Tobias Harris Is Our Cross to Bear

We brought him here. We gave him $180 million. And now all we can do is wait.

When I think of Tobias Harris in 2024 -- particularly after a game like Tuesday's against Boston -- I mostly think of two quotes. 

The first quote is from my old friend-of-a-friend Tim, spoken about his longtime buddy Mark (names changed to protect the innocent and unfortunately annoying). The couple times a year I would see Tim at a birthday dinner or bar outing would invariably always end up with Mark in tow, despite the fact that Mark was not a person that anyone seemed to particularly enjoy being around, least of all Tim. One time, I was finally hanging out with Tim sans Mark -- he was busy, they'd hung out the night before -- and I asked, for the first time, what the deal was between the two of them. Tim sighed, and answered with a gravitas that made it clear it was not a conclusion he'd reached lightly: "Mark is my cross to bear." 

No further explanation was needed. I understood what he meant: A long, long time ago, Tim had made the mistake of letting Mark become a major part of his life, and now there was no way he would ever be rid of him. Complaining would accomplish little, looking for a way out, even less. It was his burden, his lot in life, to put up with Mark until one of them was dead. 

It's easy to be reminded of this quote when contemplating the Tobias Harris experience. He has been with us for over five seasons now, frustrating if not downright infuriating fans for a good majority of that time. He's been pretty good on the aggregate, but never quite good enough, and especially not when it mattered most. And yet through the years of moaning about a trade, a new role, a benching, nothing has really changed with Tobias: There he is, our starting small forward, putting up his shots and relishing his Daddy Touch Time. There's no point in getting mad or looking for a solution at this point; it's our burden, our lot in life to put up with him. And in truth, we deserve it. 

The second quote I think of with Tobias is from Kill Bill Vol. 2, delivered by the titular Bill. He's essentially telling his daughter a bedtime story about how he once shot her mother in the head -- and how Mommy’s probably still pretty sore about it  -- as a parable with an important lesson. That lesson: "Some things, once you do, can never be undone." 

I think of this when I think of Elton Brand & Co's original-sin trade from 2019, which dealt a whole bunch of picks (plus my my sweet, sweet Landry Shamet) for a career-year Tobias. He did not fill a position of need for the Sixers, but represented an alleged surplus of talent to hopefully allow the Sixers to chest-puff their way through the East. Close, but not quite: The Sixers lost in seven to Toronto, and were then forced -- "forced" -- to sign a now-free-agent Tobi to a $180 mil, five-year contract in order to retain his services, while Jimmy Butler started looking up South Beach real estate prices and Al Horford died laughing with his Celtics teammates about getting offered nine figures to pull an inside job. One bad move led to and was compounded by another. Now, a half-decade later, Jimmy and Horf have made a combined 17 conference finals, and we're still paying Tobias Harris $40 million a year to put up decent numbers that are nonetheless most memorably punctuated by clanked threes, post-ups to nowhere and second-round playoff losses. Can't say we don't deserve it. 

It’s arguable that no team in modern NBA history has ever been as stuck with one player as these Sixers have been with Tobias Harris. It's not just that he's playing out the full five years of his absurd contract, it's that he's done so while the Sixers have moved heaven and earth to reshuffle the rest of their team essentially every year he's been here, unloading some seemingly unloadable players and contracts in the process. Daryl Morey got rid of over $110 million worth of Horford and Josh Richardson in one offseason -- one draft night, really. He sent a malcontented, maybe-decomposing Ben Simmons to Brooklyn for James Harden, and then a couple seasons later, sent a malcontented, maybe-decomposing James Harden to Los Angeles for a whole bunch of stuff. P.J. Tucker, Danuel House, Jr., the Unsinkable Furkan Korkmaz... Morey got 'em all off the books. And throughout all of it, Tobias Harris has remained a Sixer, cashing checks and scoring his 15-20 points a night. Saddling themselves with $180 million of Tobias Harris was the one thing the Sixers did that they could never undo. 

And when you think about it... did Tobias ever really even get close to being traded? Despite seemingly being on the trade block for nearly the entire time he was here -- for long enough that Blake Griffin was once a fan-favorite target in a Tobi deal -- he was never really even reported on as part of even a semi-credible trade rumor. Yeah, maybe there were whispers here and there that teams were interested in him -- never the Bostons or Denvers of the league, natch -- but they were never particularly loud, and they were usually shut down soon after they piped up. Rather, Tobias endured on the Sixers for a half-decade like a Survivor contestant, untouchable through his inconspicuousness. If he'd been a little bit worse, maybe Daryl would've felt obligated to get rid of him; if he'd been a little bit better, maybe another team would've come calling after him. As it was, he played just well enough to essentially be stranded here forever. 

Now, he doesn't even have to play that well: The trade deadline has passed, a buyout is not a feasible option, and it would take an Act of God for Tobias to not finish out his contract as a full rotation guy for the Philadelphia 76ers. I actually thought this might result in a production surge for Tobias, that being officially consigned here for the remainder of his near-max deal would be somehow liberating to him as a player. Nope: He's been beyond putrid, averaging under 11 a game on 31% shooting for the last five contests, numbers that belie just how miserable it is to actually watch him play right now. I wondered as he finished off his 5-19 night against the Celtics if we had finally reached his true low point, the unquestioned worst five-game stretch of Tobi's Sixers career. I was reminded it was perhaps not even the worst five-game stretch of the season: From last November to early December, he also averaged under 11 a game on similarly dire shooting numbers. Tough Tobi times.

Is there anything to be done about it? Not particularly. Dan Olinger detailed the other day the many reasons, fair and unfair, why it's unlikely that Tobias will ever be taken out of the Sixers' starting lineup. Tyrese Maxey and Nick Nurse have talked a good game about what they need to do to get him out of his slump, but the problem Tuesday night in Boston was not a lack of opportunities to succeed for Tobias Harris: He bricked wide-open shot after wide-open shot, failed repeatedly in his attempts to post up Derrick White and Jrue Holiday and let crucial rebounds and loose balls get scooped up by the Celtics as he maybe worried about his jersey becoming untucked if he bent down too far. The only person who can really do much to help Tobias at this point is Tobias.

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The good news is that he probably will do that at some point. We've seen this movie before with Tobias: A stretch of absolute helplessness that feels like it will never end will suddenly and most unexpectedly be replaced by a run of peak Daddy Touch Time at the Police Touch Museum. He scored in single digits in back-to-back games in December, he scored 33 the next time out and 20+ the three games after that. He put up a five points, 2-6 FG stinker against the Bulls in January, he went for 30+ the following two games. The swings are getting much wider with Tobias than they used to be -- back in 2021, he scored between 12 and 30 points every night for pretty much the entire season -- but the pendulum always reverses course in due time. Getting this much (and this extreme) Bad Tobias does mean we probably should be getting some proportional Good Tobias in the not-too-distant future. 

And really, the Sixers' situation with Tobias Harris is not quite so dire as it seems today. Unlike Tim's lifelong commitment to Mark, there is a supposed expiration date to our Tobi co-dependency: In July we will have the option of bidding him a fond farewell as he offers his sharp-shooting, book-reading talents to any one of the other 29 NBA teams. By then, half of Joel Embiid's lower body may be missing, Tyrese Maxey may have turned into a rageaholic, and we may mostly be building around Ricky Council IV. But we will be free. Our burden will finally have been lifted. 

In the meantime, we're just gonna have to deal with Tobias Harris showing up good-spiritedly to every birthday dinner and bar outing, getting greeted with a bunch of quizzical Really? This guy AGAIN? expressions from everyone else in the vicinity. And all we'll be able to do is sigh. It's not Tobias' fault really. We put ourselves in this situation. We let him become a major part of our lives. Now he is our cross to bear. And we must carry that weight, and simply hope we don't totally collapse underneath it. 

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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