New Sixers General Manager Elton Brand went for it in his first year at the helm, and the core pieces of a perennial championship contender were in place.
• PREVIOUS REWINDS
• The summer of 2016 changes everything as new era begins
• Bryan Colangelo swings trade for Markelle Fultz in 2017 as team ramps up pursuit of contention
• After breakout season, team trades Mikal Bridges, misses out on LeBron James in 2018
The Sixers lost their second-round playoff series to the eventual champion Toronto Raptors in seven games on an iconic buzzer-beater by Kawhi Leonard that bounced on the rim four times before dropping through the net. But the team had its best group in over 15 years by the end of the 2018-19 season.
The following summer truly changed the course of Sixers history forever. Brand and co. made the difficult decision to break up a remarkably talented group to create a new-look roster that was no sure thing.
In this edition of Sixers offseason rewind, let's recount the franchise-altering offseason of 2019 that set the Sixers back in their pursuit of a championship.
NBA Draft
One of the most crucial factors in the Sixers' playoff exit was their horrid depth. Trade deadline pickups Mike Scott and James Ennis III were their only viable bench players, with a revolving door of players like Jonathon Simmons, Boban Marjanović, Greg Monroe cycling through head coach Brett Brown's last rotation spot as the team desperately searched for just one more piece who could stay on the floor.
So, owning three picks in the top 35 of the 2019 NBA Draft — No. 24, No. 33 and No. 34 — provided the Sixers with a massive opportunity: not only did the Sixers need depth desperately, but the team was entering an era of building around high-priced max players and paying significant luxury tax bills regardless of which path they went down in free agency. Being able to take three stabs at selecting an extremely cheap contributor was a massive opportunity (and the team also owned the No. 42 and No. 54 picks).
The Sixers' devastating free agency showing weeks later is what people will always remember about this offseason, but their performance during this draft was abominable. By the time picks were being made, everybody under the sun knew the Sixers were locked in on Washington wing Matisse Thybulle. Their interest in Thybulle was not the issue; he was a ready-made rotation player thanks to his outstanding defensive skills. But the entire league knowing their intentions burned them: the Boston Celtics strong-armed the Sixers into giving up No. 33 to move up from No. 24 to No. 20 to select Thybulle.
Thybulle spent three and a half seasons with the Sixers, being named to NBA All-Defense teams in his second and third professional campaigns. But he never developed any sort of offensive utility, causing the team to sour on the once-promising prospect and trade him before he became a restricted free agent.
While that trade was not a valuable exchange of assets for the Sixers in a vacuum, it did allow them to get their primary target while still having No. 34 in their back pockets to add another intriguing prospect. But then the team traded that pick for two future second-rounders — and dealt No. 42 to shed a minuscule $1 million partial guarantee on Jonathon Simmons' contract. At No. 54, they selected a shooter from Iowa State named Marial Shayok, who appeared in four games for the team as a rookie on a two-way contract and has not been rostered by an NBA team since.
To recap: a team desperate for both sustainable depth and cost-effective talent which entered the draft with three picks in the top 35 and two more second-rounders exited the night with one player. That is, by any measure, an abject failure.
Free agency
Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons were locked in for the 2019-20 Sixers, but each of the three starters from the prior year's team — JJ Redick, Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris — were free agents. The predominant viewpoint was that the Sixers should run back the team that gave the eventual champion Raptors their toughest series by far, that a full year of seasoning and fine-tuning could launch them into champions themselves. The Raptors were likely going to lose Leonard and the Boston Celtics were set to watch Kyrie Irving depart for the Brooklyn Nets and Al Horford leave to join... a mystery team. The Eastern Conference was becoming wide open, with the Milwaukee Bucks being the only team in the conference certain to be elite.
When the Sixers pulled off a stunning trade for Harris just a few months after acquiring Butler, the team publicly professed a desire to build around Embiid, Simmons, Butler and Harris in the long-term. But as Butler's desire to remain in Philadelphia beyond the season was continually called into question, many began to believe that the sudden Harris addition was the Sixers hedging against Butler leaving.
But as soon as free agency began, Redick bolted to sign with the New Orleans Pelicans — and it was clear the Sixers' sights were set on building a completely new roster.
The next domino: Harris agreeing to a five-year, $180 million deal to return to the Sixers. Even in the moment, this deal was an overpay: there were zero indications that Harris had a market anywhere near that sort of money, but the Sixers gave him barely below his max offer despite his performance with the team being fairly disappointing. As we know now, the deal turned out to be one of the most damaging any team has signed in recent league history, constraining the Sixers' team-building flexibility for an entire half-decade without ever netting them anything resembling star-caliber production.
Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey aggressively pursued a sign-and-trade agreement that would send Butler to Houston, but the Sixers rebuffed those overtures. All along, it turns out, Butler was set on joining the Miami Heat — the team rumored to be the front-runners to acquire him from the Minnesota Timberwolves before Brand and the Sixers swooped in — and the Sixers, seemingly perfectly comfortable with letting him walk, agreed to sign-and-trade him to Miami in a deal that netted them Josh Richardson.
Suddenly, the Sixers had a ton of money to spend in free agency. And minutes after the Butler sign-and-trade to Miami was finalized, perhaps the most shocking free agent signing in team history was made public: the Sixers were the Horford mystery team after all, inking their multi-year rival to a four-year, $109 million deal. The plan was for Horford to be the team's starting power forward and backup center — firmly cementing the team's faith in Ben Simmons being a full-fledged point guard and primary ball-handler.
To round out the roster, the team brought back Scott, Ennis and Furkan Korkmaz, while also adding Kyle O'Quinn, Trey Burke and Raul Neto. T.J. McConnell and Boban Marjanović departed for the Indiana Pacers and Dallas Mavericks.
And so, a team built around Ben Simmons, Richardson, Harris, Horford and Embiid had been formed. The Sixers were considered co-favorites with the Bucks to win the Eastern Conference after remaking their roster.
Results
After a strong start to the 2019-20 season, the Sixers' retooled roster proved to be an abject failure. Their floor spacing in lineups featuring Ben Simmons, Horford and Embiid was so putrid that Horford had to be removed from Brown's starting lineup before the All-Star Break. Scott took a major step back; Ennis took such a massive step back that he was salary-dumped at the trade deadline. Richardson was significantly overtasked on offense — even in a tertiary role — and Harris proved to be insufficient as a primary perimeter scorer. The only Sixers who did not disappoint relative to expectations in 2019-20 were Thybulle and Korkmaz.
With Ben Simmons sidelined due to the second of many back injuries, the Sixers were swept in the first round of that year's playoffs by Horford's former team. The Celtics throughly dominated the Sixers, who left Disney and "The Bubble" with some serious self-reflection to do and even more serious roster turnover to be performed.
Brown was promptly dismissed, and the Sixers entered the 2020 offseason with several major objectives, including hiring a new coach, rerouting Horford and building a team around Embiid and Simmons that actually made sense from a stylistic perspective.
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