Daryl Morey was the right man for the job, but the job has changed for the Sixers
Morey believed that championships are won by teams with the most star power. He chased that vision throughout his career, which led to short-term decisions. The Sixers need to be thinking long term.
Daryl Morey was once the right man for the job.
He was the wrong man for the job now.
Whatever the Sixers’ reasons for parting ways with their chief personnel architect on Tuesday night, they are justified on the above grounds. The only course they can chart is one that Morey has never before captained. They must organically build a basketball team, and they must do it sensibly, the good old fashioned way. Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe aren’t just the future. They are the present. At least, that’s how the Sixers must proceed.
Whether Morey could have succeeded is besides the point. The question was whether he would have. There was enough doubt about that to warrant a change.
Morey has never backed down from his stance that championships are won by the teams with the most star power. He has chased that vision throughout his career. With the Rockets, he attempted to pair James Harden with Dwight Howard, then Chris Paul and Russell Westbrook. With the Sixers, he attempted to pair Joel Embiid with Harden and then Paul George. The more time that passes, the more one can argue that Morey’s biggest issue was actually the tragically flawed superstar he had as incumbent.
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I think that’s oversimplifying things, and also diminishing Morey’s tenure with the Rockets. Houston’s biggest problem was that it played in the same conference as one of the greatest teams ever assembled in Golden State. Morey built a team around Harden that was plenty functional, complementing him with two-way veteran grinders like Trevor Ariza, P.J. Tucker, and Eric Gordon and drafting a rim-running/protecting center in Clint Capela.
Morey did the same with Embiid and Ben Simmons in his first year with the Sixers. He added Danny Green and Seth Curry and drafted Tyrese Maxey. The Sixers were the best team in the Eastern Conference during the 2020-21 regular season. If not for the whims of fate — injuries to Embiid and Green, namely — they easily could have wound up in the NBA Finals.
That feels like a lifetime ago. But any fair evaluation of Morey’s tenure must start with where it began. Simmons had just been named third-team All-NBA in his third season. Al Horford was one year into a four-year, $109 million contract. The Sixers were less than a year removed from trading Markelle Fultz as a sunk cost. They were one year removed from holding three picks in the Top 33 of a draft where Keldon Johnson was the only legitimate playoff rotation piece they could have selected with any of the three. They were two years removed from trading away Mikal Bridges shortly after selecting him.
That is to say, nearly all of the most consequential decisions that led the Sixers to this point had already been made. They’d traded up for Fultz. They’d traded for and signed Tobias Harris. They’d chosen Simmons over Jimmy Butler. They’d traded Bridges on draft night. They’d signed Horford. The two most consequential moves that Morey made were the draftings of Maxey and VJ Edgecombe. Those are the seven plot points that led the Sixers to where they are.
Everything else is secondary. It’s also the stuff that had exhausted Sixers fans’ patience with Morey. Trading for Harden. Signing George and extending Embiid. Trading away Jared McCain. The first two were deck chairs on the Titanic. Both led to a better place, whether it was Morey’s intention or not. They ultimately landed a valuable future first round pick for Harden, and stunk so bad with George and Embiid that they got to draft Edgecombe. I’m sure that sounds like bending over backwards, but good decision-makers price in all of those possibilities. Morey is unquestionably a good decision-maker in the short-to-medium term, which is the window he has always cited as his scope.
The window needs to be a little bit wider now. The Sixers need to be thinking long term. They just got whupped by a team that rose to prominence via good old fashioned decision-making. The Knicks were fortunate to sign a unicorn free agent in Jalen Brunson. They traded six first round picks for Bridges, Josh Hart, and Karl-Anthony Towns. But they also acquired O.G. Anunoby in exchange for two players they drafted (R.J. Barrett and Immanuel Quickley).
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Morey didn’t have the blank slate the Knicks had after seven straight losing seasons. He made more of what he did have than most could have expected. Think about it. What were your expectations after the Sixers’ abysmal 2019-20 ending in the bubble? What would they have been if you’d known Embiid would have a career-threatening knee issue? In two of Morey’s six seasons, the Sixers ended up exactly where they did with Butler in 2018-19: playing a Game 7 to go to the Eastern Conference Finals. In a third, they lost a great first round series to the Knicks. In a fourth, they beat the heavily favored Celtics in seven.
But ...
They need to build now. The Sixers have clearly reached a point where they need to build a roster independent of their two highest-paid and most veteran players. Maxey and Edgecombe are the present around which the Sixers must build. Every decision they make should be geared to toward building a roster that can contend with those two players at its center.
What matters most is that the Sixers have an opportunity for a new era. That alone warrants a fresh set of eyes. It is an opportunity they are fortunate to possess, given how badly they mucked up the last one they had. Then again, the mucking up of the last one began when they hired Bryan Colangelo as the fresh set of eyes.
