Five Thoughts on the Sixers After the All-Star Break
MOC's State of the Union after an annoyingly dispiriting couple weeks of Sixers happenings.
Did the Sixers kill the vibes?
After the Paul George suspension and a gut punch of a trade deadline followed by a 1-3 skid and some re-emerging right knee soreness from Joel Embiid, it’s safe to say that the 2025-26 Sixers have hit the rockiest waters that they’ve hit all year.
As I’ll get into later on in this piece, I remain optimistic about the Sixers overall, but man, the last few weeks have been brutal. Here in this piece, I want to go through a wide range of thoughts I’ve had building up recently, ranging from the Sixers’ confounding trade deadline to their third quarter woes. Let’s get into it.
Setting the record straight regarding “The Tax”
There’s been a lot of talk in the aftermath of the trade deadline regarding the Sixers’ repeated pattern of ducking the luxury tax under Joshua Harris’ ownership. While I agree it’s obviously been a priority in their decision making, the actual story is a bit more complicated than raw, dogged cheapishness. My goal here is just to add some nuance, as well as discuss where we should blame Daryl Morey, rather than defend it.
The Sixers have paid the luxury tax twice this decade – in 2020-21, and 2021-22. In the 2022-23 season, the Sixers were right up against the luxury tax threshold, but paying it for a third consecutive year would have triggered the repeater tax, which would have given the Sixers a comically absurd payroll the following season and been a major hindrance towards their ability to build out a contender the following year.
If you recall, the Sixers traded away Matisse Thybulle for Jalen McDaniels to get under the tax at the 2023 trade deadline. While myself and many others were arguing that they should go for broke, try to win the title, and worry about next year in the summer, Morey and the Sixers decided to shed money to free up future flexibility, largely under the selling point that they had to do this in order to be able to retain James Harden that off-season.
And I just want to linger here for a minute, because I truly believe the decision to duck the tax in 2023 to be their biggest mistake of the past several deadlines. Remember: the trade that sent Thybulle to the Blazers was a multi-team trade that involved the Knicks sending a future first round pick in exchange for Josh Hart. The Sixers had one available first round pick to be traded at the time (their 2029 first). They more than likely could have sent Thybulle and that pick away in exchange for Hart (which I asked them to do very nicely at the time!), who would have helped their biggest weakness – rebounding – while providing some insurance to P.J. Tucker and Tobias Harris’ playoff inconsistencies. Tucker and Harris, of course, were both abysmal to varying levels against the Celtics and played a major role in the Sixers’ eventual loss. If Josh Hart is on that Sixers team, I would argue they win the title.
Morey stated at his post-deadline press conference last week that he hoped to dispel the notion that the Sixers refuse to pay the tax, and that it’s his responsibility to present ownership with a move worth paying for. Buddy, it was right there three years ago! You very possibly could have had Josh Hart on a team that was right around title contention but lacked toughness and rebounding. That’s a sale you have to make.
The year after that would have gotten sticky, of course. Retaining Harden would have been tough. Josh Harris would have had to pay an absolutely ridiculous luxury tax bill to keep the team together. Still – I would argue that the right call would have been to make that win-now trade and worry about the future later. If they have to pay another first to salary dump Tobias and/or Tucker, so be it. Hell, if Harden has to walk and the team needs a gap year, so be it – that’s what ended up happening anyway!
The reason I harp so much on 2023 is that, truthfully, I can’t blame them that much for not wanting to pay the tax in subsequent years. Of course, I would rather them just spend and eat the money. But at the 2024 trade deadline, nobody knew if Joel Embiid would be returning from his knee injury at all, let alone at full health. The only move they made that was a straight salary dump was getting off of Danuel House, Jr. – I can’t crush them for that, especially considering that they made another move that was attempting to win now in acquiring Buddy Hield.
Last season, with an impending tank job coming, I hated the fact that they had to pay picks to get off of K.J. Martin to get under the tax, but did it negatively impact that season in any real way? Of course not. If I owned the Sixers, I probably would have demanded the same thing. The team sucks, I’m not paying eight figures to keep K.J. Martin.
Even this year, I’m more annoyed than irate that they didn’t want to pay the luxury tax. What I’m irate about is how they went about it – they could have attached a second round pick or two to Andre Drummond and called it a day. Punting on Jared McCain’s future in part to get under the luxury tax is just unforgivable, and that’s a Daryl Morey decision more so than a Josh Harris decision.
In summation: obviously, I would love it if Josh Harris would just eat the money and pay the tax every year. But that is simply not what most NBA owners do. We should all crush him for it, but understand that this is how most NBA owners operate. It is a bigger problem that Morey simply cannot find ways to navigate Harris’ budget restraints in a productive or creative way. He has repeatedly made the wrong decision in light of these constraints, and he deserves much of the blame himself.
Why didn’t the Sixers value Jared McCain?
I’m feeling a lot of things in the aftermath of the McCain trade – angry, sad, frustrated. But the thing I am feeling most is confused. Why did the Sixers simply not value Jared McCain all that highly? I don’t get it. What did they watch last season?
I went into last season ready to be totally out of McCain; I compared him to Bryn Forbes before the draft! His 23 games as a rookie – specifically, his 13-game run in which he averaged 21.7 points per game – moved me in such a way that I would not have traded him for three first round picks this off-season. I was fully convinced he would be a multi-time All-Star.
What’s obvious now is that the Sixers never felt the same way, even in the midst of his run. As I wrote earlier this season, it was clear even before this year that the Sixers did not see him at the level that we did – let alone as a future franchise cornerstone.
I’ll never understand what made the Sixers not fully believe that what we saw from McCain during that stretch was real. This was not some unfathomably hot shooting stretch. It wasn’t even the case that he was playing with or against a bunch of depleted, tanking rosters at the end of the season; most of his games came with at least one of Joel Embiid or Paul George.
I remember two games specifically – against the Knicks and Magic in November of ‘24 – in which McCain shared the floor with both George and Embiid, and McCain was their most reliable source of offense. I found myself begging for them to get the ball out of Embiid’s hands and into McCain’s; the offense was just running better when the rookie had the ball.
Everything about McCain’s run felt legitimate to me. He was getting wherever he wanted off the dribble, he was out-maneuvering players off the ball and finding openings for cuts or open 3s, and he was an unbelievably poised passer. I truly could not point to one thing about his 13-game stretch last year that made me go, “ah, yep, that was a total fluke.”
The severity of his struggles this year did not make me rethink what happened last year; it was obvious that he simply wasn’t moving the same. I remember comparing his off the dribble game last year to Malcolm Brogdon’s at one point – he had that gallop-y, herky-jerky pace with the ball where every drive made you wonder, how did he get by that guy?
That stuff was gone this year. Coming off of his hand and knee injuries, his handle and burst were just completely zapped. But even as I concede that he was borderline unplayable for much of the year, I still fully believe in his ability to bounce back once healthy.
What’s clear now is that the Sixers believe either A) his injuries would prevent him from fully bouncing back, or B) the version of him that we believe he could bounce back to was mostly a fluke and was never that interesting to begin with, or some combination of both.
All I can say is that I vehemently disagree. I want to be on record as a huge McCain believer and as someone who was fervently against this trade.
Morey essentially confirmed everything I’m speculating about here at his press conference, stating that he was very confident that the team was “selling high” on McCain, but that only time will tell. Agreed on that last part – and if I’m wrong about McCain, I’ll happily give Daryl his flowers. But for now I’d like to stake out as strong a position on the opposite side as possible.
The Sixers’ mismanagement of free agency costs them draft picks
In the aftermath of the trade deadline, one small silver lining that many people have pointed out is that the Sixers now have a whopping 14 trade-eligible second round picks. Hooray!
That is an objectively impressive number for a team that has spent all but one of the past eight years trying to win. But that’s not going to stop me from pointing out that it could easily have been way more if not for the Sixers’ penchant for ducking the tax combined with their many blunders in free agency.
In 2022, the Sixers signed P.J. Tucker and Danuel House, Jr. in free agency. They were subsequently fined two second round picks for tampering. A year later, they salary dumped Tucker as part of the James Harden trade. While we can’t know for sure, let’s be generous and assume that it cost just one second round pick to get off of Tucker.
A few months after that, they salary dumped Danuel House to the Pistons, costing them a second round pick. A few months later, in the summer of 2024, they signed K.J. Martin and Eric Gordon. Last year at the trade deadline, they paid two second round picks to salary dump Martin. And this year, they salary dumped Gordon by giving Memphis a 2032 second round pick.
All told, that’s seven second round picks that the Sixers cost themselves due to poor free agent signings – none of whom ever made more than $10 million per year.
Again, this all ties back to my first point. Having a cheap owner is annoying, but the real problem is a general manager who can’t navigate it adeptly. The Sixers have 14 second-round picks – four of which came from trading a 2026 first round pick, and three of which came from trading McCain – but they could easily have far more if they would have either A) been willing to eat some tax money, or B) handled free agency any better from 2022-24.
The Sixers getting blown out in every third quarter is not “random”
I just wanted to echo this piece from Beckett about the Sixers’ unrelenting third quarter struggles. As Beckett points out, we are past the threshold of this being some “random” sample size thing at the beginning of the season. It has to have some quantifiable explanation based in reality at this point.
That word – “random” – has been massively overused as our understanding of shot variance and sample size has improved. We need to stop slapping that label on any statistical trend that appears without a clear and direct explanation.
As this post on Sixers Reddit points out, this year’s Sixers have the second-worst third quarter net rating in recorded history. The Sixers getting obliterated in every third quarter is not “random” any more than the 2016-17 Warriors destroying their opponents in every third quarter was “random.”
Most likely, it is psychological. The Sixers turn their brains off every third quarter. The blame belongs to the head coach and the players. They need to find ways to be more focused and intentional with their third quarters. It will legitimately cost them the season if they don’t!
I still remain a 2026 Sixers optimist!
I feel like I’ve been quite negative here – sorry! I do want to be clear that I remain optimistic about this year’s team.
As much of a gut punch as the trade deadline was, we do have to acknowledge that McCain simply had not been doing much for this year’s squad. He had scored fewer points on the season than Andre Drummond at the time he was traded.
While it sucks not to add anything, I think it’s fair to say that if you were optimistic on this year’s team heading into the deadline, you should still feel that way now. We can at least feel happy about the fact that the team has a 1.5 game cushion in between them and the play-in, and that we are just two months away from the playoffs with Embiid and George not having any season-ending injuries. The George suspension, while frustrating, does put the chances of him being fully healthy for the playoffs as close to 100% as humanly possible. We should (knock on wood) get to see the so-called big three have an actual shot in the playoffs.
The Sixers still have a net rating of +6.1 with those three guys on the court – the equivalent of a team with a win total in the high 50s. They are still a very good basketball team! And after how brutal last season was, I’ll be thrilled if we just get to see that team do battle in April.
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.
Re: acquiring Josh Hart at the 2023 deadline and having that lead to a title. I realize this the most non-scientific counterfactual ever. But is there ANY doubt in your mind that if the Sixers are the ones getting Hart (as opposed to the Knicks or, in an alternate timeline the Celtics if Heat) that he is played off the court by the Celtics because he shoots 15% from three for the series?
I, having watched the team for over 20 years, have zero doubts that’s exactly what would have happened.