Yeah OK Trades Are Cool But C'mon
Not everyone was super psyched!
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.Â
Andrew's writing is brought to you by Kinetic Skateboarding! Not only the Ricky's approved skate shop, but the best place to get Chucks, Vans, any apparel. Use code "DAVESILVER" for 9.1% off your order.
The Philadelphia 76ers, led by Daryl Morey in his first offseason at the helm, did not trade for Chris Paul this week. Nor did they trade for Jrue Holiday, Dennis Schröder or our cherished Lord Robert Covington. Last night — draft night, you may have heard — Morey and the Sixers did not trade up in the draft, nor did they trade back. They did not add any extra picks, in this year or in the future. If James Harden is still coming to Philly by week’s end, they’re doing a pretty good job of keeping it from Woj.
So what did Morey actually do in his first big night as the Sixers’ master of ceremonies? He traded two starters for two players who aren’t as good, and he gave up prospects and draft picks to facilitate both deals.
Hooray? If you were watching or participating in Sixers Twitter last night, then yes, hooray — Morey’s opening moves were received about as rapturously as season one of The Queen’s Gambit, as fans welcomed the turning of the corner on last year’s team and saluted our new fearless leadership. Allegiances were pledged. Parade routes were planned. Celtics fans were taunted. It was as friggin’ pumped as you’ll ever see a fanbase over their team spending significant draft equity for the purpose of getting less talented.
Don’t worry, I’m not actually cracking my knuckles on becoming the Marcus Hayes or Albert Burneko for our new GM’s early tenure. Morey clearly had a plan for this week — streamline the Sixers’ bloat around their stars without giving up their most promising young players — and he executed it. It was a logical tack to take with this team. And while I have no clue if the guys he drafted are any good — I’ve only done the minimum of digging with Tyrese Maxey, Isaiah Joe and Paul Reed; even if I’d put in SixersAdam/MOC-level work I wouldn’t know what the fuck I was talking about — non-Sixers folks around the league seem decently impressed. Not mad at any of that, certainly. Having a smart GM is good times.
But like. These trades… are really not exciting at all? They’re only minimally stomach-churning, and I’m glad they’re not significantly worse, as they may have been under previous administrations. But giving up a high second-rounder and a lightly protected 2025 first — as well as our great theoretical point guard Vasilije Micic, who knows — just to dump Al Horford on Oklahoma City for Danny Green (fine but at least partially washed) and Terrance Ferguson (fine but still raw and possibly despicable IRL)… eh. Greater roster balance and fewer Horf Claps, cool, but that’s a pretty steep price to pay just for undoing a previous administration’s mistake. (Kudos to Daryl though for making the first big pick he deals one that’ll be due just after his five-year contract expires, though.)
Same with sending Josh Richardson and another high second-round pick for Seth Curry. I like Curry, and he’s on a good contract, but he’s a one-way player who’s never stuck as a starter. Curry’s stellar shooting makes him a pretty good fit for these Sixers, but it’s still tough for me to wrap my ahead around needing to staple additional assets to J-Rich — a valuable player, and one who just last year was considered an acceptable consolation prize for losing out on Jimmy Butler — in order to land a 30-year-old bench gunner.
Is it Daryl’s fault that the team he inherited was lumpy enough that smoothing it out came at considerable cost? Certainly not. But it says way more about that team (and how miscast all of its supporting players were) than about his own brilliance that fans greeted him dealing Horford and J-Rich at extra cost for sub-optimal return like he was pulling off Pickswap 2020-level swindles. They didn’t exactly show their rightest stuff here, but believe it or not, Al Horford and Josh Richardson are still pretty good — if often frustrating and (in the case of Horf) now past their prime and massively overpaid. To have to pay extra to replace them with more limited players is a probably necessary evil, but it’s not exactly cause for Mardi Gras. It’s just shit we have to do.
Of course, Morey’s earned the benefit of the doubt for both knowing what he’s doing, and for building with a larger plan in mind. And that latter point is really the best argument for these moves — as the early steps in building a future team identity, as the prelude to bigger work still to come, as the thing that sets up the thing. That could mean better positioning the team for a James Harden or even Zach LaVine megadeal, or it could mean setting up a Tobias Harris trade that actually gives the team real financial flexibility post-Horf/J-Rich, or it could just mean going all in on a new sort of team structure that better takes advantage of the players they currently have. We’ll see, and finding out more about that part is something I am legitimately excited about.
This part? I’m excited for y’all, I guess. Clearly the animosity towards last year’s team was great enough that the mere act of chopping off its head — even with a goddamn pricey blade — to ensure that it wouldn’t be back next year was reason enough to celebrate for most. I wasn’t quite there, but I’m usually Team Chill with this stuff; I’d already convinced myself that a Horford who only played 24 minutes a night and a J-Rich stationed more regularly as a spot-up threat could be more effective for the team next year. Even if not, I find it hard to believe that the team right now is straight-up better without them. J-Rich’s defensive tenacity was key to this team at its most locked in, and while Horf was wildly overpriced as an Embiid backup, I don’t exactly look forward to finding out how we fill those minutes (and games, when Jo inevitably misses a stretch or two of the season) now without him.
The trades weren’t bad. I can see how they put us in a better position to make the moves the team really needs. Seth Curry could turn out to be a real nice pickup. Daryl Morey is and will be, in all likelihood, a very very good Sixers GM. But getting caught up in the rapture this early over a couple deals that don’t actually make the team much better in the short term and sacrifice some decent-sized assets long-term… it feels a little sweaty, even by our standards. We’ve earned a little over-exuberance after the season we’ve had, perhaps, and we do now have reason to hope that more legitimate occasions for elation are just around the corner. But now, after a night of peak-Process strutting and revelry, let’s maybe slow it down a little with the declarations of victory. The much harder, much more important part of building this team back up to title-contention caliber is still very much to come.