This Trade Deadline Is Gonna F**king Kill Us All

The trade deadline used to be fun.

[photo: Getty Images]

Andrew Unterberger is a famous writer who invented the nickname 'Sauce Castillo' and is now writing 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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Man, remember when the Trade Deadline used to be fun? You’d wake up like a kid on Hanukkah morning (days 1-4) and check HoopsHype or Woj’s Twitter account (Shams wasn’t born yet) to see what gifts of player-movement were waiting for you. The Sixers were mostly filled with dudes you hoped to be able to dupe another team into investing a future first-rounder or blueish-chip prospect on, and you knew there was nothing we could possibly send out that we couldn’t get back later at a moment’s notice if we were so inclined. Simpler times, as Juliette Lewis would shriek. 

Then in 2017, Bryan Colangelo traded Nerlens Noel for Justin Anderson (say hey to TLC and Wilson’s reanimated corpse for us on your way out of Brooklyn JA!) and a fake first-rounder that doesn’t even call or write anymore, and the trade deadline suddenly became a source of non-stop anxiety. Now, you wake up every morning in a state of panic, trembling as you quickly scan Twitter’s trending topics for a name you recognize. It’s something to be endured, to be survived. And it’s gonna take a fucking miracle for us to get through it this year.

The Sixers are not exactly entering this year’s trade deadline from a position of strength. Most of the team’s once-expendable assets have since been expended, and the team’s grocery list is somehow bigger than the amount of space we actually have in our fridge. Could certainly use another shooter. Really need someone who can serve as a secondary creator in the half-court. An upgrade at the Mike Scott position perhaps (if we’re allowed to talk about such things)? Another backup center to hold down the fort while Joel Embiid is out? Does this store accept future second-rounders and theoretical prospects who can’t find their way out of Delaware?

But the threat of such small-scale additions and subtractions should not be what really wakes up Sixers fans in a Patrick Ewing-like sweat this time of year. It’s traversing our way through a sea of Split Joel and Ben Up at All Costs-type fake rumors and trade proposals that act like one or both of them have a half life of about another month before they destabilize into nuclear decay on the not-WFC bench. It’s NBA Twitter randos suggesting the Sixers care enough about the 2017 Rookie of the Year award to trade Joel Embiid for Malcolm Brogdon. It’s rival NBA execs making faux denials of Ben Simmons being an on-court team fit, as if willing the actual possibility into the world through reverse-psychology. It’s actually employed full-time NBA bloggers and podcasters suggesting that the fourth through sixth best Clippers might be fair value for JoJo. (Yes, this last one actually happened, I had to listen to double check.)

None of this could actually happen, though, right? Trade Machine screenshots on Twitter might make you want to rip your computer apart like Steven Adams with one of Embiid’s radial collateral ligaments, but the Internet’s collective brain-worminess can’t turn it into reality -- and Elton Brand and his supporting cast of front office toughs wouldn’t possibly actually push the button on such a franchise-upending trade halfway through what was supposed to be a title-contending season, no?

Well. I wouldn’t be so dramatic as to suggest that the Tobias Harris trade last year means that nothing is off the table in terms of over-reactive deadline deals. But when talking with some friends last night about what was actually possible for the Sixers at this trade deadline, I realized that trading Embiid would be the only thing that really shocked me at this point. Trading Simmons -- particularly while Embiid is on the shelf and Ben’s serving (productively if not quite spectacularly) as the team’s primary engine in the interim -- would certainly be a surprise, but there’s a universe where I could see it happening. Meanwhile, Harris, Horford, Richardson, Thybulle... all of ‘em could be on the block for the right name in return.

The pressure this team has to win and win big this year is real enough that after the team pulled out the home victory against Brooklyn last night, my primary reaction was relief that no one would have to lose their job today. The team is expensive, the team is much-hyped, and the team is under-performing, at least compared to the rest of the largely overperforming East. The on-court answers aren’t coming quickly enough, so if EB sees a shortcut to take that might be able to get the Sixers back up to snuff a little more quickly, it wouldn’t be surprising to see him take it, no matter the long-term cost. If the team flames out early this year, there might not be a “long-term” for this front office or coaching staff anyway. 

Is there definitely a core problem that even needs fixing, though? The Sixers are sixth in the standings now, which is certainly lower than we’d hoped or expected for this time of the year, and they’re coming off a largely excruciating 4-6 stretch that has even FOTB and general Process bright-sider Jason Lipshutz proclaiming he’s gonna take the Ricky-endorsed attitude of Not Watching the Games for a little while. (To be clear once again: This approach is not cosigned by INPWCATWSR, whose official policy is that you should watch every second of every Sixers game no matter how excruciating or inconvenient.) The team’s road record is a stupefying 7-14, which seems like bad news, considering they’d be slated to play four consecutive road series if the playoffs started today.

I’m not gonna pretend that the team’s road record isn’t a problem, or that I haven’t started losing my mind at every Al Horford ah I really shoulda gotten that one clap after he misses one that he really shoulda gotten, or that I’m even positive that Simmons and Embiid will ever be able to realize their best selves playing alongside one another. But I will say that I do think the team’s current struggles are overblown. It’s a bad stretch, but holy hell, it’s been a tough stretch. The Sixers haven’t played a team out of the playoffs since before the Christmas game against Milwaukee. Embiid’s been out for nearly half of it, and particularly against teams like the Nets and Pacers where he serves as the Sixers’ primary advantage, that’s a very big deal. Losing six straight road games is never OK, but most of these were predictable Ls, and the team has managed to hold serve at home in the meantime. It’s not good, but it’s not catastrophic. 

It’s understandable that you might look at the standings and have your eyes bug out at the Sixers -- the team predicted by many (including our now-on-the-rotation-bubble eighth man) to walk to the Finals in the East -- having five teams ahead of them in the standings. But I maintain that’s more about other teams exceeding regular-season expectations than the Sixers flopping all that hard. If you told me preseason that the Sixers would be 26-16 through 42 I’d mostly think “eh, not wonderful, but fair enough.” Struggles were hardly unanticipatable. But if you told me five other teams would have records better than that, I’d do a cartoonish jaw drop trying to remember what other teams there even are in the Eastern Conference. 

Even being sixth, though, there’s just three games (and less than a point in overall average differential) separating Philly from Miami in second. The Sixers are still a combined 7-5 against the five teams ahead of them. And have you looked at the rest of their schedule? There’s still a couple tough runs -- visiting the two L.A. teams in Staples, a beginning-of-February trek through Boston, Miami and Milwaukee that Brett Brown is probably going to pack for like Al Pacino preparing to get whacked in Donnie Brasco -- but a whole lot of soft corners, including a 14-game end to the season that includes just two matchups against teams currently over .500. There will absolutely be time to make up ground, and while no one’s catching Milwaukee, nobody else has enough distance in front of the Sixers to assume the separation will stick. 

There’s upgrades to be made with this team, for sure, and it’s fair for the front office to look to make them -- for as rough as things have gone for Philly this year, it still might be the best chance they get at coming out of the East in the playoffs, which means that available opportunities are worth seizing if they make sense. But the trade suggestions that see this team upending their fundamental identity by trading one of their two top-20 players for a bunch of nicely complementary dudes who will probably never even make an All-Star team are the ones we need to shield our sanity against -- and that we have to praying that our front office isn’t seriously entertaining just because we’re doing a little worse than expected and everyone else is doing a little better. Here’s hoping for an Extremely Offline next three weeks for Elton & Co.