Philadelphia 76ers: Don’t expect the Rockets to make a deal with the Sixers

The Philadelphia 76ers quickly pounced on Daryl Morey when he departed the Houston Rockets, but don’t expect his new team and old team to make trades together.

The Houston Rockets and Daryl Morey parted ways earlier this month, and the Philadelphia 76ers wasted no time taking advantage of the unexpected opportunity to hire him to run their basketball operations. In less than two weeks, Morey had ended one chapter of his basketball career and began the next.

Morey is the NBA’s premier trade-maker. His reputation of being the king of the deal is well-deserved, as Jared Dubin laid out here for FiveThirtyEight. He turned Kevin Martin and Jeremy Lamb (along with two first-round picks and a second-round pick) into James Harden, and he turned roughly one million non-guaranteed contracts (actually just Patrick Beverley, Sam Dekker, Montrezl Harrell, Darrun Hilliard, DeAndre Liggins, Lou Williams and Kyle Wiltjer), cash and a first-round draft pick into Chris Paul.

In what we now believe to be an effort to keep James Harden happy, he also flipped Paul for Russell Westbrook, in addition to two first-round draft picks and two pick swaps going out to the OKC Thunder.

Needless to say, Morey has the reputation of throwing everything (including the kitchen sink and a couple of second-rounders) into his trades, and when he has the assets to make a move it can be hard to deny him. That’s a big reason his former team probably won’t be doing business with him in the trade market, at least not this offseason.

Since the announcement that Morey would be joining the Philadelphia 76ers, the leading trade discussions among media and fans immediately switched to potential blockbuster deals between the Sixers and the Rockets. Will James Harden reunite with Morey in Philadelphia? Will reluctant shooter Ben Simmons get traded to the Rockets?

The breathless speculation is all for naught because there won’t be any blockbuster wheeling and dealing between the two teams. For starters, the Rockets are committed to Harden and deservedly so. Even if the Rockets don’t have a realistic championship window, it’s next to impossible to get value for a top-five player like Harden, and trying to do so with the trade-master seems like a fool’s errand.

New Rockets general manager Rafael Stone is by all accounts a sharp basketball mind with experience in the organization’s analytics department alongside Morey, in addition to being their general counsel prior to these recent developments. In a way, he’s likely learned just about everything he knows about running an NBA team from Daryl Morey, which probably gives him a leg up on plenty of top basketball operations executives around the league.

Still, does knowing more about Morey’s philosophies than most make him somebody you would want to tangle with in your first weeks and months running a team, or is it better to practice avoidance and make your deals with somebody who doesn’t know what you’re thinking and trying to achieve?

Surely the Rockets and Sixers aren’t disqualified from making marginal deals here and there, but if you’re expecting some kind of massive deal involving stars between the two teams, prepare to be sorely disappointed.