A quick reminder before everyone starts making their travel reservations for next year’s Bucks-Celtics Eastern Conference finals: the two biggest improvements the Sixers can make this offseason will not pop up on the transaction wire.
They were never going to turn themselves into a championship team in the first few weeks of the offseason. P.J. Tucker, De’Anthony Melton, Danuel House — these are smart, sensible additions who leave the Sixers much closer to being the thing that they were not in the postseason: a complete basketball team capable of optimizing its core talent.
At the end of the day, though, that core talent is still the key. In a world where the Sixers are playing for a championship next season, their two biggest offseason acquisitions are a younger James Harden and an older Tyrese Maxey.
There are other necessities. Joel Embiid needs to be more of the player he was during the regular season — a healthy, focused, dominant two-way force — and less of the one he was after tearing a ligament in his thumb against the Rockets. Tucker needs to be a player who is worth the three-year, $33.2 million contract the Sixers have reportedly agreed to pay him.
More than anything, though, Harden needs to be the player whom Daryl Morey thought he was acquiring when he traded Ben Simmons, Seth Curry, Andre Drummond, and two first-round picks for him in mid-February. And if he falls short of that, Maxey needs to make up the difference.
Harden, Embiid, and Maxey. They were always going to be the reason to believe that the Sixers can get themselves out of the conference semifinals. For Embiid, the question will always be one of health. For the other two, it’s whether they show up in September as different players than they were in May. If they do, the Sixers have a chance to enter the regular season as the most improved team in the Eastern Conference.
Naturally, this is mostly about Harden. The offseason has barely begun and the Sixers have already built themselves a rotation that can thrive with a point guard like the one Harden was with the Nets two years ago. With the additions of Melton, Tucker, and House, they have three more playoff-rotation-caliber players than they had against Miami in May. Give Doc Rivers even two of the three a couple of months ago and you’d have to give the Sixers a better-than-even chance at playing the Celtics in the conference semifinals.
Harden doesn’t need to be the guy he was during his peak years in Houston. He doesn’t need to be the guy who scores 30 points a game or carries his team through long stretches of playoff games. He simply needs to be the guy who is worth the money that the Sixers are about to guarantee to him: a healthier, quicker version of the guy he was last year. He needs to be the guy who shot .366 from three-point range in Brooklyn in 2020-21 instead of the guy who shot .326 in Philly in 2021-22. He needs to be a guy who can navigate the paint once he gets there off the dribble, a guy who can get you a bucket somewhere besides the foul line and the three-point line. He has the vision, the handle, the basketball IQ. He will make guys like Tucker, Melton, and House better versions of themselves. He just needs some of his old sea legs.
If Harden needs to be closer to the star he once was, Maxey simply needs to continue developing into the star he can be. He doesn’t need to be an all-world defender, or an elite passer, or a player who makes his living breaking opponents down off the dribble. He just needs to show the kind of improvement that is more than fair to expect out of a 21-year-old who has his mentality and work ethic and who made a huge developmental leap in his first NBA offseason.
The top of the Eastern Conference is a lot tougher now than it was a few weeks ago. In veteran wing Joe Ingles, Milwaukee made a low-risk, high-reward addition that could pay second-half dividends similar to the ones Miami reaped with Victor Oladipo.
With a healthy Khris Middleton, a newly re-signed Bobby Portis, and Pat Connaughton all in the fold, the Bucks are every bit the force that won a title two years ago. Meanwhile, the Celtics have only improved a rotation that was already the NBA’s deepest, adding the play-making point guard they lacked in Malcolm Brogdon and a professional scorer in Danilo Gallinari.
There is still some heavy lifting yet to do. In a perfect world, the Sixers can move Tobias Harris to a team that can make better use of his strengths and swap in a wing who enables Tucker to play the four. They can use a scorer off the bench, and another player capable of guarding bigs. There are still a lot of intriguing directions that this offseason can turn. In the end, though, the stars need to be the stars. There’s plenty of reason to think they can be.
