Evaluating The Sixers Offseason
It wasn’t super imaginative, but how effective was it?
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At this point, nearly a week into free agency, the Sixers are indisputably a better team than they were last season. While none of their moves have been earth-shattering or even clear home runs from a value standpoint, the Sixers have addressed exactly what they needed to: toughness, versatility, and depth.
My lone critique at this stage would be that it has been a somewhat unimaginative series of moves — Daryl Morey has yet to acquire a single player that he didn’t once acquire as GM of the Houston Rockets — but again, they’ve gotten better, and there could be more dominoes left to fall.
Here in this piece, I’ll run through a few of my key takeaways from the off-season so far, and discuss what I think could or perhaps it should happen from here on out.
Tucker and Melton bring more than just toughness
One of the bigger takeaways from the Miami series was the fact that the Sixers defense was simply not good enough in all facets. They weren’t connected as a team, they weren’t versatile enough, and they simply didn’t have enough physicality and toughness. The additions of P.J. Tucker and De’Anthony Melton will help to clean up those problems in a major way.
But the benefit of adding those two players goes well beyond the fact that they won’t get pushed around. Both of them have a sense of hypervigilance on both ends of the floor, which the Sixers sorely lacked last season. While they didn’t have many defensive players who were obvious physical liabilities, they also didn’t have many, if any players who were adept at flying around and putting out fires on the defensive end; one mistake usually led to another mistake on the back end. Tucker and Melton are both quite good at recognizing rotations that need to be made, and providing a level of connectivity to the defense. It will no longer be solely on Joel Embiid to clean up the mistakes of others, as Melton and Tucker can also make weak side rotations and help clean up a mess.
On both ends, both players go out of their way to simply make winning plays. The Sixers were a team that was allergic to loose balls and was miserable on the glass, and both of these guys should help that out tremendously. It will be nice to see the Sixers no longer getting out-muscled, but it will be even nicer to see them making heady plays and seeming equally or more engaged than the other team from a mentality standpoint.
Let’s not overreact to Danuel House
I am not going to crush Daryl Morey for signing Danuel House, but I do think that this was a somewhat poor use of resources and that House is more of a theoretically useful role player than an actually useful one.
Simply put, I view House as a ninth man. He was floating around on 10-days for most of last season, and has not looked like a top-seven player on a winning team for the past few years. I would consider him to be perhaps a hair worse than James Ennis was when he was a Sixer.
It’s unclear what the available alternatives were, but I would’ve rather had Andre Drummond back at that price, and hoped to add a serviceable wing elsewhere. Juan Tuscano-Anderson also would’ve been a more intriguing addition to me. Donte DiVincenzo would’ve been a better addition in my mind, as well.
House is a mistake prone player on both ends, can play a little bit out of control, and is a serviceable but not great one on one defender. I wouldn’t feel all that comfortable whatsoever sticking House on Jayson Tatum for five minutes in a playoff series, for example.
Again, he is playable. He’s likely a better playoff player than Matisse Thybulle. I just find myself somewhat less than enamored at the idea of using the biannual exception on a player who was on the fringes of the league for most of last season.
Simply put, good teams don’t sign a Danuel House for value in free agency. They find him from nowhere, develop him, and let him go as they immediately find another replacement. The Warriors did this with Alfonzo McKinnie and Toscano-Anderson. The Heat did it with Derrick Jones Jr. These players tend to follow the same lifecycle: a smart team finds them from nowhere, makes them look good, and a dumb team overpays them in free agency well the good team has already found another replacement. Somehow, in this case, Morey is both the smart and the dumb team.
Perhaps I’m being too harsh, and if Morey hadn’t acquired House in Houston, I may not be as critical. After all, these contracts almost never come back to bite you because they can so easily be used in a trade — it’s not hard to imagine him, Jaden Springer, and a second round pic being flipped for something at the deadline — but after seeing this contract, the length of the Tucker contract, and the incessant Eric Gordon rumors, one wonders why Morey continues to give up a premium simply to acquire his former players, and why the Sixers haven’t been able to develop a Danuel House of their own in the past couple years.
While their off-season has been totally fine, it has not been the least bit creative. Virtually every member of Sixers Twitter proposed some iteration of the Melton trade, every discussion heading into the off-season was about how they need someone like PJ Tucker, and Danuel House was one of the first names that many mentioned once it became clear that they would have the biannual exception available. While playing it straight has served him well, one wonders if Morey has a slightly more creative trick up his sleeve before the off-season is over.
So, what’s left?
Having addressed the most obvious needs, there are still one or two areas where the Sixers could use some help. I personally would be comfortable turning the back up center minutes over to Paul Reed or Charles Bassey, but signing a veteran for the minimum wouldn’t hurt.
The other dimension that the Sixers could surely use is a shooter who provides some degree of off ball movement and chaos. While the Danny Green trade had to be made, he was the lone player in last year‘s rotation who was actively maneuvering off the ball and would make defenses chase him around. On this year‘s roster, not only do the Sixers lack quick trigger shooters, they also lack anyone who makes a habit of any sort of off ball cutting; they have an awful lot of players whose comfort zone off the ball is standing still in the corner.
I’m not ready to write off the possibility that Furkan Korkmaz could be that player; he was horrendous last year, but if he’s the player he was in the two seasons prior, he certainly cracks the rotation here. An Eric Gordon trade would be interesting, but seems highly difficult from a logistics perspective. On the lower end, bringing Wayne Ellington in on a minimum would be a worthwhile add. If the Sixers can swing a Reggie Bullock trade, he provides some of that dimension as well.
If the Sixers do trade for Bullock, that of course would have to involve Matisse Thybulle. If they are able to get a player of that quality in exchange, I would not at all mind trading Thybulle, but if not, part of me wonders if trading him is the wrong decision from a value standpoint. With his value as low as perhaps it’s ever been, maybe the right decision would be to sign him to a reasonable extension (perhaps 3 years, $20 million), let him look good to start the regular season, and then flip him for the deadline. If he’s signed to a reasonable contract, and starts the season well, his value will be well beyond what it is now. Matisse left a horrible taste in my mouth with his performance in the playoffs, and I’ve never been a big believer in him, but I do think that bringing him back and signing into an extension would be the best way to get value out of him at this stage.
The only other domino that could potentially fall (aside from Kevin Durant, which is almost definitely not happening) is a Tobias Harris trade. While I’ve been as big of a Tobias hater as anyone in the Sixers Twittersphere, I just don’t see how you’re able to recoup anything that makes trading him worthwhile this off-season. If they could swing a deal for Harrison Barnes and Richaun Holmes, I’d do it in a heartbeat, but I struggle to see that being on the table. While I’d love to have someone who fits more of a 3-and-D mold in Tobias‘s place, I do think that there’s a lot to be said for simply being skilled in terms of the value it brings to a playoff series. Tobias, unlike your basic three and D player, is not someone who you can hide a miserable defender on. He can post up a 6-2 player if he needs to, and he can beat a close-out if the situation calls for it. I would no longer be simply looking to move him for nothing, as I may have been at times last season— he proved to me in last year‘s playoffs that he can be a net positive on a team looking to make a deep playoff run.
If Morey can swing a home run deal for Harris, Thybulle, or Korkmaz, I would be all for it. But if this is all there is to the off-season, I would be fine with extending Thybulle and going into the season with this as the roster. This is a team with a ton of shot creation, a high-quality defense, and no obvious weaknesses. Perhaps chances will open up to trade those three players during the regular season, but for now, I struggle to see that being on the horizon.