For Philadelphia 76ers fans, this is The Bad Place.
“The hatred among Sixers fans is at one of the highest levels I’ve ever seen here in Philadelphia,” Joe DeCamara, a Philadelphia radio host, said in a recent interview.
A combination of bad luck and bad strategy almost left the team where it was in the mid-2000s at the end of the Allen Iverson era: adrift with no path to contend for a championship. Whatever plans Daryl Morey, the team’s president of basketball operations, had when he took over in 2020 seems to have been resolved.
“We feel like people are underestimating the Sixers right now,” Morey told reporters at his introductory news conference, “but we’ve got to go out there and prove it.”
What proved, in fact, was quite the opposite, noted recently when James Harden, the team’s second-best player, publicly dismissed Morey as part of his quest to force a trade to another team.
Discontent is nothing new for star players, but in the case of the Sixers it became very public at a time when their fans were at their wits’ end. The wider public has developed an appetite for this brand of superstar drama as it unfolds every summer, but the Sixers, perhaps more than any other NBA team, are in a poor position to demand of patience as the organization put its fans through a decade of stops and starts, including the rebuilding plan known as The Process.
Harden’s relationship with the Sixers has been Good News-Bad News this summer. The Good: Harden, a 33-year-old guard, has opted into the final year of his contract. The Bad: Provided the Sixers trade him to the Los Angeles Clippers, according to two people familiar with the request but not authorized to discuss it publicly. To make matters worse, videos surfaced on social media this week showing Harden disparaging Morey while talking to reporters at an Adidas event in China.
“Daryl Morey is a liar and I’m not going to be a part of an organization that he’s a part of,” Harden said in the videos. Harden’s agent and Adidas did not respond to requests from The New York Times seeking to confirm the authenticity of the videos. A Sixers spokesman declined to comment.
The exact nature of Harden’s anger at Morey is unclear, but his resentment is a rare setback nonetheless. Harden is one of the greatest offensive players ever, and few defenders can guard him alone because of his combination of ball handling and size. He is one of the few players who can make a team successful on his own — when he chooses to.
Harden and Joel Embiid, Philadelphia’s star center and the reigning Most Valuable Player Award winner, share some of the responsibility for the Sixers’ lack of success. They have often underperformed in key moments in the postseason, and did so again this spring, when the Sixers lost to Boston in the second round.
This has fueled even more pessimism in Philadelphia, where sports-related pessimism is as important to the city’s identity as the hoagie.
“As a fan, it’s simple: I want the team to win,” said Amos Lee, a folk singer-songwriter and avid Sixers fan. “I want them to spend all the money and get all the best players and put the coolest people in the team and that’s it. But I don’t know what franchise it is.”
Lee added, “It’s been mismanaged for a long time.”
The Sixers hadn’t made the Eastern Conference finals since 2001, and Doc Rivers, who was hired as head coach a few weeks before Morey joined the team, had a history of falling short in the playoffs. However, Morey kept him for three seasons. And after Ben Simmons, the star point guard drafted two years after Embiid, asked for a trade out of Philadelphia, Morey fought back before swinging a trade for Harden, who is trying to escape his second straight that team. Now Philadelphia is his third.
According to a person familiar with Morey’s thinking, the plan remains to bring Harden back after the Sixers ended trade negotiations with the Clippers without reaching what they believed would be a suitable deal.
That’s not a plan — that’s an unreasonable expectation. Harden has shown he’s willing to hold out or feed the floor if he doesn’t get the trade he wants. And even with Harden back, the team didn’t make any real improvements this off-season and, in fact, lost several rotation players in free agency. If the 76ers didn’t get out of the second round last year, how will they do next season with a less talented team and a sad Harden?
If Harden does go, he would be the latest in a string of Sixers stars to leave the team under dire circumstances, stretching back to Charles Barkley in 1992. Before Simmons and Harden, Iverson was frustrated with the franchise. when he was traded in 2006as usual Andre Iguodala when he was traded in 2012.
Morey has long shown little interest in fielding a struggling team. When he was an executive in Houston in 2019he traded Chris Paul and multiple first-round picks for Russell Westbrook after losing to the Rockets in the second round of the Western Conference playoffs. Before that, Morey dismantled a middling Rockets team that included a young Kyle Lowry. Those moves allowed the Rockets in 2012 to acquire the star that would propel them toward true contention: Harden.
If Morey decides to hit the eject button during the Embiid and Harden era in Philadelphia, after less than two full seasons, he’s shown a willingness to make tough choices. But that requires patience that Sixers fans don’t have, and asks the team’s ownership to accept a near-term regression and financial hit while they planning for a new arena.
But the clock isn’t just ticking on what to do with Harden. It also resonates with Embiid. He said recently that he wants to win a championship if it is in Philadelphia “or anywhere else.” Later he suggested that he is not seriousalthough that didn’t ease the anxiety of some Sixers fans.
On the one hand, fans understand his anxiety. He endured several different leaders in the front office, a coaching carousel and lonely stars without a single conference finals appearance to show for it. But on the other hand, those same coaches, executives and teammates also had to endure his disappointing playoff performances.
“They haven’t done a good job around him,” said Spike Eskin, co-host of “The Rights To Ricky Sanchez,” a Sixers fan podcast not affiliated with the team. “The organization has been a mess for the entirety of his career. But he’s as much to blame for their lack of success in the playoffs as anyone.”
But right now, Morey doesn’t have much of a choice. That was partly up to him. The best option in a sea of bad guys might involve some wishful thinking: Maybe Harden shows up to camp in good shape and reconsiders his desire to leave. Maybe Embiid puts together another MVP-level season and doesn’t get hurt, as he often has.
They might even get out of the second round.
