Are the Sixers Admitting to Joel (And Us) That This Team Just Isn't Gonna Happen?

AU is bothered by the results of the trade deadline, but is more disturbed by some of the larger implications.

So this trade deadline was bad. I was maybe a little less dispirited by or angry about it in the moment than some, if only because I’ve gotten used to it over the previous five years of Daryl Morey trade deadlines —which have included one blockbuster trade for James Harden, and four years of smaller deals that left me some degree of underwhelmed and/or annoyed. Whether through genuine team-building strategy, intractable ownership mandate or just some combination of bad timing and bad luck, the Sixers have long conditioned us to expect the unimpressive at the deadline, that we’ll be sending out a little more and getting back a little less than we’d like. I spent my last remaining shock and outrage about it two years ago when we dealt Jaden Springer to the Celtics for nothing. Losing Jared McCain at this point is a bigger but ultimately shallower hurt.

But if there is something about this trade deadline that I’ve been unable to really shake the past few days, it’s that our inactivity in improving the team this year — and whether or not Daryl really meant this to be the final sum result, our activity to actually worsen it — speaks to something of a larger existential crisis with the Sixers. At previous trade deadlines, there was always some amount of reason to justify punting for another year: Joel’s uncertain health, or a lack of available assets, or the team not really being close enough anyway or whatever. This year, I’m not sure what that excuse is: The team is unusually healthy, they’ve got at least some picks (and apparently young players) to spare and they’re in the middle of the playoff hunt in a wide-open East. So that just leaves one possible reason left to accept a trade deadline where the team sends players out without getting any in return: The front office just doesn’t think this team is good enough to have a real chance to contend this year.

And that may be right. But if that is right... isn’t that a much bigger problem? If things are going so much better than most of us expected this year with this team and it’s still not enough to earn any amount of faith from the powers that be, doesn’t that mean that this version of the Sixers is just never going to be good enough? Was this trade deadline the front office openly admitting that it’s already over with this team?

Plenty of people have pointed out what kind of message a trade deadline like this sends to Joel Embiid, for him to openly call out the team for ducking the tax in so many years past and essentially ask them not to do that this year, and for them to still do it and to give him literally nothing in terms of on-court help in consolation. Some have gotten really upset about it, even wondering if this was going to lead him to ask for a trade in the offseason. And my first instinct was to go All right, let’s settle down, Joel understands the business by now, this wasn’t about him, it’s not like Jared McCain was really doing much this season to begin with, he’s probably not even gonna remember this trade deadline in a couple months anyway. I thought everyone was overreacting.

But the more I think about it, the more I feel like we may even be underreacting. I think Joel kinda should be that mad about it. Because, against all odds, this season has turned into something close to a best-case scenario in terms of his overall performance. The past month, not only is he back to averaging 30 a game on elite shooting numbers and good distribution, not only is he playing in every game that’s not part of a back-to-back, but he’s making the Sixers a legitimately winning team again. It’s been a little obfuscated by the team going 1-4 in their last five games without him, but in their last 17 games with him, they’re 12-5. His defense isn’t what it once was, and his rebounding has felt particularly putrid (though Statman says it’s not as bad as all that), but his stats are hardly empty: In fact, in 20 total games so far this year, Joel has had a positive plus-minus in 18 of them. We couldn’t ask for more than what he’s given us, and we would never have guessed he’d ever be giving this much of it to us again.

And apparently it’s not good enough. Joel has improved his play for the season to All-Star levels, and has been near-MVP-caliber for a month — with his truest superstar co-star yet in Tyrese Maxey, and one of the best supporting casts he’s ever had — and the front office still went eh we’re not seeing it. Joel’s play wasn’t enough, Joel’s health wasn’t enough, Joel going on the record and essentially begging the Sixers not to do what they always do this time of year wasn’t enough. The team saw all that and said “not this year.”

Now, Daryl says that the team was trying to actively upgrade at the deadline, but that “nothing materialized” — and I believe he probably was at least exploring those avenues. He says that he still thinks the team can make a deep run in the East, and maybe he legitimately does. But the sum total of actions can’t help but speak louder than words here, as clearly the team was comfortable dealing McCain (and to a lesser extent Gordon) for picks, knowing that there was at least a pretty good chance we wouldn’t get anything else back but future flexibility. (And say what you will about the whole of McCain’s sophomore season; he was 15 of his last 26 from three and helped us win multiple games in the past two weeks.) Making the team worse at the deadline was certainly not an untenable outcome for this team, because it was the outcome they arrived at. So the logical conclusion to draw from that is that they didn’t believe the team was really that great to begin with.

Like.... Come On

Now, once again: They might not be wrong in reaching that conclusion. Even with as many things have gone right with these Sixers — Joel’s health and return to all-world play being the biggest, but also Maxey’s making the leap, V.J. Edgecombe’s rookie excellence, Dominick Barlow’s scrap-heap revelatoriness, Kelly Oubre Jr.’s and (until recently!) Paul George’s reliability — things have still largely topped out at “uninspiring” with these Sixers. They lose a lot of games they should win. They can’t maintain consistently strong play for 48 minutes — usually not even for 36. They break down late way too often. Their advanced stats and point differential suggest an upper-side-of-middle-of-the-pack team, and the eye test doesn’t suggest much different. If Daryl & Co. saw all that and decided that objectively, it wasn’t the smart play to make any kind of all-in push this year, we certainly can’t say they’d be crazy for thinking that.

But why would next year be any different? The year after? We can’t possibly expect things to go better, or even this well, with Joel and PG again — it’s something of a miracle to get this much out of Jo again for even one season. We don’t have incoming cap space, and while it’s always better to have more picks than fewer, it’s not like the McCain deal landed us some magic asset that we can obviously use as a key to unlock the final piece of the puzzle for this team in the offseason. We have every reason to think that this incarnation of the team is as good right now as it’ll ever be. So to project that it’s not good enough means one of two things: Either the front office is actively planning on being kinda not good enough for the foreseeable future, or they simply don’t plan to keep this version of the team together much longer anyway.

Either way, if you’re Joel Embiid, I imagine it has to sting a little. I don’t want to treat him like a martyr; he’s certainly being paid handsomely regardless, and his record with public-message-sending is hardly without blemish either. We don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes — maybe the team is making him assurances or offering him consolation beyond what’s public, and trying to temper his hurt feelings and earn his continued loyalty that way. Or maybe the team just thinks that’s what the money’s for. But in any event, to make it so clear to Joel and whoever else is paying attention that the team doesn’t believe it’s worth really trying to contend this year, even with him back and playing at such a high level... it really could lead to Joel looking around in the offseason and going you know they’re right, if I actually do want to contend, maybe I should try to do so elsewhere. And I don’t know what Daryl or anyone else would say to him at that point to try to convince him otherwise.

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Andrew Unterberger 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.