I don't want to sound like a 76ers apologist. I think the Colangelos were a disaster, and Elton Brand should probably lose his job. But I will say a lot of the criticisms being levied against them are unfair and revisionist. Let's take a look back at some of the most condemned choices and see if we can't shed some light on them.
The most common criticisms of the post-Hinkie tenure have been centered around Tobias Harris, Al Horford, Jimmy Butler, J.J. Redick and Markelle Fultz. Of those five, I will argue three are not mistakes, one arguably was not, and then one was the massive mistake that undermines anything that the 76ers have done. Let's start with the most controversial player in my opinion, Tobias Harris.
The first caveat I'll mention. It is nearly impossible to evaluate "what could have been" with trades. We simply don't know what was available with the same assets. So I'll be evaluating those on as much face-value as I can.
There are two threads to the Tobias Harris situation. Number 1, should they have traded for Harris in the first place? In terms of real assets, it boils down to Tobias Harris for Landry Shamet, a 2021 unprotected Miami pick and a load of second round picks. Shamet was a rookie that offered great catch and shoot 3-point shooting and solid defense. A prototypical 3-and-D guy that everyone in the NBA wants so badly. However, at the end of the day, the 76ers saw a window and Shamet offered 3-point shooting and nothing else offensively. In addition, being a rookie, there is cause to wonder if the 3-point shooting was something of a mirage. There's some evidence, now one year into his Clippers tenure. His 3 point percentage is still a strong 37.5%, but a far cry from the scorching 42.2% of his rookie year. The Miami pick was valuable but not by an insane amount. At the time of the trade Miami were an eight seed, and now in the present it looks less and less valuable each day. So the 76er's didn't give up a king's ransom for Harris.
Now let's look at what Harris brought to the table. Ever since becoming a starter around 2016, Harris had been trending up. While being moved around a lot, in his two years before 2018-2019 he increased his points per game and 3-point shooting percentages both years. With the Clippers, he hit his peak, scoring 20.9 points per game on fantastic .496/.434/.877 splits. And he was only 26! He had shown growth every year he'd been in the NBA, was still young, and even if he never got any better if he provided 16-20 a night on that efficiency that's a good running mate for the Embiid-Simmons duo. Theoretically, becoming a third banana with play-maker like Simmons would only increase his already great efficiency as well. To me, that's a no-brainer trade. You're massively upgrading offensively, the defense is not enough of a detriment, and in a certain way he's a perfect complement to Simmons, a guy that can space the floor and hit jump shots in a variety of spots on the court. Maybe he can't create his own shot effectively, but with Simmons and Embiid (working on passing out of double teams), he shouldn't have had to. It didn't turn out that way this year, but that's hindsight.
You can say that his struggles were foreseeable, that his Clippers percentages were unsustainable, and that very well may be true. But even his lower percentages of .471/.367/.800 and 19.6 points per game is still a good third scorer who's still in his prime. Last year's Raptors third best scorer in the regular season was either Serge Ibaka or Kyle Lowry, who scored less points on similar efficiency. The Harris trade was a good move at the time.
Part 2 of our Harris conundrum is the contract that was given to him. He infamously struggled in the playoffs against the Raptors, his inability to make the Raptors pay for leaving him open was well-documented. The 76ers still gave him a max deal, five years 180 million. Should they have done this? This one is much more subjective, and the crux of the argument centers on the deservedly derided phrase "who else were they going to get?" But I believe it works here. We'll start before that however.
As stated above, Harris has shown a solid body of work that he can absolutely be a third piece on a championship team. He's relatively young, still just 28 this year, in the middle of his prime, and there is reason to believe his Raptors struggles were something of a fluke. He was much nearer his career numbers earlier in the playoff's against the Nets, and his regular season work is significant. In addition, the Raptors were (and still are) arguably the best defensive team in basketball, and while many of his shots were open, it's a factor that must be considered. Let's also not forget that despite his struggles, the 76er's were eliminated by the eventual Champions in game seven on an unbelievable shot. They were as close as they've been in twenty years to winning a title, keeping essential pieces of that is not a bad decision.
Finally, let's go to the options available to the 76er's in 2019. For this first exercise, we assume that the 76er's were going to max someone no matter what. Harris was the clear best, most realistic option. They weren't going to get Klay, Middleton, Durant, Porzingis, Leonard, D'Angelo or Irving. Butler didn't want to stay for a multitude of reasons, so that wasn't an option. Kemba and Vucevic (not saying they were likely to come either) also are not great fits with the Simmons-Embiid core. No other player comes close to deserving a max deal, and most don't really come close to Harris ability-wise.
Let's look at another possible scenario. The 76er's decide that Harris simply isn't good enough, and will wait a year to max someone else upcoming. The 2020 free agency class is brutal. Only four upcoming free agents averaged more points than Harris this year. Anthony Davis, DeMar DeRozan, Brandon Ingram and De'Aaron Fox. Davis is impossible. DeMar is as much of a playoff disappearance act as Harris so far, and is much more ball dominant. Fox is a primary ball handler which the 76er's don't need, and it's incredibly rare to not sign the first extension given the extra money the Kings can offer, and the Kings have the option anyways. Ingram is the one intriguing name, but he's had just the one really good year, and in 2018-2019 Ingram was far from a sure thing that the 76er's could target as an obvious upgrade to Harris. Other names on this list like Gordon Hayward, Evan Fournier, Fred VanVleet and Danilo Galinari, are simply too questionable to say they are actually sure-fire upgrades to Harris without using significant hindsight, and even with hindsight can you really say gun to your head all these players are better than Harris?
All this being said, the decision to max Harris is questionable, but I don't believe it was indefensible or terrible at the time like many say. Detractors may bring up his recent playoff performances as evidence against his contract. Putrid as he has been, I don't believe this is fair. Ignoring the revisionism of this argument, Harris was put into a situation he is neither prepared for nor was expecting. Harris cannot create his own shot, this much is clear. But he was not supposed to, and is hurt more than any other 76er by Simmon's injury. This is worst case for Harris, and he is being judged harshly for unfortunate circumstances. Now you can ask, should we really be giving max contracts to players that cannot reliably create their own shot. It's a fair question. I hope it's not too presumptuous to point to Klay Thompson as evidence it can work. Of course, Tobias Harris is not Klay Thompson in his wildest dreams. But paying a max to 80-90% of Klay offensively (which is what Harris' best self was at the time of the contract) is not a fire-able offense in my opinion. Getting Harris for less than the max wasn't really an option either. According to Shams Charania via Bleacher Report, nine teams were interested in signing Harris, and with the 76ers having his bird rights and able to sign him despite the cap, the amount of money they could give him wouldn't be able to be used elsewhere anyways. So the extra money given to Harris over a theoretical different player doesn't actually matter.
In conclusion, the decision to trade for Harris was a good one. Could they have gotten someone superior to Harris with a first rounder and Shamet? Doubtful. The guy they traded for was an extremely efficient 20 points per game scorer from all ranges that didn't demand touches. His 23.5% usage rate on the Clippers would've been tied for 56th with Montrezl Harrell and Domantas Sabonis, a perfect running mate to the ball dominant Simmons and Embiid. The decision to max Harris, while questionable, was not indefensible. He's in his theoretical prime now, and is good enough to be a third option on a title winning team even if he's currently the highest paid member of the team. We've seen a similar situation with Chris Bosh (16 ppg on better efficiency while being the highest paid member of the 12-14 Heat) and Kevin Love (16 ppg on worse efficiency while being the second highest paid member on the 14-16 Cavaliers). Harris is worse overall players than both of them by a large margin. But he can fill the scoring role they did just as well, maybe better. There also wasn't anyone that was clearly better than Harris that had the same combination of fit and actually considering Philadelphia in the 2019 or 2020 FA classes.
Next time, we'll examine the other 2018 trade, Jimmy Butler.
