The Sixers Have Stuff to Trade Now
If the price went up, the Sixers might still be able to pay it.
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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On January 6th, Tyrese Maxey was still having a largely unremarkable debut season. He'd played eight games, averaging about 15 minutes a night, putting up six points per game on 43% shooting from the field, to go with 1.5 rebounds and 1.5 assists a contest. No one would have considered his play disappointing, but as with most rooks from good pedigree, there were moments of promise and moments of frustration, and we just hoped that with time we'd get a little more of the former and a little less of the latter over the course of the campaign. It looked like he was well on his way to having a perfectly ordinary rookie year for a late-first round pick.
A week later, Maxey may have been the dealbreaker in a possible Sixers trade for James Harden.
Of course, we'll never know for sure exactly what role Maxey's presence played in the negotiations. Maybe it was more about a surfeit of first-round picks that Daryl Morey proved unwilling to part with, or about Houston's demand of sophomore defensive ace Matisse Thybulle, or about Rockets owner TIllman Fretita putting his hand on the receiver while he cackled with his H-town cronies about his plans to keep demanding more and more shit from Morey until his former GM just snapped and hung up. Maybe it was Morey being tempted into riding out the Sixers' promising start to the season, with the team's opening night first five still yet to lose in the seven games they'd taken the court together. Maybe it was a little bit of all of it.
But in that week in between his middlest-case scenario start to the season and his late-game inclusion in Harden talks, Tyrese Maxey simply made himself a lot more interesting as a trade target. Of course the biggest part of that was his 39-point eruption against the Nuggets with half the usual roster in the doctor's office, a coming-out party that matched volume with efficiency (18-33 FG, six assists to two turnovers) and introduced our rookie to the NBA world at large. And although that one-game lavafest was of course a fluke, his surrounding performances confirmed that it wasn't a mirage: In the three other games he played in that week, Maxey averaged 16 points a contest on 48% shooting, with 14 total assists and just three turnovers. The dude was legit as a young, cheap stud -- and he wasn't alone on the Sixers' roster in that respect, a fact that changes everything about their current trade prospects.
Shake Milton hasn't had one game as explosive as Maxey's 39-pointer this year -- he already had his last year, natch -- but the 24-year-old junior's been gradually heating up over the course of the season, and his last two games have just been scorching: 31- and 28-point affairs that helped the Sixers pull away from Miami early and keep pace with Memphis late, respectively. Now Shake's numbers are way up for the year -- 17 points and four dimes a game, both easily career highs -- and what's more, they seem to be underselling just how good he's been, since his three-point shooting is still down 10% from last year. He's scoring with newfound strength and versatility, getting to the line at twice the rate he did last year, and his defense is easily far the stoutest it's ever been. And oh yeah, he's still on his Hinkie Special rookie deal, paying him barely $5 million total across this season and the next two.
And don't forget about Seth Curry, who before Maxey and Milton started shooting laser beams out of their foreheads like a couple of Dr. Evil sharks, was easily the hottest shooter on the planet. His current True Shooting mark of 79.6% is not only tops in the NBA this season, it would be six points higher than the all-time record, set last year by Knicks center Mitchell Robinson. That'll certainly go down, particularly as Curry re-finds his form after his extended absence and recovery from his positive COVID-19 diagnosis. But even besides his insane shooting, Seth was playing the best ball of his career, averaging 20 points and four assists per 36 minutes, serving as an acceptable secondary ball-handler and never forcing shots for the Sixers, and actually playing some pretty solid defense. At under $8 mil this year with two more to go basically at the same rate, production on anywhere close to this level from the 30-year-old is an absolute steal, and would be coveted by all 29 other teams.
Speaking of steals, there's also still Matisse, who's lost a little bit of his luster with a rough start to his sophomore campaign, but still has the kind of otherworldly defensive potential that countless GMs would find ways to talk themselves into. And on that flipside there's also now Isaiah Joe, the Sixers' second-round pickup last draft who has shown himself in pandemic-necessitated minutes to be a shooter from range of highly advanced proficiency, if not a whole lot else just yet. Put Joe's and Thybulle's production together into one prospect and you'd have one of the best trade assets in the entire league, but even separately, they still have obvious (if not overwhelming) value as pieces. If the Sixers do want to cook up a big trade this year -- and they should -- there's just a ton of cool pantry shit they can throw in the recipe now.
This is all important, because the Houston experience may prove illustrative of a frustrating reality when it comes to Ben Simmons' trade value. The Rockets ultimately decided they'd rather take their chances with Victor Oladipo and a generation's worth of draft picks than a relatively known All-Star commodity like Simmons, who's still just 24 and made third-team All-NBA season. This suggests that he might not be the sort of player a restarting-from-scratch team would want as their first core piece, which could make Simmons' presence something of an awkward fit in any future superstar deal, given his contract, rep, and uh, player specifications. But at the same time, when you have a 24-year-old perennial All-Star who's never missed the playoffs on a long-term contract, it's hard to justify dealing him simply for more complementary parts, either. It could be tough to find a fair return for Ben on the trade market.
So maybe instead of trading Simmons for the superstar that puts the Sixers over the top, they trade some other stuff -- valuable stuff, stuff that other teams actually want -- for a not-quite-capital-S star whose presence at least allows Simmons to slide into more of a complementary Draymond Green role on this team, focusing on what he's already good at. Build it with the expiring deals of Danny Green and/or Mike Scott and whatever future picks we can spare from now until 2025, and the Sixers have the pieces to make a competitive offer for Zach LaVine or CJ McCollum if the Bulls' or Blazers' season collapses. Hell, attach enough first-rounders and maybe you can even get in the bidding for Bradley Beal should he become available, even without Simmons. The Nets just traded for one of the best offensive players in NBA history with Caris LeVert as their best outgoing player asset; ask 30 GMs around the league if they'd rather have LeVert at his age, contract and injury history (even before this most recent discovery) or Shake at age 24 making pennies annually, I dunno if even 15 of 'em would answer LeVert.
It's probably cold comfort for those who were pushing hard for a Harden trade -- by the end, I was basically one of 'em -- but it is a sign of something arguably as important as any individual star acquisition: That we have the right people (at least the most important right person) in charge making decisions. Last summer, it seemed like the Sixers' cupboard was almost entirely empty, and that the team needed to bundle all of its remaining scraps together if it wanted any chance of landing the kind of veteran help that would give the team even a very small championship window. Now, thanks to Daryl Morey's drafting and maneuvering (and an excellently timed breakout campaign from Shake), we have not only our best guard rotation in forever, but a real chance to level up appropriately there if the right opportunity arises.
And the right opportunity will almost certainly come around again. SixersAdam looked at a handful of them last week, and those are just the ones that seem plausible now -- every year in the NBA, there are trade targets that seem unobtainable right until the moment where they suddenly ask out. There'll be other deals, hopefully with teams that aren't the one that our GM just kinda left holding the bag while he fake-took-time-off and joined with a more desirable organization almost immediately. And until then, we can enjoy being in the extremely rare and enviable position of having multiple guards on the roster who can dribble and/or shoot -- feels like we've waited a decade just to get one -- and enough of a glut that we could even deal one and not lose 100% of our handling or shooting guard capabilities (or our trade prospects) with them.