Now that the dust has settled on the trade deadline, Daryl Morey may need to pop back out of the dugout for one more curtain call. The Sixers GM was the clear winner of the NBA’s transaction frenzy. For months, critics such as myself were collectively staring at Morey, waiting for him to do something with Ben Simmons while Joel Embiid played at an MVP level. Morey endured his struggle session, waited for a star to grow disgruntled, then emerged on a tarmac with open arms as James Harden walked off a private jet.
But while the trade scrutiny may have ended the second Morey brought Harden in for a hug, a new pressure began that moment: The Sixers are now championship or bust.
Those expectations are a particularly important distinction for Philadelphia. There are times when the delicate art of building a contender calls for nuance. But the Sixers threw that all out of the window when Sam Hinkie, back in 2013, orchestrated perhaps the most blatant and thorough rebuild professional sports had ever seen. Hinkie never would’ve had to offer his coach $100,000 to lose a game; instead he basically told the whole world his plan—which bore fruit in the likes of Embiid and Simmons—until the NBA decided it didn’t have the stomach for it anymore.
After some frustrating intervening years—and swings from GMs who couldn’t capitalize on the foundation Hinkie built—Philly brought in Morey, ur-Hinkie, to take the team over the top. And now Morey has brought the Sixers to where The Process was supposed to lead all along: a team built to win championships right now. That’s the standard the Embiid-Harden era deserves to be judged on.
For all the excitement about this new partnership, both players still have postseason mountains to climb. Embiid has been mostly fantastic during the playoffs. His counting stats may not leap off the page, but the Sixers have largely thrived whenever he’s been on the floor in the postseason. Still, he’s never made a conference finals—unlike his positional rival and fellow MVP hopeful Nikola Jokić. And his last two playoff defeats (a sweep at the hand of the Celtics with Simmons out in 2020 and the seven-game stunner against the Hawks in ’21) were both massive disappointments.
Then there’s Harden, who for a decade has put up some baffling playoff performances with a rotating cast of superstar teammates. Whether it was Dwight Howard, Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook or even Kevin Durant running alongside him, Harden has a history of falling short, both in terms of the expectations placed on his team and on him. (Though the hamstring injury he suffered during the Nets’ run is an important footnote.) Harden not only has to prove that his style of play is conducive to success in the playoffs, but he also has to prove he can make it work on and off the court with another big personality. (Harden seems to have had measures of fallouts with Howard, Paul and Durant. Howard has played for multiple teams since but also won a title. Paul made the Finals after leaving Harden. Durant already has two Finals MVPs.)
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We still won’t know how Embiid and Harden will play off of each other until after the All-Star break. On one hand, Harden in a vacuum is a massive upgrade over Seth Curry. At his best, Harden remains a deadly isolation scorer and is by far the best half-court shot creator Embiid will have played with in the NBA. On the other hand, Embiid is not the typical rolling center Harden has grown accustomed to throwing lobs to. And one of Harden’s biggest flaws is how little he does off the ball, a situation he will find himself in often when Embiid is posting up.
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Either way, Philly is seemingly locked into this core. Unless Harden is shockingly not extended in the summer, he and Embiid are now the duo that will be responsible for delivering on the promises of a rebuild that started nearly a decade ago. (Embiid’s own supermax extension begins in 2023.) There’s no more time to trade for draft picks or angle for cap space. The Sixers—as Morey pledges to do whenever he believes his team has at least a 5% chance to win a title—are all in. And Embiid and Harden now have to prove they can be as successful as their contemporaries.
One way or another, this was the promise of The Process, to put multiple top-10 talents on the same team and open up a window to compete for titles. Morey was right to hold out on trading Simmons, because he constructed the type of team Hinkie had long envisioned for the Sixers. It also means, for everyone involved, it’s time to deliver results.
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