Evaluating Daryl Morey's Time as Sixers GM and Previewing His Legacy-Defining Off-Season

MOC looks at Morey's four years in Philly and explains why it's now or never for our Team President this summer.

You might think otherwise based on the way I often talk about him, but I actually really like Daryl Morey. He often says and does things that drive me completely insane, but he’s smart, forward-thinking, and takes his job seriously without taking himself so seriously. I very much respect his intelligence and approach to his job, despite my many philosophical disagreements with him.

Still, while it can be hard to properly evaluate and contextualize his time here, it's hard to feel better than lukewarm about it. In a word, I would summarize it as underwhelming. When he was first hired back in 2020, Morey was a consensus top-five executive in the league, and you would be hard-pressed to make the case that the Sixers have been one of the five best-run front offices in basketball over the past four years. In the three years prior to Morey’s hire, the Sixers had an average regular season win percentage of 61.5, and had two second round exits and a first round exit. In the four years since his hire, they’ve had an average regular season win percentage of 63.4, and they’ve had three second round exits and one first round exit.

But narratives can change quickly in this league. The Sixers are entering an off-season with more flexibility than just about any other team in the league, and Morey has basically had an entire year to prepare for it, with much of last season spent setting up the surfeit of cap space and draft picks that the Sixers now have to operate with. The Sixers could very well come out of this off-season being universally considered as an inner-circle title contender, and Morey will be widely praised and validated for his approach both this summer and the full year leading up to it.

But of course, it could go the complete opposite way. The Sixers could strike out on their big name targets, fail to assemble a championship-level supporting cast with their backup plans, and Morey will be excoriated by fans and media. There is a lot riding on this off-season for Morey, and whatever the outcome is will likely color the perception of everything that preceded it. So, before that all happens, I’d like to do a thorough evaluation of Morey’s four years here, and break down what the bar for success should really be for this off-season.

Any positive evaluation of Morey would have to start with an admission of how unbelievably fucked the Sixers seemed to be at the moment that he took the job in October of 2020. They had two absolute albatross long-term contracts on the books from the previous summer (Al Horford and Tobias Harris) and one of the worst-fitting rosters in the league, which was built around two young stars (Embiid and Simmons) who had already started to sour as a duo. 

For Morey to flip Horford and Richardson into Danny Green and Seth Curry while only giving up one protected first round pick was an absolute home run; he acquired two absolutely perfect fits while also shedding long-term salary. Morey also drafted a future star in Tyrese Maxey, and eventual rotation guys in Isaiah Joe, and Paul Reed, and acquired cheap, playable backup big men in Dwight Howard and Tony Bradley. 

The 2020 off-season was undoubtedly Morey’s best with the Sixers, and he deserves a ton of credit for it. Here’s my lone critique of it, which is perhaps the biggest critique to be made of Morey’s time as a whole: even his very best moves felt like they were born out of common sense. Tons of people – including myself – suggested the Seth Curry for Richardson swap before it happened. It was one of the most commonly discussed fake trades on Sixers Twitter before Morey was even hired. 

Is The LeBron Sixers Window Reopened? Do Sixers Owners Feel Shame?

Maxey falling into the Sixers’ lap – which basically saved the franchise – was pure luck, and selecting him there was a no-brainer. I, along with countless others, had Maxey as the No. 1 option for that pick. Isaiah Joe was also not only a hot consensus choice for that pick, but more importantly, the rumor swirling around at the time was that the Sixers gave Joe a promise prior to even hiring Morey. Getting Paul Reed with the 58th pick was an excellent outcome, but outside of that, it’s hard to exactly call that draft a stroke of genius on Morey’s part.

All in all, though, Morey nailed the 2020 off-season (in one night!), and he was rightfully lauded by Sixers fans because of it. Looking back at it now, though, it just feels like he did things that any good GM would do – nothing about it strikes me as him having tremendous foresight or creativity. And that trend keeps coming up again and again in evaluating his time here. 

The next big development for Morey and the Sixers was the aggressive push they made to trade for James Harden in January of 2021, before ultimately being denied by his former team. I’ll give him a ton of credit for going for that – the Sixers were off to a great start to that season, and a lot of GMs in that position would not have wanted to go for such a big swing immediately after taking the job. Had the Sixers pulled off that deal, they would have gotten the last truly great James Harden season. Obviously, I’m not the biggest Harden fan nowadays, but getting rid of Simmons at the peak of his value would have been an excellent move, and Morey deserves credit for having the balls to try to do it. I have very little doubt that they would have beaten the Hawks with Harden instead of Simmons. 

Morey also reportedly made a big push for Kyle Lowry at the trade deadline, but the Raptors were supposedly insistent on Tyrese Maxey being in the deal. He deserves credit for not biting on that. The backup plan, though, was awful – trading three seconds for George Hill was a disaster. Hill did not play for an entire month after the trade due to a hand injury, and then was not a difference maker whatsoever in the playoffs; by the end of the Hawks series, rookie Maxey was proving to be a more valuable player.

I Feel Nothing About JJ Redick

Next came the 2021 off-season, which was frustratingly inactive and unimaginative. Landing Georges Niang and Andre Drummond for cheap was good value, as was re-signing Danny Green to a two-year deal (especially with the second year being non-guaranteed). I won’t criticize them for taking Jaden Springer with the 28th pick, though I do think it would have made a ton of sense to trade that pick if there were any takers. 

The real problem with that off-season was not what they did, but what they didn’t do. It was obvious that the Sixers were likely to have an enormous size and athleticism deficit on the wing after Simmons demanded a trade, and they did absolutely nothing to address that. When they eventually did make the Simmons trade to acquire Harden – something that wasn’t as much of a home run as he got credit for at the time, given how injured Harden was – the team, while extremely talented, had no prayer whatsoever of competing for a championship, because their wing rotation was so unbelievably bad. 

And here’s where I have to pick a bone with a Morey-ism that drives me up a wall. Morey loves to say (paraphrasing), “Don’t get too caught up in what the roster is during the off-season. What really matters is the roster at the end of the season!”

First off, buddy – you can’t keep saying that when three of your four trade deadlines here have resulted in George Hill, Jalen McDaniels, and Buddy Hield. But more importantly, there is enormous value in having the core pieces of your team in place at the beginning of the season. Getting to see that iteration of the roster while still having time to spare to improve the team is massively valuable. 

When they acquired Harden, it immediately became clear that the team had a crippling lack of rebounding, wing depth, and playable backup bigs, which you could have potentially addressed if the deal was done with time to spare before the deadline. I’m not saying that he necessarily should or even could have gotten that deal done earlier, but I do think that he needs a much greater appreciation for not having to shapeshift the team at the trade deadline.

Three Potential Targets for the Sixers' Second-Round Draft Pick

Last thing on the 2022 trade deadline: Not trading Matisse Thybulle – who had real value at the time, and hilariously made an All-Defense team that year – for some form of veteran wing help stands out to me as a big mistake. Morey repeatedly overvalued Thybulle during his time here, and eventually wound up trading him for next to nothing in 2023. 

The 2022 off-season was without a doubt a respectable job by Morey. He got Harden back on a team-friendly deal, and he acquired two top-six rotation players (P.J. Tucker and De’Anthony Melton) using only the mid-level exception and a late first round pick. They also added Danuel House Jr. for the bi-annual exception. 

That being said – and keeping up with the theme I mentioned earlier – boy, did these feel like common-sense, unimaginative moves. I suggested a Melton trade similar to the one they ended up doing during that off-season, as did several other Sixers Twitter folks. P.J. Tucker was mentioned by name by Joel Embiid immediately after the season ended as someone he would like them to add, and of course is a former Rocket. House, another former Rocket, was floating around on 10-days in 2022 before the Sixers signed him to a 2-year deal. Oh, and of course, the Sixers were fined two second round picks for their tampering when acquiring Tucker and House. 

Again, none of these were bad moves, but they didn’t exactly feel like outside-the-box thinking. Really, the entirety of Morey’s tenure has a whiff of Colangelo energy to it – a failure to work the margins, an obsession with taking home-run swings rather than stringing together singles, and a bizarrely repetitive reliance on past relationships. Indeed, Morey has acquired eight (!) players in his four years with the Sixers that he once acquired while running the Houston Rockets. The first head coach that he hired (Nick Nurse) was someone he once hired to be the head coach of the Rockets’ G-League team. The Sixers’ CEO is Tad Brown, who was the Rockets’ CEO during Morey’s time there. Many of those acquisitions and hires have worked out quite well, but still, there’s a certain Bryan Colangelo Relationships Guy vibe to it.

Before the 2023 season, the Sixers signed Montrezl Harrell (relationships!), and waived Isaiah Joe and Charles Bassey. That series of moves was one of the worst “on the margins” decisions that Morey has made in his time here – the inability to see that Harrell was washed, and the misevaluation of Joe was just unacceptable. It’s the type of mistake that you just don’t see the best-run teams in the league make.

The 2022-23 season featured only one trade: Thybulle and a second round pick for Jalen McDaniels and two second-round picks. It was an acceptable trade that was done primarily for financial purposes, even if it did signify a disappointing end to the Thybulle era. 

The 2023 off-season was defined by one single development – the Harden saga. While we don’t know exactly what happened, we know that Morey committed some sort of unplanned error in communication that sent the Harden situation into chaos. I’m not going to crush him for the actual result of the Harden trade – he did better than I thought they would do – but I will once again criticize him for being at the helm of an organization that somehow always finds itself entrenched in chaos and controversy. 

It’s also important to note that Morey (and by extension, the Sixers) did not make it out of the situation completely unscathed; the Harden situation did some unquantifiable amount of damage to his reputation and level of trust around the league, and there is absolutely a chance that it comes back to bite him. But again, I will definitely give Morey credit for presumably getting more out of the trade by waiting. Whatever additional thing he got – maybe it was the pick swap – could come in handy someday. 

Outside of that, Morey didn’t exactly give us anything else to get excited about throughout the off-season. Signing Pat Bev and Mo Bamba to minimum deals and re-signing Paul Reed were the only things they did all summer. He did add Kelly Oubre shortly before training camp, which turned out to be terrific value. But he ended up being their only signing of consequence, and they did not use their mid-level exception at all that off-season. 

It’s not as if the Sixers had tons of flexibility, but as usual, they weren’t able to execute any sort of creative solution to improving the team in either the short or long term. Were there any teams looking to overpay for De’Anthony Melton? Could they have swooped in and gotten someone like Obi Toppin, who was traded for two second-round picks? Why didn’t they trade into the second round of the draft? Were there any Tobias Harris takers out there?

Speaking of Harris, not trading him will likely go down as one of the biggest blemishes on Morey’s resume, fairly or unfairly. My take is that criticism is fair – they should have made a much stronger effort to trade Harris earlier in his contract. The 2021 off-season would likely have been the best time to do it – while it was never all that high, Tobias’ stock peaked as a Sixer after the 2021 season; it was his best in a Sixer uniform by a considerable margin. Believe it or not, I actually had people giving me shit on Twitter that off-season for being an anti-Tobias guy and campaigning to trade him – I know, it’s hard to imagine that now. If there was ever a time that they could have off-loaded Tobi while not having to attach multiple picks to him, it was likely either 2021 or this past season, when he became an expiring deal. 

In addition to not trading Tobi at this year’s deadline, Morey did next to nothing to improve the team. The Buddy Hield trade was a huge whiff, and the Jaden Springer, Pat Bev, and Danuel House trades were more about future flexibility than anything else. The Sixers tried to go half-in, half-out at the deadline, and the end result was nothing to be proud of. 

Not going all-in at this past deadline – or even doing a better job of going half-in – is a major part of what makes this off-season so huge for Morey’s reputation. The Sixers had the assets to maximize a year of Joel Embiid’s prime, and chose not to, in large part to preserve their flexibility for this summer. In that light, anything short of hitting a home run this summer will be viewed as a legacy-defining disappointment. 

The Corner Three: Zo's Draft Guys and Spike's Boston Finals Take

There are really only two things that could be viewed as a success for this summer: landing one of the big fish expected to be available via trade or free agency (Paul George, Jimmy Butler, Mikal Bridges, etc.), or somehow concocting the perfect combination of role players around Embiid and Maxey – something on-par with the Nuggets’ supporting cast in between Jokic and Murray. If they don’t land a true star, I’m going to need to see the Sixers make their equivalent of the Aaron Gordon or Derrick White trades – maybe even both. 

At some point, you’re going to have to accept it if landing a true star becomes impossible, and navigate an alternative route to title contention. Make a bet on a talented young player who could be a perfect fit here, as the Nuggets and Celtics did with Gordon and White. The mentality can’t be all-or-nothing.

He absolutely cannot try to salvage the idea of trading for a third star by talking himself into an incredibly flawed one like Brandon Ingram. He also cannot simply try to sign a bunch of one-year deals in order to be players for a superstar in free agency again next year. He’s had an entire year to prepare; he must have a better backup plan than that. Assembling a kick-ass, star-less supporting cast – which should be doable with five firsts available to trade after the draft, as well as max cap space – is far, far better than either settling for a highly flawed star or kicking the can until next year. That type of stars-or-nothing thinking would be massively destructive for the Sixers. If Morey falls victim to that, he should and will be crushed by fans and media. 

In evaluating his performance to this point, I don’t think there’s any case to be made that Morey has done an outright terrible job, but he definitely hasn’t been in the top flight of GMs over the past four years. I would grade the job he has done as being slightly above league average. He certainly has plenty of things to hang his hat on, but the overwhelming majority of them have either been relatively common-sense moves or have been largely based on relationships that he established in the past. The single best thing that he did was drafting Tyrese Maxey, and that’s a move that many GMs in his position would have made – and one that could easily have been taken away, and that the team would be completely screwed without.

So, this off-season could not possibly have bigger stakes in terms of its impact on Morey’s legacy here. They have had almost an entire calendar year to prepare for this off-season. My expectations are extremely high, and I will be the first one to sing his praises if he nails it. But if he underperforms? There will be no excuses left. Morey himself created all of the circumstances that led to this off-season; blowing it will ruin not only my perception of this upcoming year, but will also make the one preceding it look like a total waste in retrospect. It would move my view of his time here closer to being an outright failure rather than just a mixed bag. He has to absolutely nail it this summer.

---

Mike O’Connor is the best O’Connor in basketball writing. Previously of The Athletic, you can find Mike on Twitter @MOConnor_NBA. Mike’s writing is brought to you by Body Bio, supplements based on science, focusing on your gut and brain health. Get 20% off E-Lyte, Gut+, and all Body Bio products with promo code FIRECJ at Body Bio’s website.