PHILADELPHIA — Daryl Morey wasn’t going to tell us where he was going even if he could. As of the wee postdraft hours of Friday morning, he wasn’t even allowed to tell us where he was. Thanks to some sort of procedural guidelines that could only have been handed down by folks who bill by the hour, Morey’s only direct comment on his first big move of the offseason was that he was not allowed to comment on it at all. And so the Sixers’ president mostly stared blearily at a disheveled half-circle of media members, and the disheveled half-circle mostly stared blearily back. And it was thus that the De’Anthony Melton era commenced.
Not that it mattered. The biggest question that Morey faced heading into the draft is the one he still faces. It is also the one that he will need to tiptoe most delicately around until the answer reveals itself. No doubt, the Sixers added a critical piece to their rotation when they traded the No. 23 pick to the Grizzlies for Melton, a 24-year-old grinder of a guard who can play excellent defense and shoot at an above-average clip. But that still leaves them at least one significant player away from a rotation that might have altered the balance of power in their second-round playoff loss to the Heat. And the more you look at their personnel and payroll situation with Melton in the fold, the more it leads you to conclude that the most complicated work has yet to be done. Now, more than ever, the Sixers need to find a trade for Tobias Harris that makes sense.
To be clear, this is my conclusion. Morey and his front office may well have reached a different one in recent weeks as they’ve gathered information on Harris’ market value. Talk to anybody around the team and they’ll go out of their way to downplay their desire to part ways with the veteran forward. Sure, they have gauged the marketplace, but gauging marketplaces is what front offices do. They continuously gather information and use that information to assess and reassess the optimal course to chart through a world of scarce resources. What shouldn’t get lost in that process is the deep respect the organization has for Harris and all that he has done to make the Sixers one of three teams in the NBA to win at least 194 games and three playoff series over the last four seasons.
