If the future of the franchise is to be any brighter than the present, the performance and health of the big names must improve. But there are some silver linings below the larger disappointments.
At the beginning of the All-Star break, I wrote about what a welcomed pause the break would give everyone. For a week, there were some regular annoyances with this team that we could forget about. We did not have to worry about checking the latest injury report. We did not have to watch Joel Embiid or Paul George try to gut out inefficient performances at 60-70% health, if that. We did not have to endure another game hanging in the balance only for the Sixers to find a way to screw it up in the final minutes.
All of that starts up again on Thursday when the Sixers welcome in the reigning champion Boston Celtics to Wells Fargo Center and I wouldn’t bet on any kind of new-found life from the Sixers coming out of the break. Some fans may have waved the white flag on 2024-25 earlier than others. By now, it sure feels like most of the fanbase is ready for this to be over. Fans are seeking silver linings given the franchise may not even hold its own lottery pick after this season, which is always the most obvious example of light at the end of the tunnel after a tough year.
This week’s reported signing of Lonnie Walker IV was another example that Daryl Morey and his staff are leaving no stone unturned. Fans might be ready to fast forward to the offseason, but the front office is at least trying to maximize the final two months of 2024-25, however the season ends. The more you dive into Walker’s career, the more you’ll realize this no-risk addition comes with at least a mild degree of upside.
Walker, 26, is a Reading native who won Pennsylvania’s Mr. Basketball award in 2017 as the state’s top high school player. He was a McDonald’s All-American coming out of high school and was recruited to Miami by current Temple head coach Adam Fisher. Walker, the 18th overall selection in the 2018 draft, had some moments with San Antonio after one season in college. But he did not earn a second contract with the Spurs following the expiration of his rookie deal. In 2022-23 and 2023-24 he played with the Lakers and Nets on a pair of one-year deals respectively and appeared poised to join the Celtics this season on another one-year deal but was waived just before the regular season started and has played this season overseas.
If the end of that sounds familiar, it’s because Guerschon Yabusele was let go by Boston prior to the 2019-20 season and also proceeded to make his way across the Atlantic. Yabusele was out of the NBA for a much longer period of time than Walker was, but landed in Philly after a successful Olympic campaign last summer. He has now established himself as a viable NBA rotation player in his late 20s. He’s scheduled to hit free agency in about four months and this time the Sixers won’t be the only NBA team interested in his services.
Who knows if Walker’s Sixers tenure will be as successful as Yabusele’s has been? For what it’s worth, Walker is a few years younger than the Frenchman which is certainly a positive when looking to unearth a late bloomer. It sure seems like Morey realized that relying on veterans like Kyle Lowry, Eric Gordon and Reggie Jackson in the backcourt behind Tyrese Maxey and without Jared McCain was a mistake and has attempted to make amends. Not only have the Sixers now added Walker, but Jared Butler and Quentin Grimes were deadline additions that are playing lots of minutes already.
If we zoom out beyond these in-season moves, we’ll find more additions that might not have been raved about or garnered national attention at the time they were made, but turned out to be good moves by Morey. Drafting McCain at 16th overall last year was a home run and McCain only played 23 games this season. Signing Kelly Oubre to a one-year deal just prior to the start of 2023-24 definitely worked out and re-signing Oubre to a 1+1 looks like a good move as well. Justin Edwards is having a pretty nice rookie season given he was an undrafted free agent. Ricky Council IV was brought in as an undrafted free agent two years ago, and has seen his role grow this season. Council should be around at least for the franchise’s short-term future. We’ll save the best for last here and include the drafting of Maxey at 21st overall in 2020 as a low-cost investment that has already returned fantastic profits for the Sixers.
These are all the kinds of moves that allow contenders to remain contenders and sustain success. Adding young talent to the roster that can be developed and eventually moved into bigger roles will give any contending team the next wave of talent to stay competitive with. It’s much harder to do in the absence of a slew of lottery picks or copious amounts of cap space, but the best executives are able to pull it off.
Of course, we all know the Sixers aren’t a contender this year and opinions on Morey are much more negative than positive at the moment. This is because the Sixers missed on their bigger moves. Big hits can cover up small misses but there’s probably not enough small hits to cover up big misses, especially in a sport like basketball where the rosters are the smallest. The George contract certainly looks like an albatross and extending Embiid was premature at the very least. It’s not fair to group Caleb Martin in with these two players but Martin certainly wasn’t signed to a four-year deal last summer with the idea that he’d be traded at the deadline of his first season in an effort to get younger.
While James Harden had his moments with the Sixers, most fans would probably characterize his acquisition as more of a miss than a hit by Morey. In fairness, Morey was in a tough spot dealing with a depreciating asset like Ben Simmons. Simmons didn’t want to play for the Sixers and Morey probably couldn’t have done much better than Harden in his search for a high-end player back in a Simmons trade. Nevertheless, fans will probably never be confident in Morey’s ability to connect on a big enough swing to win a championship in Philadelphia and as Embiid ages, Morey may need to hit on more than one big swing.
But if there’s one good thing that stands out in his tenure as President of Basketball Operations, it should be that the front office has done well at finding depth pieces in their 20s to round out the rotation and potentially grow into bigger roles down the line. This should make them less reliant on wasting roster spots on past-their-prime bench players in their mid 30s. Again, none of this really matters if the team’s top-end talent doesn’t perform the way it’s designed to. But it’s not irrelevant either.