Philly Front Office

“I bet all this team of scrappy upstarts needs to beat Lebron James is an unhappy, lumbering center who might hate basketball!” – Doug Collins, probably

Fresh off a Cinderella run to [checks notes] the second round of the playoffs after beating the Bulls, the Sixers were feeling themselves.  When you beat the #1 seed without its two best players (Derek Rose and Joakim Noah) and can take the 4th seed Celtics to 7 games¹, you are obviously on the precipice of greatness.  It should be noted that if you squint, you can see a team of solid role players in need of a star leader not unlike the 2001 Iverson Finals team.  Wouldn’t you know it, one was available!  In just a few short months, a franchise altering trade would turn the NBA on its head. 

On October 27, 2012, James Harden was traded from the Oklahoma City Thunder to the Houston Rockets for basically two first round picks.  The Thunder, terrified of having to pay all of Harden, Kevin Durant, and Russell Westbrook tried to get ahead of the situation by splitting up its star trio that just went to the NBA Finals.  This effectively killed a potential dynasty in its infancy, made the Rockets into a perennial contender, and turned Harden into a household name.  Why do we care? Well, this was only about two months after the Sixers nuked their future with a trade of their own.  It’s a good thing no one on the Sixers had the foresight to see if the Thunder were open for business before making their own deal.

On August 10, 2012, as part of a 4 team trade the Sixers sent their last two first round picks (Nikola Vučević and Moe Harkless²), their best player (Andre Igoudala), and a future first round pick out the door for Andrew Bynum of the Lakers.  Dwight Howard went from Orlando to Los Angeles and Denver barely gave up anything for Iggy.  Even before anything had a chance to play out, Philly lost this trade.  They gave up way more than anyone and didn’t get the best player back.³  Everything about this trade was a debacle from the start including the thought process behind it.  The flaw in the plan was decimating a core of role players in search of a star.  Without one, what is the point of the other?

The team catch phrase for the move was someone who could “move the needle.”  They thought they were getting a 24-year-old local boy fresh off a 24-12-2 stat line with room to grow.  How they could even look at those stats without impaling themselves on red flags though is a feat in itself.  Even a casual fan knew that Bynum never looked like he enjoyed basketball.  Yes, that is subjective and can be explained away by teaming with a grueling task master in Kobe Bryant, but how could it be overlooked when contemplating such a franchise altering move?  Worse yet were the medicals.  He had missed huge chunks of 5 out of his 7 seasons and WAS INJURED WHEN THE TRADE HAPPENED!  The Magic didn’t do a straight Howard/Bynum swap because they didn’t want him. Shouldn’t that tell you something?  The Lakers absolutely fleeced the Sixers into making their trade for Dwight happen.  Just a total robbery.

Just how bad did the trade end up being?  Bynum’s arthritic knees were a problem from the jump causing him to completely miss training camp to rest.  Somehow, despite not moving, he suffered another injury, this time a bone bruise unrelated to the arthritis.  His knees were declared “degenerative.”  A tentative “All-Star break” debut was nixed after he further injured himself bowling.  Come. On! What the F?  Not helping anything were his bizarre appearances.  His hair was in a permed bowl cut at one point and “not wanting to be there” just oozed from his enormous, doughy, barely mobile frame.  After a completely lost year, the only positive was that his contract was up and they never signed him to an extension that had been very seriously contemplated at the time of the trade. Imagine, and I absolutely will not for this book, if they gave him a max contract of $100m over 5 years?!?!?!

On the bright side, from this dumpster fire came the official landing on rock bottom.  One year after naively believing they had a chance, the Sixers were left with a before-he-was-great Jrue Holiday and not much else.  They traded their best player, their young players, and their draft picks for absolutely nothing.  Everyone who wants to label this as the first year of The Process forgets that they were trying to be good in 2012-13, which just makes it that much more of a travesty.  Like Chris Farley in Wayne’s World 2, they had no place else to go.

1. The score was 54-55 with 11 minutes to go in the 4^th.  They took this as “we were this close” when they should have seen it for all of the smoke and mirrors it truly was. ↩︎
2. ♪♪ How could you trade Moe Harkless ♪♪ ↩︎
3. They were the patsy.  The Lakers and Magic needed an idiot to make their trade work.  Good God that’s the Sixers’ music!!!. ↩︎