Just. Get. Nerlens.
Just. Get. Nerlens.
Andrew Unterberger is a famous writer who invented the nickname 'Sauce Castillo' and writes 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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In my mind, just about everything that's gone wrong with the Sixers over the last six years can be traced back to Feb. 23, 2017. By that year's trade deadline, the Sixers were already basically done for the season: Joel Embiid had torn his meniscus, and though the team was still scrapping together some wins, they were out of the playoff hunt and not necessarily looking to win more games than they had to. Thus they were more sellers than buyers at the deadline, which was fine; jettisoning Ersan Ilyasova for an extra second-rounder felt like the natural course of action at that point. Fine by me, with one exception: I demanded in no uncertain terms that the team not trade Nerlens Noel.
At the time, Nerlens was a still-promising-enough fourth-year player with the misfortune of being 1/4 of the Sixers' then-glut at center, obviously behind Embiid, though arguably still ahead of a third-year Jahlil Okafor and second-year Richaun Holmes. The Sixers had been trying to trade Okafor for months, but with no obvious trade fit in sight (because he sucked and nobody wanted him), there was some thought that the Colangelos-led Sixers might instead deal Noel, in part to not have to worry about what to do with him after his rookie contract expired in the off-season. The mere notion incensed me: "A needless Nerlens trade could be the most damaging thing to process-trust since we drafted Jah in the first place," I wrote for The 700 Level in my trade deadline primer, succinctly titled "Just Don't Trade Nerlens."
They traded Nerlens. What's more, they traded him for real close to nothing: an expiring-in-multiple ways Andrew Bogut, an already-busted Justin Anderson, and a top-18-protected 2017 pick that the Sixers would've had to go something like 37-1 to finish the season to have any chance of conveying. It was a beyond-paltry return for the first true prospect of the Process Era, one who was having a pretty dope season to that point and one who seemed to still have considerable untapped upside at the time. I've still never been angrier as a Sixers fan; the trade was not only bad, it was insulting, trying to trumpet the acquisition of a first-round pick that never actually existed to cover up just how bad the Colangelos got hosed in the deal. I immediately emailed Spike and Mike insisting the Ricky needed "Nerlens was traded for a fake first-rounder" type T-shirts at the next live event so it could become a permanent, never-forgotten part of Process lore. (They obliged.)
I recount all this, of course, to say that this week, Daryl Morey has the rare opportunity to go Dr. Samuel Beckett and put right what once went wrong here with Nerlens. And him doing so is the absolutely only thing I care about at this trade deadline.
The Sixers, as you might have heard, are in need of a backup center. Doc Rivers appears to have finally lost trust in Montrezl Harrell -- only took him stinking for about a month straight -- but the chances of Paul Reed filling that hole in the rotation and in Doc's heart are minimal; Reed's too erratic and not vet-y enough for Doc to ever rely on him at length. Nerlens isn't particularly vet-y either (in ways both good and bad), but he's older, more established, and less weird than BBall. More importantly, he's available: the super-rebuilding Pistons have no real use for a 28-year-old center (who's only their third-stringer to begin with), and if no one ends up trading for him by the deadline, Detroit might just buy him out anyway. If we want the man we once called The Eraser back in Philly, we should have multiple ways of retrieving him at our disposal.
Is he still any good? I have no idea, honestly. I thought he looked solid enough in New York a couple years ago when he was called on to replace an injured Mitchell Robinson in the starting lineup, and he was decently productive when he played against us in that home-and-home about a month ago. But I can't say I've followed him all that closely, and the numbers the last two seasons are not super-encouraging: his scoring and shooting efficiency has dropped drastically, to the point where he's shooting below 43% from the field for Detroit this season. And efficiency, along with the steal/block numbers, has kinda always been Noel's calling card, the thing that excused his lack of offensive versatility or defensive consistency. Without that... well, I guess that's how you end up out of the rotation for one of the worst teams in the NBA.
I do not care. He could be more washed than my mismatched socks on laundry day; get him in the building and we will figure it out. Get him running pick-and-roll and skying for lobs with James Harden and Tyrese Maxey on offense, get him at least competing for rebounds and attempting to protect the rim on defense, get him yukking it up and telling Okafor and Sauce Castillo jokes with old buddy Joel Embiid on the sidelines. I don't know if he can do much more than all of that -- I don't even know if he can do all of that -- but he can probably still do at least some of it, and that's more than either what Harrell is currently giving us or what production Doc will trust BBall to provide. Hell, he's still 14th on SixersAdam's trade deadline target rankings; that basically makes him the Crackers of currently available deadline targets.
And it's just time to close the loop on this one. I can't even remember the last time we had a two-time Sixer -- was it Ilyasova after we picked him back up post-Hawks buyout following the 2018 trade deadline? That's way too long at this point, and Nerlens is the perfect player to break the streak. He can unite the Process eras, as someone who played with both Henry Sims and Embiid, and he can help Sixers fans reconnect with a time when we could watch a team that would be lucky to rack up 33 wins across two seasons and still be relatively happy to do so. Most critically, he can be a Sixer again, after being shipped away in one of the most unnecessary, unacceptable deals in recent trade deadline history. It's time. It's been time.
So c'mon Daryl. Do what you gotta do this week to make it happen. Get our karma right for the first time in six years. I know we don't have any real first-round picks to trade at this point, but I'm sure you can find a fake one back there somewhere. Let's bring our guy home.