When a Team With No Margin for Error Makes Itself Worse at the Deadline
AU imagines it's a frustrating time for the guys on the court right now — even moreso when they remember that there used to be 1-2 more of them.
While I’m still deeply disturbed by how bad the Sixers have been since the trade deadline — 1-5 in their last six, including double-digit losses to the Blazers, Hawks and now of course the Fly the Processed Pelicans — I am no longer stupefied by it. I have Sixers Bluesky luminary Avi Wolfman-Arent to thank for that, since he pointed out the simple fact that while we now remember the first couple months of the season as halcyon days for the Sixers thriving while shorthanded, the team in fact was never that good when both Paul George and Joel Embiid were out. Losing Embiid as we have for the past four games is predictably devastating to this team’s ability to compete at the highest levels, but without George on the wing to at least credibly space the floor for their guards and generally provide two-way competence, it’s very difficult for them to compete, period. I get it, kinda.
What I still don’t get is how the front office could know how tricky things were likely going to be for the Sixers to stay afloat post-trade deadline, and how they could decide that it was an acceptable outcome to have a deadline with players going out — never mind one who certainly seems like he’d be some degree of helpful right now — and none coming in. The team may have fallen apart around this time of year anyway, but it’s pretty hard not to look back at that deadline activity and not see that as the nudge that sent the already-teetering Sixers towards full collapse.
Now, of course, Daryl & Co. didn’t know Joel was going to miss four straight at this particularly vulnerable moment. And it’s true that the post-deadline team was still 1-1 before Jo started missing games, with a forgivable-if-dispiriting loss to the Lakers in L.A. and a pretty solid win in Phoenix. But they did know George still had about 20 games to go on the suspension for his drug policy violation. They did know that Tyrese Maxey was leading the league in minutes, and that his December and January numbers had already slipped a little from his October and November dominance. They did know that VJ Edgecombe was at least starting to careen into the rookie wall, and that Quentin Grimes had been pretty frosty since Thanksgiving. And most importantly, they did know that Joel was Joel, that it was something of a miracle that he was as available and productive all of January as he was, and that banking on him being healthy enough to drag the team across the regular-season finish line was like planning a cross-country road trip in a 2001 Chrysler Sebring.
This is all to say: This Sixers team wasn’t one equipped to weather any additional losses. Even at their winningest this season, the margins were thin — their scoring differential was never that positive, and their staying in the black record-wise relied on an unsustainable amount of rookie clutchness. Paul George’s suspension made it that much thinner, though with Joel still around and Kelly Oubre Jr. providing a decent-enough PG facsimile, it was still manageable. With Joel out for the last four games and possibly more to come, we now officially need all the help we can get. But not only did we not call in backup for our lineup at the deadline, we sent some of our current troops packing. And now, after a 15-point loss to the woeful Pelicans, things look dire, and they probably should.
I’m not sure how much the specific loss of Jared McCain is the thing currently dooming the Sixers. Certainly, the Pelicans rouler-ing les bons temps all over the Sixers from deep on Saturday night we absolutely couldn’t buy a triple for the final 18 minutes makes McCain’s absence feel even more conspicuous — especially while Jared is shooting 45% from deep in Oklahoma City and going off for 21 in their most recent win over Brooklyn (and while our reacquired emergency backup PG Cam Payne is 1-9 from three to start his second Sixers tenure). But it’s worth remembering that much of McCain’s current productivity is coming in garbage time for the Thunder — who are much better at getting to such run-out-the-clock opportunities than the Sixers have been this season — and that while he could potentially offer some relief for Maxey and Edgecombe, he probably couldn’t play alongside them enough to make things all that much easier for them on the court. McCain probably would have been helpful for this period, but he ultimately might not have changed that much.
It’s not the loss of McCain himself that’s stinging me right now, so much as the unforced removal of a rotation guy — any rotation guy — with no obvious substitute either brought in or already waiting in the wings to replace him. (Payne, playing in the Serbian league up until his reacquisition, emphatically does not count.) For the Sixers to make such a future-fortifying move and then do nothing else to offset the damage to the already-weakened present... I can’t say for sure how much of a psychological effect it has, but I would certainly have some frustrations (and some questions) if I was one of the guys taking the court right now.
And again, this is why I wonder if the Sixers haven’t mentally pulled the plug on this season already. Spike and Mike have said that they didn’t agree with my article positing that the front office’s behavior this deadline projected a lack of belief in this version of the team to do anything real this season or likely ever, because maybe there just wasn’t a good trade out there and why force a trade if we believe in the guys we have. And I don’t disagree with those specific points, but I feel like they’re missing the main argument I was making – which is not that we should kill the team for not making a home-run trade, but that we should perhaps take it as meaningful that they *did* make trades to actively and inarguably make the team worse this year. Usually a controversial trade deadline for a contending team awkwardly reshuffles a roster, or trades youth for experience, or plugs one hole while creating another. I could have understood a deadline built around any of those types of trades, or indeed one built around no trades at all. But when all said deadline does is shrink the active roster by two, that to me says something about how close the front office does or does not consider this team to being a contending one.
And I don’t want to keep writing versions of this article. I think Daryl has generally done a good job getting this team to where it is this year, and I think that still being over .500 is something of an accomplishment for them. I don’t doubt that he had intentions of pulling off additional moves at this trade deadline, and that perhaps external (and/or internal) forces prevented him from doing so. (Though I still feel like this probably was an acceptable outcome for him, or he wouldn’t have done the McCain trade in the first place.) I wouldn’t have dealt Jared and would’ve liked to have gotten more for him if we did, but I can’t say for absolute certainty that he’ll end up being worth more than this bounty of picks we got for him, especially without knowing what future deals having these assets at our disposal could lead to. And hell, if it is indeed the front office’s/ownership’s position that this team isn’t close enough to true contention to even feign at making moves to put it over the top, I don’t necessarily disagree with that — they probably aren’t. In the long term, this all may very well be justifiable.
I just don’t know what else to write about watching these games this season, though. The team doesn’t seem competitive right now. They seem overmatched. They seem like they’re looking around for answers that aren’t there. And that’s not entirely the doing of this trade deadline by any means, but when you have to deal with so many things that are beyond your control as a basketball team, I have to imagine that when the rare things you can control are also serving to make it tougher and bummer-ier on you, that’s gotta make for a disproportionate part of the load you carry. Hopefully Joel comes back for the Wolves tonight, we turn things around quickly and the vibes can persevere. But everything is fragile right now. And when the cracks are showing as obviously as this, it’s really gotta suck for the team to remember that its own front office was wielding the hammer that caused one or two of them.
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.