Carter-Williams' shooting made him expendable to Sixers

Sam Hinkie said the only guarantee he gives the rolling tide of players who pass through the 76ers' roster is that they will be treated well as long as it lasts. Sometimes, of course, that's not very long.

"Every day, we'll try to make you better, but that's the extent of the agreement," Hinkie said Friday, as the general manager explained the trade-deadline moves that shook up the locker room. "We tell them, 'Our goals are not just about you. You could be a part of the larger picture. . . . We'd love you to be part of that, but there are no promises.' "

Michael Carter-Williams might have thought that didn't necessarily apply to him, but the point guard got a rude surprise Thursday, when the Sixers sent him to Milwaukee in a three-team trade that brought back a first-round draft pick that could be very valuable but doesn't have to turn out that way.

"In management's eye, to the people who made this decision, the benefit outweighed holding onto Michael," said coach Brett Brown.

The benefit is a Lakers draft pick that is top-five protected this year but only top-three protected after that. It is possible, even likely, that the Lakers will keep the selection for the forthcoming draft. After that, who knows? Could the Lakers parlay that pick and a large amount of available salary-cap space to lure free agents to Southern California - never a tough sell - and turn around quickly enough that their pick in the 2016 draft might not be that great? Well, yes.

"It's almost impossible to get your hands on a pick that at least has the chance to be a high lottery pick," Hinkie said. "Those picks don't move around much. That made us consider [the trade] and, in the end, feel it was the right thing to do to move the program forward."

On the face of it, that's fine. But it is just as likely that it had been determined the team wouldn't reach its destination with Carter-Williams as the point guard, and trading him was an inevitability. The Sixers might really benefit if the Lakers' pick becomes a great one, but Hinkie is also willing to accept the possibility that the team will get only a so-so player in return for Carter-Williams.

The reality is that the Sixers watched Carter-Williams for nearly two years, worked with him, coached him, and then had to decide whether the point guard would ever shoot the ball well enough to play on a championship-level team. He has a few other holes in his game, and some strong positives as well, but his shooting is the reason Carter-Williams is no longer in Philadelphia.

"Shooting is an important part of the game, increasingly so," Hinkie said. "We talk a lot about the way teams are built. When you watch games in June, there are a lot of threes being shot and a lot of games being won in the balance of makes and misses. All the best teams are really strong behind the line."

That's what the Sixers will need eventually. Carter-Williams is actually shooting worse this season than he did as a rookie, and that was pretty bad. On shots taken more than three feet from the basket, he made 32.9 percent in 2013-14. This season, Carter-Williams is making just 27.6 percent of his shots that aren't layups or dunks. His three-point percentage is barely 25 percent.

It is awful, but it isn't a surprise. His fundamentals and his shot selection are dreadful, and he doesn't appear to learn from his mistakes. At times this season, Brown has said that Carter-Williams was hindered by missing summer workouts as he recovered from shoulder surgery. Maybe that was not simply an excuse, but the organization stopped waiting for improvement on Thursday. While he still had trade value, while he was still the reigning rookie of the year, Hinkie got what he could - and that might turn out wonderfully.

As part of Thursday's wrangling, the Sixers got Isaiah Canaan from Houston. Canaan, a backup point guard with the Rockets, is known as a good shooter. He'll be the starter for the Sixers the rest of the season, but Hinkie said Canaan will really be evaluated as a potential off-the-bench scorer for the future.

"His identifiable NBA skill is that he can shoot," Brown said. "We all know as we start playing with Joel [Embiid] and Nerlens [Noel], we're going to have to sprinkle some perimeter players in the game. That's this game. You better put the ball in the hole from the perimeter."

The hole in Carter-Williams' game is that he can't do that, at least not now. The Sixers are gambling they can do better with someone else, even though that someone else hasn't been identified. It could be D'Angelo Russell or Emmanuel Mudiay in the forthcoming draft. It could be some kid still playing in high school. It could be they swing and miss.

"The onus is on us to find the right set of players, whether the ones flying into Philadelphia today, the ones we find in the next several months, or the ones we bring in this summer and beyond to keep progressing," Hinkie said.

Once they are here, of course, no promises they make it all the way around the track to the finish line. Just ask Michael Carter-Williams.