CAMDEN, N.J. — The Philadelphia 76ers made the big move that had to be made: They traded James Harden to the Los Angeles Clippers.
The Sixers moved Harden, PJ Tucker and Filip Petrusev to the Clippers for the expiring deals of Marcus Morris Sr., Nic Batum, Robert Covington and KJ Martin as well as a haul of draft picks. The Sixers have assets and President of Basketball Operations Daryl Morey now has to make the right decision to put Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey in a position to win a title.
With the additions, Morey can either move those expiring deals paired with a draft pick or two, or he can keep them and wait for their salary to come off the books, giving him a ton of money to use in free agency.
“So I think for cap space people think about it in more of this narrow way,” said Morey. “Ideally, we would actually use that cap space early. That’s generally better because then you both have the front-end flexibility and the back-end to re-sign them flexibility and you see who’s available. In the parlance of how teams talk, we would like to use it early, if we can, and in terms of acquiring the people we might re-sign or bring back early, it gives you more flexibility.”
Flexibility and optionality are the biggest keywords with Morey. He wants to make sure he is in a good position for a future move. The cap space the Sixers can have with these expiring deals gives him the option of either making a trade now or waiting until free agency.
“The nice thing is we do have the back end optionality that if we don’t use it early on players we wanna re-sign or have longer deals, then what we wanna do is go after the best players in free agency which people are too down on,” Morey continued. “It’s not the famous year like 2011 or whatever, but it’s a normal free agency year with quite a few good players that we would be excited about if they became available.”
Of course, Maxey’s play could change what Morey is looking for. Instead of going for a superstar, maybe the Sixers take into account the play and improvement of Maxey and see him as the budding superstar to have next to Embiid. Maybe Philadelphia looks for maybe just a good player that fits rather than a great one.
“It shows the work he (Maxey) put in and Joel has put in,” said Morey. “I think you’ve seen him expand his game as well. That work they put in we’re seeing on the floor and so, yes, absolutely. If Tyrese gets to that All-Star level which he for sure, looks like he has a solid chance to be. I wouldn’t say it changes our calculus of what we need.”
In any case, the play of Maxey gives the Sixers a better shot at winning a title. Morey and the front office then need to push the right buttons around them to give Maxey and Embiid the proper help.
“It changes our odds of winning the title,” Morey explained. “If he becomes that good, now these assets are filling in and could be our third-best player or fourth-best player and we love how these vets all mesh and we think Tobias (Harris) and De’Anthony (Melton) are real anchor guys for us as well.”
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