Sixers free agent point guard T.J. McConnell remains unsigned as of 3:45 p.m. Monday.

A couple of T.J. reports out there:

Adrian Wojnarowski reported last week that Charlotte was among the teams taking a look at T.J. in the free agent market. 

Here’s the thing –

There are very few point guards still available. Seth Curry got four years and $32 million to return to Dallas. Austin Rivers is going back to the Rockets on a two-year deal. The Sixers might not have any other options here, and T.J. is super affordable coming off a contract that paid him $1.6 million last year. You’re certainly not breaking the bank for an experienced backup who knows the system and also happens to be a fan favorite.


Problem is, McConnell was completely removed from the Sixers playoff rotation. After playing in the game one Brooklyn loss, James Ennis was cleared to return from injury and T.J. was dropped along with Jonathon Simmons.

Said Brett Brown at the time:

First, it’s a difficult decision because T.J. has been a part of our bloodline for a while. The energy he injects is contagious and we all get. Even if you study the stat line from the game we lost, he was a +12, which is pretty good. You start looking at the ripple effect of maybe what can others do from a spatial standpoint. James is able to stretch the floor a little bit more. You try to give Jimmy the ball as a legitimate point guard, a point guard when Ben was not on the court. That influenced that decision. I thought T.J. handled it as we all guessed he would. He’s a wonderful teammate, but it was driven for those reasons I just said.

T.J. came out of the lineup, Jimmy Butler became the secondary ball handler, and the Sixers ran more pick and roll while trimming their rotation down to eight players. McConnell played mostly mop up duty through the rest of the playoffs.

That’s the main issue here, bringing back a guy who was not a playoff contributor when your expectation was to advance to the Eastern Conference finals. For the same reason, I don’t think you can bring back Boban.

The question is whether or not T.J.’s benching was a Butler-inspired outlier, a blip, if you will, because if you go back further, you could certainly point out that the Sixers were much better in game four of the 2018 Boston series, the game in which Robert Covington was benched and McConnell entered the starting lineup. It helped defensively, first, with T.J. sticking himself to Terry Rozier and holding the opposing point guard to a 4-11 shooting mark with a 1-6 three point effort and 11 total points in 39 minutes. Offensively, McConnell went for 19 points, with seven rebounds and five assists in his first career playoff start. He coughed up the ball zero times. It was a tremendous performance.

But part of the problem there, I think, is that T.J. was coming in to solve two problems. One, Ben Simmons was totally walled off and rendered ineffective by Boston. Two, Robert Covington was having a really poor shooting series. In that case, T.J. was seen as a Plan B, while this year his inclusion was Plan A. The adjustment from Brett Brown was to remove him from the rotation, then the Sixers went on to blast the Nets 4-1 to win the series.

So that’s how we have to think about it. Is T.J. McConnell a regular season backup point guard and possible playoff solution? Or is he a regular season backup point guard who ultimately ends up becoming the same liability we saw a few months ago?

Ultimately, this isn’t about the regular season, it’s about the postseason, and it’s hard to justify bringing back anybody who was removed from the playoff rotation back in April. T.J. has done a lot of good things for this team, but the Sixers are gonna have to decide whether or not bringing him back helps this franchise take the next step.