Welcome to the penultimate Sixers mailbag of the 2024-25 regular season. Let's get into your questions, featuring two about Paul George trade scenarios and one rehashing what went wrong in this nightmare of a season. As always, questions came from my followers on Bluesky.
From @drnick513.bsky.social: If the Sixers somehow get the No. 1 pick and another team offers picks + taking Paul George’s contract for it, should they take that deal?
If the Sixers land the No. 1 pick, they should not entertain any offers whatsoever for the pick. They should use it to draft Cooper Flagg and thank the heavens that their cataclysmic season turned out to net them the player who could become the NBA's next dominant two-way superstar.
However, if the Sixers keep their top-six protected first-round pick and it is closer to No. 6, I do not think it would be unreasonable to have conversations about potentially using it to execute a trade down in which the team is able to shed the remaining three years and $162 million on George's contract.
If the Sixers are picking at No. 6, they will surely have some tantalizing options on the board, but based on the nature of this year's draft class, the consensus so far is that the best options available would be guards, many of them on the smaller side. It is fair to wonder if that would be an appropriate use of such a valuable resource for a team that already has 24-year-old Tyrese Maxey and 21-year-old Jared McCain with 24-year-old Quentin Grimes set to hit restricted free agency after a stellar run in Philadelphia that has forced people to rethink what Grimes' ceiling is.
So, if the board shakes out in a way which is not conducive to the Sixers extracting optimal value from that pick, all sorts of trade options should be on the table, with traditional moves down the board being the most likely. But trying to shed George's salary is another option, particularly if a team finds itself drawn to George and is willing to part with quality rotation pieces.
The nine-time All-Star will turn 35 years old next month and, if his declines in production and availability this season were signs of what is to come, George's remaining salaries will be extremely prohibitive to the Sixers' chances of fielding a championship-caliber roster — particularly because an even larger elephant in the room still looms.
Would anybody have interest in such a deal, though? The odds are against it for all of the reasons that dumping George now seems like an appealing option for the Sixers. One team does stand out as a potential landing spot, though…
MORE: Why was George's season so disappointing?
From @zeutsch.bsky.social: People talk a lot about trading Paul George but who would value him more than we would and why? He doesn't make sense for a rebuilding team and another contender couldn't fit him into their salary table, right?
The vast majority of NBA teams likely view George as a clearly negative asset at this point. But there is one team that has time and time shown disregard for the possible long-term ramifications of its moves. The Phoenix Suns are just chasing all of their losses at this point, with the next approach to come, according to a recent story from Tim MacMahon of ESPN, likely being a "pivot and reload" around Devin Booker. Finding a team willing to take on Bradley Beal's remaining deal while also convincing Beal to waive his no-trade clause to make the deal work has been an impossibility to this point, which prevented Phoenix from acquiring and immediately extending Jimmy Butler despite the 35-year-old causing many similar concerns as George. The reality is that a Kevin Durant trade is coming this summer; the only question is where he goes.
Could that be Philadelphia? It feels reasonable to assume Durant would prefer at least a handful of other options, and maybe putting eggs in an even older basket is not wise for the Sixers. If the Suns are underwhelmed by the market for Durant — who was nearly sent back to the Golden State Warriors at the trade deadline in a complex deal that would have landed Butler in Phoenix — could the Sixers convince them that their reload should be flipping Durant for George and adding a premium first-rounder with which they can either stick and pick or start moving down the board to add some assets to their barren collection?
If the Suns were to end up with George, though, the more likely scenario may trade involving more than two teams where Durant lands in his preferred destination, while the team adding Durant trades most of their assets to Phoenix and a few of them to the Sixers, who send George to Phoenix. In essence, it would be Phoenix rerouting part of their trade return for Durant to the Sixers for George. It is probably not a likely proposition, but it is just about the only one centered around George that feels feasible as far as trades are concerned.
MORE: Predicting Sixers' team/player option decisions, from Kelly Oubre Jr. to Justin Edwards
From @mred315.bsky.social: In your estimation, what were the top 3-4 things that went terribly wrong with the Sixers this season?
The first thing is Joel Embiid's season, and the second thing is George's season. That much is abundantly clear — not only did the two highest-paid Sixers only play 60 combined games, but neither one performed at a level even close to what the Sixers hoped, expected or needed from them when they were healthy. There were other issues with the roster and coaching, to be sure, but they were not fatal flaws. Embiid and George giving the Sixers such little value relative to their contracts was undoubtedly fatal.
The next thing that went wrong with the Sixers this season? Probably the team's initial reliance on aging veterans. None of the Kyle Lowry, Eric Gordon or Reggie Jackson signings on veteran's minimum deals were inexcusable in a vacuum — only the Jackson deal seemed to not make any sense at the time — but all three of them in tandem was a brutal use of three roster spots. The more you dip into those waters, the more likely you are to get burned with the season in which the player finally looks over the hill. That happened with the Sixers quite a bit.
At least an honorable mention in this discussion has to be the Sixers' horrid injury bug that basically lasted the entire season. It should absolutely not give the team license to declare this season a fluke or merely a product of bad luck, but the Sixers' luck with injuries has been awful since October, even when disregarding Embiid and George's constant ailments. Jared McCain had broken out before tearing his meniscus in a season-ending injury. KJ Martin had broken out before suffering a stress reaction in his foot that effectively ended his Sixers tenure. Andre Drummond has had a toe issue derail nearly four months of his season. Even more of Lowry's season has been destructed by a bad hip. Gordon suffered a season-ending wrist injury. Caleb Martin spent all of his time with the Sixers sitting due to an injury or playing at a suboptimal level due to whatever injury he was gutting it out through.
"Just didn't seem," Sixers head coach Nick Nurse said on Saturday, "like the injury bug would ever leave us."
MORE: Reasons to watch final games of Sixers' miserable season
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