Passing on Harden means missing best chance to be great

The trouble with passing on an opportunity, even one of high risk, is returning to the spot where it all began. That’s what happened to the 76ers last week when they withdrew from the out-ofcontrol bidding for James Harden.

When they did, that was that.

When they did, they had Joel Embiid, great but undependable, and they had Ben Simmons, talented but easily solved. They had a nice ensemble of shooters around them, better than the crowd that eventually necessitated a coaching change after last season. But they were stuck with the essential foundation that never wins championships. Now what? Where do the Sixers stand in that Eastern Conference they promised to win last year and still quietly believe they can solve?

“I don’t look at the East much,” Doc Rivers said. “Or the West. Right now, I am just focused on us.”

That’s a good team to be focused on, for it needs work. Not that any record tells all this early in any season, and particularly not in one where coaches regularly are made to work without good players due to insane health restrictions, but that was a 9-5 record the Sixers lugged in and quickly out of Oklahoma City Sunday. It was a good record, but hardly a historymaking arc, which had to be disappointing given one reason: Embiid has never played better.

At 26, and in his seventh year out of Kansas, Embiid is in his physical prime, sufficiently NBA-seasoned and appropriately hungry after repeated postseason failures. He is the most talented player, skill for skill, in Sixers history. He’s averaging 25 and 11 and has been dominating late in games. Though he may never cease dribbling into trouble and turning the ball over (too often in the most critical of circumstances) Embiid has played with a heightened determination under Rivers.

And yet … the results, basically, are unchanged. The Sixers typically win at home, sputter on the road, lose when Simmons is walled off in the lane and cringe every time the injury report leaks, fearful that it will include Embiid’s name.

That’s why Daryl Morey’s decision not to take the Harden deal was high risk. The Sixers were not good enough to win anything without taking some kind of gamble. Eventually, there will be the usual, trade-deadline boots and salary dumps. But there will not be another chance, at least not soon, for

Morey to flip Simmons for an established superstar.

That shot clock has expired. The Nets, already at daily risk of toxic clubhouse relations with Kyrie Irving on staff, didn’t mind adding the stress-carrying Harden to the mix.

They took the chance. Could work, no?

“I hear they are going to be pretty good,” Rivers said, with a tinge of skepticism. “But the games have to be played. And we’ll see how it all turns out.”

The games have to be played. That’s the Sixers’ challenge. The question is whether Morey and Rivers have hired enough talent to contend. They did acquire Danny Green and present him as a reliable, dangerous shooter, stopping short of invoking JJ Redick’s name but opening space for that interpretation. Green has been spectacular in certain spurts, but dull in others. Once a dependable, 45-percent-plus three-point shooter, his long-range accuracy has dipped to 37 percent. That has made him just another player, nothing special. Seth Curry was also expected to boost the offense, as an upgrade from Josh Richardson. Before flunking a mandatory virus test, Curry was shooting at a legendary level. But there was a reason why, at age 30, he has started just 86 of his 204 NBA games. He’s a backup, yet the Sixers have appointed him as a starter, expecting championshiplevel starters’ production. That’s not how it works. Two seasons ago, the Sixers charged into the postseason with two superstars in Embiid and Jimmy Butler, with Tobias Harris close to entering that discussion, and with Simmons, an All-Star. That didn’t work, but it least it met the specs for NBA contention: Multiple players perceived to be among the league cream. Butler was an irritant to his coaches and teammates, but it would have been interesting to see how that would have worked had the plan not been so quickly shredded. Harden would have been a virtual Butler replacement piece, all the sweet, all the sour.

The Sixers, though, were not willing to match a splurge that dropped Brooklyn into a win-or-else situation. If they can’t win their first NBA championship with Harden, Irving and Kevin Durant, the Nets will be doomed to use their Dr. J ABA moments as their only example of ever getting it all right.

But that’s the Nets. As for the Sixers, they are what they have been: Good, but flawed. They will need Harris, who had his best professional hours under Rivers in Los Angeles, to finally graduate to the All-Star level. They’ll need Tyrese Maxey to be an All-Rookie player; he has the talent, yet is prone to some younger-player mistakes. Everyone else? Eh. Matisse Thybulle can defend but can’t shoot. Mike Scott is good for the occasional spurt. Some other guys.

Last week, Charles Barkley proclaimed the Sixers victorious in the Harden jamboree, as it would ease stress on Simmons by lifting the trade rumors. The hole in that theory is that Simmons never stresses about the possibility that he is not the best player in the world. It’s why he never improves.

But like Barkley, the Sixers have made their wager. They’d better hope they are right. The last, great chance to become different has come and gone and will not soon return.

So Embiid and Simmons it is for a while. Check the record later. For a hint, check it sooner.