Goodbye, Tobi
As Tobias Harris ends his Sixers tenure on a zero-point effort in a home elimination game, MOC offers a heartfelt farewell to his second-least-favorite Sixer ever.
The average fan might not think that often about the infrastructure of NBA scouting departments, but I actually think about it quite a bit.
For those who aren’t aware, here’s a brief rundown of how most teams operate: Most teams have a group of 4-6 scouts specifically designated towards draft scouting. They’ll also have one or two advance scouts, whose job it is to attend other team’s games and scout play calls and other X’s and O’s minutiae. They’ll also likely have multiple pro-personnel scouts, whose job it is to evaluate and grab intel about other team’s personnel in order to provide detailed insight for trades and free agency.
Many teams also hire part-time regional scouts as independent contractors, and/or will contract independent companies to pay for their services. When I worked as a scout, for example, I worked for an independent company that sold insights and services to several NBA teams.
It’s a highly competitive industry and the job requires you to be meticulous. Most scouts keep insane amounts of highly organized notes. If you ask a pro-personnel scout for notes on a player’s performance in a game they were assigned to five years ago, they could probably provide you with them. Their job is to miss absolutely nothing – to be encyclopedic. You could ask them about a very specific skill of an extremely obscure NBA player, and they should be able to give you a detailed answer.
The reason I think about the depth of this infrastructure so often is this: I just can’t fucking believe that any team could have this type of infrastructure and do what the Sixers did in 2019 with Tobias Harris. I just don’t get it. How is it possible?
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not asking how any team could possibly want Tobias Harris. He’s a tall, athletic wing with lots of skill and is well-liked off the court. What I’m asking is how any team could be enamored with him. Because that’s what the Sixers were back in 2019: enamored.
They gave up two first round picks, two second round picks and Landry Shamet to get him, and then gave him the largest contract in franchise history to that point. But it didn’t stop there! They also performed a bizarre backroom deal to sign Tobias’ brother, Terry Harris, to a Summer League contract, and later a training camp deal, followed by an Exhibit 9 deal to play for their G-League team. Terry, who averaged eight points per game playing 20 minutes per night as a fifth year senior at North Carolina A&T, had absolutely no business being anywhere near the NBA, respectfully. He played in 19 games with the Delaware Blue Coats that year, averaging 3.5 points per game on 35.6 percent shooting from the field.
I think that trading a huge haul to acquire Tobias, offering him the largest contract in franchise history, and also performing an obvious backroom deal to sweeten the deal would adequately qualify the Sixers’ front office as enamored. They gave him the type of treatment that would only be mildly appropriate for the very best players in the NBA.
The reason I harp on the role of pro-personnel scouts here, is because it really takes a careful, consistent eye to pick up on what an incredibly flawed basketball player Tobias is. If you just watch highlights, or only catch a game once in a while, you could easily be fooled into thinking that Tobias is, in fact, a very good NBA player.
I can understand how most of us Sixers fans, who weren't grinding his film and keeping nightly notes on him for a living, saw that he was having the best year of his career that season for the Clippers, got swept up in the social media hype train for him at the time, and didn’t crush the Sixers for making the trade. I can understand how fans got excited during his first week with the team and talked themselves into it. What I can’t understand is how any professional basketball team could have several full-time employees whose job it is to evaluate Tobias Harris, and decide that they must bend over backwards to get him and then roll out the red carpet to keep him.
I will never in my life forget what an absolute nightmare it was to root for Tobias during this era. He is by far the most maddening player I have ever watched. The simplest way I can describe the Tobias Harris conundrum is this: on a good team, he is nowhere near good enough as a scorer to be your second or third best player, nor is he anywhere near good enough at role-player responsibilities (shooting open 3s, defending the other team’s best player, etc.) to be your fourth or fifth best player. Even at his best, he is stuck in this limbo of never having the proper role to fit into. He is somehow underqualified for any role you put him in – there is no situation you could put him in that would allow him to impact winning at a high level on a night to night basis. The best thing that Tobias Harris could ever be in the NBA is an empty calories scorer on a mediocre team; the highest purpose in his basketball life is to bring a 34 win team to a 37 win team.
But everything I just described? That still only applies to Good Tobias. When he’s in Bad Tobias mode – which he was for basically the entire second half of this season – he is one of the single most harmful high-minute players in the NBA.
The nicest way I can put it is that he leaves so much value on the table. Even just his aversion to shooting 3s when he’s open is highly limiting for the team’s offense. But what’s 50 times worse is the fact that he offers absolutely nothing in regards to the little things – when it comes to all of the micro-skills and micro-decisions that take place underneath the surface of the game, Tobias Harris is one of the worst NBA players I have ever seen.
He is one of the worst entry passers I have ever seen. He never drew a SINGLE CHARGE in 5.5 years in a Sixer uniform. He finds himself involved in countless miscommunications on defense. He’ll stand still and watch rebounds and loose balls go by him like he’s watching a shooting star. He will ruin good defensive possessions by doing things like randomly closing out super-hard on a non-shooter and getting blown by, or biting on a pump fake that we all see coming a mile away, or swiping down and fouling a player shooting a turnaround fadeaway with the shot-clock expiring.
One of the core aspects of sports fandom is that you want your team to be the smarter, tougher, sharper team – and what makes Tobias infuriating is that he always makes you feel the opposite of that. Watching Tobias on a nightly basis is like watching a cheesy horror movie every night in which the characters keep making unrealistically awful decisions that get them in trouble.
All of the things that I’m mentioning here coalesced to create the palpable stench of loser energy that he brought to the vibe of the team. His ability to make momentum-killing plays – often not in blatantly awful ways, but just in terribly timed minor mistakes, or missed open looks – is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I don’t know what the stats say about his shooting percentages in clutch situations, but I can tell you that it always felt certain that he would miss when the ball found him in a big spot. Hence, why he never had a single memorable playoff moment in his six runs here.
Just one big moment – or even one very good series – would have rewritten the entire narrative on Harris’ time here. Instead, we got a whole bunch of nothing; neutral impacts at best. His 2-13 performance from deep in Game 4 against the Raptors in 2019 will live on forever, but especially the wide open 3 he missed when down four with a minute to go. His abhorrent mental lapses throughout the 2023 Celtics series will echo throughout my mind forever. His respectable, but non-life changing performances against the Hawks and Heat in 2021 and 2022 did absolutely nothing to change his reputation here. His terrible performance against the Knicks, capped off by his poetic doughnut in Game 6, was merely the icing on the cake.
The knock on Joel Embiid’s career is his series of failures to put the Sixers on his back and get them over the hump, despite being so damn good that he still always at least gets them to the doorstep. The knock on most of the running mates of Embiid’s career – but perhaps especially Tobias – has been their inability to rise to the occasion to pick up the slack for an injured or slumping Embiid just one single time. Embiid will forever bear the brunt of his playoff shortcomings, but in just one of those years where they had a real shot (2019, 2021, and 2023 especially), if Tobias or Ben Simmons or whomever play at the level they are supposed to, the story of this era is completely different.
In a way, I feel bad for Tobias – he didn’t ask to come here in the first place, and he couldn’t possibly say no to a $180 million offer to stay here for the next half-decade. It’s pretty undeniable that his reputation would be better if he had been on a mediocre team this whole time rather than a contender. If he could have just toiled away in NBA obscurity, he would likely be happier as a person. But coming here, he just became too visible. The holes in his game became so glaringly obvious.
I did my best to not come off this way publicly — to not ever come off like I have a personal grudge against him, and to evaluate him fairly each game — but man, I absolutely could not fucking stand watching Tobias Harris play basketball. He is my second-least-favorite Sixer of all time behind only Al Horford, but watching Tobias brought me to a level of frustration that I have never felt from any other athlete in my life – and I know I’m far from alone in that. The unanimous annoyance that we all felt and expressed over the past several months from watching Tobias’ nadir as a Sixer is unlike anything I’ve ever seen in Philadelphia sports history.
To be clear, this is purely a sports thing, and is not personal whatsoever. I have absolutely zero critical things to say about Tobias as a human being, which is somewhat rare for a highly critiqued athlete who has spent more than half a decade as a public figure in the city. I respect him for that, and I wish him the best personally. I’ve often wondered if I should feel bad about how much I dislike his game, given what a great guy he is, but truthfully I don’t feel bad at all. Tobias Harris spent six years sucking the joy out of something that is theoretically supposed to give me as much joy as anything in life — watching my favorite basketball team. He deserves the criticism, and he is compensated more handsomely than 99.9% of people on earth for it.
And finally, you can’t dissect the infuriating nature of the Tobias Harris era without discussing all of the paths not taken because of him. The most obvious one is that they likely would’ve made an effort to keep Jimmy Butler, but I’m going back even further than that. Could they have traded for Nico Batum without giving up any draft picks at the 2019 deadline? Could they have acquired any of Harrison Barnes, Markieff Morris, or Otto Porter, Jr., who were all traded for next to nothing at that deadline? I would argue that any one of those four players would have given the Sixers a better chance to beat Toronto in 2019.
That summer, even if they don’t re-sign Butler, perhaps they could have signed actual winning players like Malcolm Brogdon, Danny Green, or Bojan Bogdanovic instead of giving Tobias $180 million – not to mention that they would have preserved the two firsts, two seconds, and Landry Shamet from not trading for him. Even in a world where the Sixers still make the Tobias trade and give him that contract, could they have undone the danage by trading him and a first round pick for Kevin Love back in 2020? Could they have attached him to Ben Simmons in 2021 and still gotten assets back in the deal? Could they have taken on longer term bad money with assets attached to it in 2022 or 2023? Could they have traded him along with picks for a quality starter this past season?
We’ll never know. One thing is for sure: the Tobias trade and contract should serve as a major lesson for the Sixers moving forward. They absolutely cannot be seduced by raw talent, and neglect things like fit and winning DNA. Daryl Morey’s obsession with talent over everything is likely the reason that he never made it a top priority to get off of Harris’ contract – if there is one thing Harris is, it’s talented. I imagine that if Morey ever seriously considered trying to salary dump Tobias, he fell back on the idea that talent wins championships, and Tobias is too talented to give away for nothing. But he was wrong: There are tons of players who are less talented than Harris who would’ve given the Sixers a better chance to win the title over the past six years.
And so, as I do my final reflection on the Tobias era, I have absolutely nothing good to say. I don’t have a single positive memory of his time here that is worth mentioning. I will have no nostalgia for watching him, and I feel no degree of sorrow watching him leave. I would say that I’m thrilled – and in some way I am – but frankly I’m too scarred to celebrate. The torment of rooting for a basketball team that he played for will haunt me for the rest of my life. Goodbye, Tobi.
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.
By far the single biggest reason for the Sixers failures over the last 5.5 season. It's not just that he wasn't really even a good player in the context of the current NBA game, but his salary obliterated any chance to coherently team build. Also, I'm not really sure how someone who had been traded so often prior to getting to the Sixers was viewed as player to lock down for 5 years?
That felt good to read... it must have felt great to write! My Grandmother often stressed ended on a positive note - so here it goes: Tobi and Bobi made my kid smile.