How (Tobias) Harris lost Pennsylvania

Tobias Harris returns to the scene of the crime where Sixers’ owner Josh Harris and co. inked the Long Island native for $180M heading into five seasons of Joel Embiid’s prime.

This isn’t an election allegory and isn’t political at all, although I couldn’t resist the snappy headline since that stuff is top of mind right now.

This is about how the former Sixer, and newly minted (for the second time) Detroit Piston, Tobias Harris, arguably one of the most objectively likable players in the entire NBA, and maybe even in NBA history, simply lost his way with the fans in Philadelphia. And spoiler alert: little of it was his own fault and no, it’s not a reflection of how harsh Philly fans can be. This was all an organizational blunder of epic proportions.

As the forward makes his way back to The Center tonight for a game that will not feature Joel Embiid or Paul George, we can bank on some mixed reactions from the home fans, likely some audible boos, and some mixed emotions for Harris himself. (Although I’d probably boo Josh Harris for offering the contract before I booed Tobias Harris for taking it).

Nick Nurse was asked about Harris’ time in Philly and used the word “rocky” more than once — and no, he wasn’t invoking Mr. Balboa.

But how did we get here?

2018 ‘stah hunting’

Mikal Bridges was sitting there ready to come home and all the Josh Harris, David Blitzer, minority owners, Brett Brown and former Colangelo-goons collaborative front office had to do was literally nothing after selecting the Nova stud 10th overall in the 2018 NBA Draft.

But they made a deal with the Suns, targeting a draft pick they’d hoped would net them Kawhi Leonard firstly, with names like Jimmy Butler, Tobias Harris or Kemba Walker as seemingly viable fallback options. Heck, they even had the ammo Sam Hinkie left them for two of those names and more.

2019

Harris was acquired by the Sixers by Feb. 2019 via trade by the formerly Elton Brand “led” front office. (We’ve since learned Brand, like Brown, wasn’t a traditional final say decision maker in those days.)

Yaron Weitzman’s book “Tanking to the Top” offers a description of the scene before Tobias was acquired:

“After the game [Brett] Brown was pulled into a room in the Wells Fargo Center. Brand, [Managing Partner Josh] Harris, his partner David Blitzer, CEO Scott O’Neil, and [former team analytics lead Alex] Rucker were already seated.”

Brown would later recall “…[trading for Harris] was a unanimous thumbs up.”

So they landed Tobi a few months after they’d landed Jimmy, and we immediately began to hear reports that ownership was willing to break records with the highest payroll in the league to keep that core (Embiid, Ben Simmons, Butler, Harris and JJ Redick) together for years to come.

That first season the Sixers nearly defeated the eventual champion Toronto Raptors. And in that series, well… Harris foreshadowed much of the playoff disappointment that would one day feel as inevitable as an Embiid playoff injury.

Harris shot just 38 percent from the floor and 28 percent from distance. In an agonizing home loss in Game 4, with the chance to go up 3-1, the Tennessee product shot just 7-of-23 in a game the team lost by five, as Toronto took back home court.

2019 free agency

By free agency in late June we’d heard from Shams Charania that “around the league, executives believe several other teams, such as Memphis, Utah, Dallas and Brooklyn, will also provide competition for Harris.”

By the time Butler was traded to Miami, and the Sixers decided to pivot from the obvious superstar and instead spend nearly half a billion on a core of Harris, Simmons, Al Horford, Josh Richardson to “complement” Joel’s prime… well, it didn’t take long to realize what a disaster Harris’ own $180M, five-year deal was.

Without reports of a whopping rival offer, it truly felt as if the team had bid against themselves there.

2020 NBA Playoffs

The Sixers were swept in the bubble by the Boston Celtics, and Harris looked very durable, but nothing special.

Memes of how little he and Horford produced relative to their salaries ruled the day.

2021

By the time the Sixers lost to the Atlanta Hawks in the second round, Simmons, and to a lesser extent coach Doc Rivers, drew local fan ire. But Harris once again came up vitally short in a monster home game.

OK, so maybe he had a bone bruise he was nursing, and he never complained to his credit, but still… shooting just 47.5 percent from the floor and 36.4 percent from three wasn’t going to cut it. He shot 8-of-24 in Game 7, absorbing too many ineffectual possessions. Owning his shortcomings, he’d post:

OK, sure there were supporters of his throw-back style of play and durability.

But by this time nearly everyone around here was looking for ways to trade him along with Simmons… and who knows how much easier Daryl Morey’s job would have been if he hadn’t felt any need to dump Harris’ salary along with the then disgruntled Simmons.

Would that have helped the team land Tyrese Haliburton instead of James Harden? We’ll never know, but we do know: no team wanted to take on the remainder of Harris’ still comically exorbitant salary.

2022

Sometimes Harris looked really good! This first round series vs. Toronto was easily the best he’s ever consistently looked in a Sixers uniform during meaningful play:

He’d had a heart-to-heart with Doc Rivers and Morey ball’d his game on the fly, taking more threes and less long twos than in years past.

“Tobias has had to make more changes than anybody on our team. And he keeps doing it without complaint, and it’s such a great example for what a good teammate should be. And he’s been doing it every night,” Doc Rivers said as Harris stymied Pascal Siakam on one end and got buckets on the other.

OK, and maybe he tweaked a knee before the next Miami series?

But in the end, Harris shot just 48 percent from the floor and 33 percent from distance vs. Butler and co. He went out with a whimper for the fourth straight postseason and Butler, who would lead his team to a Conference Finals in three out of four seasons, and two Finals berths, would baptize his former organization with this question only Plato can answer:

And you know what didn’t help? With Butler’s voice fresh in our minds, reading from NBA Insider Jake Fischer that “Harris’ representation has made it known that the veteran would like more on-ball opportunities within the Sixers’ offense, particularly in pick-and-roll action.”

Lol!!!! BRO!?!?

Daryl Morey even revealed how worried he was for Harris’ own psyche as the fans turned on him:

“I got super frightened last year [when Harris] went through his thing where like the fans were booing him and he seemed to be going down this dark road where he was gonna heel turn and get the whole town to hate him.”

2023

It got so much worse. This was where Harris reallllly began to lose us.

Up popped a flurry of puff pieces from journalists about how awesome and misused he was via his own camp. Remember when his agent and father Torrell Harris said: “….Tobias is an assassin scorer. I mean they can’t stop him. Nobody in the league can stop him. So he’s proven that over his career even when he was with the Clippers he was an assassin scorer….And then [L.A.] traded him …. to the Sixers. Ever since [then] the Sixers,’ they put him in the corner.”

Dude… do you even watch the games? Harris was like the FIRST OPTION against Atlanta in that Game 7!

We collectively lost our minds wondering if we wanted him to make “quicker decisions” or play “thoughtlessly.” But nothing worked.

In the series vs. the Boston Celtics in 2023, the assassin scorer shot just 48.6 percent from the floor and 26 percent from distance. In the nauseatingly winnable monster close-out home game, dude shot 1-for-7 with 2 points. Womp womp. Philly had a late lead but simply stopped scoring down the stretch. Their highest-paid player was worse than a net zero.

You know how Allen Iverson talks about being #BuiltForThis town? Harris was basically the opposite.

2024

The Sixers hosted the Knicks in Philly for Game 6 and lost by three points. Harris went 0-for-2 for zero points. So yeah, he fittingly capped off his Philly tenure in the most putrid fashion imaginable. He looked simply terrified, played miserably, and didn’t deliver vet-min value, let alone max value.

Multiple names Morey signed off the scrap heap for $2-$4M bucks easily outperformed one of the league’s richest players.

The fans rejoiced when the pain was over and Paul George was coming to replace him.

Today

The fan-Harris decathection and detachment process was completed years before his five-year, near-max deal mercifully expired. We’d all moved on way before that day came.

To win big in the NBA you have to be able to play both the babyface hero and the heel, to borrow some pro wrestling parlance. You have to be able to smile like Maxey in Philly, and sneer like Maxey at MSG. Harris had everything anyone could have asked for in a teammate in terms of personal game sacrifice and locker room likability.

He embedded himself in the community, he worked tirelessly to improve community literacy rates, he provided charity and did community events, he spoke out bravely against injustice, but he didn’t play well in the biggest home games of his career.

In an alternative universe, the Sixers’ paid Butler $198M back in 2019 and gave Harris the exact same $180M deal he got and it all worked out.

Harris may have played well in the games they were up double digits and sure, maybe have played poorly in the close ones they lost, but he’d forever have a place in our hearts as the good guy, the glue guy, the locker room cohesive necessity who bridged gaps and cut tensions between Butler (who’d likely have run Brett Brown, Markelle Fultz, Ben Simmons and perhaps Doc Rivers out of town) and Joel Embiid.

In that universe, we’d fondly remember how fun and likable Harris was, how much he and Boban once made us smile, and some game where (as a fourth or fifth option) he actually delivered.

But in the end, we didn’t get that universe. We had this one — for five years of Joel Embiid’s precious prime. So yeah, don’t blame Tobias, he’s a solid NBA player who could have been a really helpful 7th man. Only 163 players have more career points in history. Only 21 active players have scored more regular season points. He’s no bum. And don’t blame the Philly fans for being too hard on him. They were fair, whether it helped or not.

Just blame the Sixers’ pre-Morey leadership group for paying Harris… oh about $115M too much. That’s why now it’s clear, though little fault of his own, Tobias Harris lost Pennsylvania.