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What if the Sixers Had Just Stuck With James Harden?
By Sean Barnard
Published:
The Philadelphia 76ers drift aimlessly into the home stretch of the season. They cling to the hope of getting healthy to generate some sort of playoff pulse while rotating through their rolodex of fringe NBA players as they attempt to tread water.
Joel Embiid remains sidelined with increasingly unclear injury updates, Tyrese Maxey joined him on the sidelines with a tendon issue in the pinkie finger of his shooting hand, and Paul George waits out the final handful of games of his suspension. This trio last took the court together on January 29th, and they have suited up for 32 of a possible 151 games across the two seasons they’ve been assembled.
As the NBA season progressed into what should be the most exciting stretch, and people of the Philadelphia region casually check their app of choice to see what players are even suiting up on any given night, it’s impossible not to feel discouraged by the direction of the franchise. This is especially the case when there is a laundry list of mistakes made for what would have made this outlook much different.
James Harden was traded to the Sixers a few years ago as the perceived missing piece to get this team over the championship hump. It was a gamble made over the same player Daryl Morey largely staked his career on in the early parts of his Rockets tenure, which returned wildly successful results. Under Morey’s watch, Harden ascended from the Sixth Man of the Oklahoma City Thunder to a three-time scoring champion and MVP who was more influential to the game of basketball than all but a handful of players in the sport’s great history.
Even in Philadelphia, Harden was far more successful than is sometimes recognized. Across his 79 regular-season games between 2021 and 2023, the 11-time All-Star averaged 21.0 points, 10.6 assists, and 6.4 rebounds while shooting 37.0% on three-point attempts. He led the NBA in assists in his lone full season with the organization, was more compatible with Joel Embiid’s skill-set than any other star, and the Sixers’ big man would not have earned his MVP without the constant pick-and-rolls and pocket passes the two flourished with.
As has become a common theme in this era of Sixers basketball, they were eliminated in the second round of both seasons that Harden spent in Philadelphia. In 2022, the Sixers lost in six games to the Miami Heat in a series in which Embiid missed two games due to an orbital fracture and concussion he sustained in the opening round against the Raptors. He was also already playing through a torn ligament in his shooting hand thumb before these issues popped up. The following season, the Sixers lost to the Boston Celtics after taking a 3-2 series advantage and failing to close the deal. For a brief period of time, they were the betting favorite to win the NBA title after taking this series advantage. Ultimately, they failed to execute, with Harden a major part of this conversation, and it was added to the list of missed franchise opportunities.
As the Sixers continue to roll out a depleted rotation of fringe NBA players, it’s impossible not to wonder what if? What if the Sixers had stuck it out with Harden and committed to him as what seemed to be the initial plan for both Harden and Morey when he was first traded here?
To be clear, this is a conversation that has fully been brought on by the concept of 20/20 hindsight. I personally saw enough of the James Harden experience during the soulless 112-88 Game 7 loss to the Celtics when Jayson Tatum dropped 51 on the Sixers’ heads, and Harden finished with the mild stat line of nine points, seven assists, six rebounds, and five turnovers, while shooting 3-for-11 from the floor and 1-for-5 on three-point attempts. Harden attempted fewer shot attempts than Tobias Harris in the postseason exit and got the free-throw line for only two attempts, looking disengaged well before the game was out of reach.
Morey saw enough of the experience to seemingly pull whatever theoretical offer was on the table and end the Harden era in Philadelphia. This rocked their relationship to the point where Harden took it upon himself to call Morey a liar in front of a group of Chinese children overseas:
There are plenty of fair critiques of Harden’s personality and play style, but it cannot be denied that he is the greatest trade request artist of all time. Between gaining weight, going through the motions on the court, and traveling across continents to make his unhappiness heard, we may never see a star with as deep a bag of antics as Harden possesses. If A.J. Brown had a fraction of these skills, he would have been catching passes on the Patriots months ago.
But the daydreams of Harden remaining on the team have been thoughts that have infiltrated the Sixer’ locker room. During the Joel Embiid tell-all article that dropped this summer on ESPN, the former MVP was not shy to romanticize playing alongside Harden and pointed to his belief that this was the right pairing.
“Embiid’s season and a half long stint alongside Harden, with whom he grew close, accelerated Embiid’s evolution as a leader,” wrote Dotun Akintoye in July. “Embiid speaks of Harden with deep affection. He thinks the 76ers gave up too quickly on that iteration of the team. What was required after their Game 7 collapse against Boston in 2023 was tinkering in the margins, not another restart…. I kept going back to it, the continuity,” Embiid says. “When you feel like you have something, instead of building up on it, you just start over. And that’s been like that every single year.”
The article also discussed Embiid’s disappointment with how his relationship with Harden has deteriorated. This was put on display in the Sixers’ most recent matchup with the Cleveland Cavaliers, with lip-readers making quick work of the interaction between the former teammates.
The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t, and the Sixers seemingly got burned by this principle.
In theory, it makes complete sense why threading the needle to create a max contract slot for Paul George was the best direction for the franchise. But for all the basketball sense the George addition made, he carried personality concerns of his own. For all of his faults, Harden at least plays basketball at a regular rate. Since leaving the Sixers in the 2022-23 offseason, Harden has suited up for 210 regular-season matchups and 13 playoff games. Over the same period, Embiid has played 72 regular-season games and six postseason matchups, while George has suited up for 142 regular season games and six playoff matchups, with the 74 games he played for the Clippers in 2023-24 before signing the max contract deal with the Sixers doing some heavy lifting. The postseason is a different conversation, but it is a sure thing that the Sixers would not have fallen off a cliff in the regular season the way they have these past two years if Harden was still on the roster.
Maybe it does not matter.
Maybe building a foundation on an oft-injured superstar who has now missed more regular-season games than he has played since he was drafted is too faulty to ever establish a true contending threat.
I am more sympathetic to Joel Embiid than most. He is a caliber of talent that you simply can’t teach. When he is at his best, there is not a single player in the league who is consistently better than him, and this in itself makes it worth doing everything possible to make it work. His critics are loud, but when you dive into the actual facts of why the Sixers have come up short in the postseason setting, there are very few times when the bulk of the responsibility can be put on Embiid’s shoulders.
At the same time, Embiid has not uplifted the roster around him and carried this team to postseason wins at the level you would hope for this caliber of player he is. You search through the list of players in the same tier of talent that Embiid deserves to be mentioned in, and you will not really find a player with as empty a postseason resume as Embiid. For the most part, this has given me the belief that he is destined to break through at some point, but these odds have looked increasingly slim as the years go by.
Winning an NBA Championship is an extremely difficult task. It involves threading a needle from a talent, availability, and chemistry standpoint that the Sixers have yet to find the exact formula for. But if you are to say that this team has no chance of winning the NBA Championship going into the year, you will be right 29 out of 30 times. Based on everything else that has gone wrong internally, it is pretty evident that the Sixers were not getting over the championship hump even if Harden was still the MVP version of himself.
But sometimes it’s the journey and not the destination that matters. To this day, the 2000-01 Sixers team that lost to the Lakers in the NBA Finals is brought up among the favorite teams by Philadelphia fans despite that squad failing to lift the trophy. There was a spirit and fight that the Allen Iverson-led roster possessed that was infectious to the city. Of all the attempts building a proper team around Embiid, the Sixers have yet to be able to replicate that level of connection with the fan base.
This journey has becoming increasingly unsatisfactory in recent years as an increased percentage of the season has held this lifeless feeling. For all of his faults, Harden at least plays basketball at a high rate and has had a handful of nights every season that made you believe the Sixers had a chance. He now plays on a Cavaliers team that holds the second-best chance of winning the Eastern Conference,, with the odds nearly 10 times shorter than the Sixers.
The calculation made by Morey was understandable at the time, but the right decision does not always necessarily lead to the right results. The Sixers will do their best to salvage this season and what is left of the Embiid era. But shaving the beard may not have been the organizational facelift the Sixers thought they needed.
Sean Barnard has covered the Philadelphia 76ers and general Philly Sports for over six years in a variety of roles and for multiple outlets. Currently works as a Content Writer for DraftKings Network, Sixers/NBA Insider for Philadelphia's Fox Sports the Gambler, and co-host of Sixers & Phillies Digest on Youtube. Forever Trusting the Process.