 'If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders' section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.
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