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Obligatory Revisiting of the “Sixers Should Have Traded for Tyrese Haliburton” Topic
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The Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder are tied 1-1 in the NBA Finals, and therefore Sixers fans are asking if the team should have traded for Tyrese Haliburton when the opportunity possibly arose. The report they’re referring to came from the Inquirer’s Keith Pompey, who wrote in January of 2022 wrote that the Sixers weren’t interested in a deal that also included Harrison Barnes and draft picks. A year later, Haliburton was on Paul George’s podcast and mentioned the rumor, which gave it some life well after it had passed:
A few weeks after the report, the Sixers acquired James Harden and Paul Millsap in a trade with the Nets, sending Ben Simmons, Seth Curry, Andre Drummond, and two first round draft picks to Brooklyn. Thus ended the Simmons holdout/mental health saga. The Sixers went on to lose 4-2 to the Heat in the second round of the playoffs, then won 54 games the following year and lost 4-3 to the Celtics, and the Harden era ended with a trade to the LA Clippers.
I was listening to WIP the other day and this Haliburton topic came up. Spike Eskin vehemently pushed back on it, claiming that it was fed to Pompey by Tobias Harris’ agent father. For what it’s worth, nobody else connected Haliburton to the Sixers at the time, not Woj or Shams or Marc Stein or any of the national insiders. The Kings ended up moving Haliburton, Buddy Hield, and Tristan Thompson to Indy and returning Domantas Sabonis, Justin Holiday, Jeremy Lamb, and a 2023 second-round pick. They kept De’Aaron Fox as their primary ball handler and went on to win 48 games the following season, then fell back to Earth as an average basketball team.
Regardless of whether or not Haliburton was a realistic target for the Sixers back then, he was not yet a star. He didn’t have his breakout until the following season, so there was certainly risk in returning a 15 point-per-game point guard, just 21 years old at the time, to pair with Joel Embiid in an effort to get over the playoff hump. Haliburton got his first All-Star nod in 22-23 as the main guy on a pre-Pascal Siakam Indy team that won 35 games. It took them a year to make the leap and get to here they are now.
So the question really is one of timeline. Harden was the proven quantity at the time, and probably matched Embiid’s window better than anyone else. He was 33 during his full Sixers season, played 58 regular season games, and averaged 21 points and a career high 10.7 assists. He shot 38.5% from three. He won Game 1 and Game 4 against Boston pretty much by himself and then combined with Embiid to choke away a Game 6 lead, and that was pretty much the end. Hardens highs were high and his lows were low, but aside from the 2021 Hawks series, that particular Sixers team had the best chance to go to the Eastern Conference Finals, and they blew it after putting themselves in a great position to finally get the monkey off their back.
Of course, you could ask yourself if any of this matters. Revisionist history is a sports fan favorite. We’re all old enough to remember when the Eagles should have drafted Earl Thomas instead of Brandon Graham and Justin Jefferson instead of Jalen Reagor. The former ended up working out just fine, and the latter was a mistake that Howie Roseman fixed en route to two Super Bowl appearances in three seasons. Plus, we all know that the Sixers go as Embiid goes, and unless his knees are magically healing and/or he is aging in reverse, you could put prime Michael Jordan next to him and it might not matter in 2025.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com