Daryl Morey was brought in to be the President of Basketball Operations for the Philadelphia 76ers to try and turn this team around following a tough 2019-20 season. However, no one man can do it by himself. He has to have good staff around him in order to succeed.
Morey walked into a situation in Philadelphia where they needed to fix a lot of issues. They had to move off of Al Horford’s contract, they had to bring in some shooters to space the floor for Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid to operate, and they needed flexibility.
They achieved those goals on draft night on Wednesday.
“Extremely happy,” said Morey. “It’s important that the guys fit and the guys are here for multiple years. We’re big on developing and building through the draft. We have two young superstars in their prime and we want to put around them guys they can build with.”
Morey had some help from general manager Elton Brand as well as the other new additions to the front office, Peter Dinwiddie and Prosper Karangwa. It has been a wild offseason for the team so far with a front office overhaul in an abbreviated offseason. They all came together fairly quickly so they can make the moves they had to make in this 2020 draft to improve the team and they came away with great fits in Tyrese Maxey, Isaiah Joe, and Paul Reed along with the two big trades.
“I think it was great synergy,” Morey added. “Elton Brand and his team of Peter and Prosper [who] just joined, it was such a great team effort. Obviously, tons of prep goes into this to be ready for any scenario that comes up. We’re excited about the picks and the fit with the roster. You can’t say enough about Tyrese, Isaiah, and Paul. We’re thrilled with their selections.”
Morey was successful during his time with the Houston Rockets due to the fact that he had a good staff around him. He used those other guys in the building and he delegated responsibilities to them in order to keep them engaged.
Now, there are more Rockets executives around the league taking on bigger roles and Morey wants to do the same in Philadelphia.
“That’s a big priority for me,” he explained. “I think you see why there’s now five or six account executives from Houston on other teams, it’s because I push a lot of responsibility on them. If you got a good team, it’s really important to use them, make them excited and engaged. A big part of Elton and I working together and why he was excited for me to join is so I can learn from him and hopefully, he picks up some stuff from me. My goal will be in not too many years is there is a ton of 76ers executives around the league and I think it can really happen.”
The big thing Morey emphasized after the draft was that he did not want to come in and pretend that he knew all of the answers. He wasn’t in Philadelphia and he did not watch their games every night. Obviously, he was focused more on the Rockets and he referred more to Brand and the rest of the staff.
“One big thing that was important to me was to not come in and think I know,” he stated. “Honestly, if you watch a roster every day, every game, which I didn’t and Elton did, and Vince Rozman did along with their team, I listened a lot when I got here. I tried to just overlay some of the approach and technique, but if I came in and said ‘I have the answer’.”
The fact that a guy who has had the success that Morey has had can come in here and realize that he does not know this roster and willingly admit that is something that the team can build with. That shows leadership and it shows that he trusts his staff. This is a good start to the Morey era in Philadelphia. [lawrence-related id=39264,39261,39258]