According to a report, the Philadelphia 76ers have made Ben Simmons available in James Harden trade talks. What’s next for the Sixers?
On Thursday evening ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski updated the NBA world on the ongoing James Harden trade situation. After previously stating that Ben Simmons wouldn’t be made available in a trade for Harden, apparently the Philadelphia 76ers have altered course and are willing to include him in a potential deal with the Houston Rockets. It’s a surprising development at this early stage, but the Sixers make sense as a potential destination.
The ties between the franchises are well-documented at this point. Sixers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey was the general manager of the Rockets until recently. He acquired Harden from the OKC Thunder and built a team around his unique heliocentric skill set, and satisfying Harden’s desires was the line he walked in order to keep the team near the top of the Western Conference for almost a decade.
Now that the wheels have fallen off to some degree in Houston, with Morey and head coach Mike D’Antoni gone from last season, and Russell Westbrook replaced with John Wall, Harden doesn’t want to be the frontman for a franchise with no championship aspiration. With the Sixers, he may indeed be able to content again for a championship, and possibly with a clearer path than he ever faced in the Western Conference against the peak Golden State Warriors and LeBron James and Anthony Davis’s Los Angeles Lakers.
Ben Simmons is seven years younger than James Harden, and he alone wouldn’t be enough to make a deal happen. It would take at least several draft picks for the Sixers to be able to pull off a trade, and at this point it doesn’t look like there’s much traction on either side. Whether that’s because the Sixers aren’t willing to pony up the trade assets or the Rockets aren’t interested in what’s been offered, only time will tell.
We may see other Eastern Conference contenders (and non-contenders alike) accelerating things with offers of their own. Even though interested teams may not be able to assure themselves that Harden would sign an extension to stay with them after a trade, we only have to look as far back as the Toronto Raptors trading for Kawhi Leonard to see how a blockbuster move for a one-year window can pay dividends.
At some point, some team is going to make the offer that gets a deal done. The only question to ask is: Will it be the Sixers?