When the Sixers traded Al Horford to the Oklahoma City Thunder, Daryl Morey and the team created an $8.2 million dollar trade exception. After building a pretty nice roster around stars Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons, Morey has one more ace in his back pocket that he can use to bring in a number of interesting options. Here are my 5 targets for the Sixers to use their trade exception on.
Option 1: P.J. Tucker
The talk of the NBA right now is how the Sixers are one of the preferred destinations for NBA star James Harden, however, I think Morey should be picking up a different, much cheaper option from his former team and that guy is P.J. Tucker.
Tucker, over the last two years, has massively improved his game and evolved into a phenomenal 3&D player for Houston. Playing at power forward, Tucker would instantly improve the Sixers at a much-needed position given that Mike Scott is currently the backup power forward.
Defensively, Tucker has provided an insane contribution to his team over in the West, keeping guys like Kevin Durant to 5-9 off 44 possessions, Kawhi Leonard to 5-15 off 44 possessions, LeBron James to 3-9, Jayson Tatum to 1-4. The only star I really found who had a solid game against Tucker was the Sixers' own Ben Simmons, but even then, when Tucker was on point guards against the Sixers, the Rockets outscored the Sixers by over 14 points.
Whilst Tucker truly shines on the defensive side of the ball, he adds some quality corner 3 shooting off the wing. Over his career, he’s actually led the league in corner 3 attempts and has improved his overall 3-point shot in the past few seasons despite a slightly lower 35.8% clip last year.
Everyone knows the issues that plague the Rockets right now. Westbrook wanted out after one season, Morey left for the Sixers, and now franchise star James Harden wants out too. But PJ Tucker has also had his issues with the team. Reports came out last year that he was unhappy in Houston and the team waited quite a long time to give him his contract offer this season, so a trade wouldn’t be hard to come by.
Option 2: Doug McDermott
Over the offseason, the Sixers have done a fantastic job of placing shooters around Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid. Seth Curry and Danny Green were great additions to the squad, so why not add another shooter at power forward in Doug McDermott?
McDermott is a pure 3-point shooting power forward, and one who would benefit really well off the pick and roll offense that the Sixers should run with Embiid and Simmons. Whilst he doesn’t offer you the defensive stats and skills that P.J. Tucker does, he comes with better offensive attributes and is coming off a career year where he averaged 10.3 points a game, 19 minutes, with a 43.5% 3-point shot.
He’s been discussed in trade talks already this offseason, so it shows that the Pacers are at least up to the idea of trading their sharpshooter power forward.
The Sixers would instantly improve their power forward depth with more shooting potential.
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Option 3: Lou Williams
Could this realistically happen? No. Do the Sixers really need to add another guard? No. However, when Lou Williams falls under the value of your trade exception you have to at least consider the chance of getting him.
Williams has been fantastic since joining the Clippers and has been a huge scoring piece for them off the bench, averaging 18.2 points off 28 minutes last season alone, alongside the 5 assists a game and a 35% 3-point shot. However, he is disgruntled with the load management this year which might just be the spark the team needs.
Lou Williams would instantly improve the Sixers, giving them a huge scoring boost of the bench and adding much-needed experience and playoff experience to a pretty young core of guards.
He would be an incredible mentor for the young guys in the squad, especially players like Maxey, Matisse and Shake. Whilst he would take minutes off the young guards, which is the main downfall to adding him, the benefits could set the team up for a great playoff push and help develop the young guards even more than they currently can.
Like I said at the start though, a trade for Williams is pretty much off the table. There’s no way the Clippers would want to trade him given the impact he has on the team and even if they did, I feel like the trade they’d want would be too high for the Sixers to pull off. A guy can dream though...
Option 4: Rajon Rondo
Rajon Rondo was a huge player for the Lakers last season and for their championship win, he gave that team so much outside of AD and LeBron and it would be silly of the Sixers to not at least explore the chance of adding him to the team.
Once again, the benefits of adding a veteran of the game like Rondo would include adding a major scoring and playmaking piece to the bench whilst adding a wealth of experience and playoff experience to a young core of guards.
Just like Lou Williams, he would be an even better mentor for the young guys in the Sixers locker room. Again, just like Lou, you would have to sacrifice some minutes to the younger guys to have Rajon on the floor but it would be worth it in the long run, especially if the Sixers find themselves in a good position for a long playoff run.
The one issue with this trade is you’d have to wait to add him. He only just signed with the Hawks this past offseason so the only chance the Sixers would have to acquire him would fall near the deadline depending if the Hawks are competitive or not. If they aren’t, it would be a great move to see if the team could add Rondo ahead of the playoffs and give them a huge boost entering the postseason.
Option 5: Nemanja Bjelica
Now, everyone knows the history between the Sixers and Nemanja Bjelica but before you get annoyed at me for even suggesting this, hear me out. I know he stabbed the team in the back a few years back when he was set to sign a contract. He pulled out due to wanting to be closer to home in Serbia and then he went and signed a contract with the Kings, a move that ended up haunting the Sixers.
Since he made that decision, Bjelica has been on a phenomenal journey of improvement. He adds pretty much the same, if not more, shooting than a guy like Doug McDermott, whilst having a little more defensive ability than him.
Bjelica was a great piece for the Kings last season at power forward and would bring much-needed quality to the power forward position for the Sixers. He ended up with a stat line last season of 48% field goal, 41.9% 3 point shooting, 82% from the line, whilst massively improving in almost every area of the game like steals, assists, and points.
Nemanja also offers great value as a stretch 5 for the Sixers, a much-needed option when it comes to the playoff and it also gives them a different gameplan in the way that they can play ‘small ball’ if they needed to change things up.
Whilst Bjelica hurt the Sixers in the past with what he did, he could be a really nice asset to the team as a big improvement to the power forward depth, whilst offering the option to play as a stretch 5. The Kings should be easy to deal with too, given they’re not going to make the playoffs this season.
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