Sixers President Daryl Morey Hints At A Relatively Quiet NBA Trade Deadline

During a Friday appearance on 97.5 The Fanatic’s Anthony Gargano Show, Philadelphia 76ers team president Daryl Morey discussed some of the challenges his front office is facing heading into the Feb. 9 NBA trade deadline.

“If you overlap players who would play in our playoff rotation with the players that are available, especially with so many teams who feel that they are in it with the play-in game, it gets down to a very small group of players,” Morey said. “It’s not zero, but it’s not a big group of players.”

The current NBA standings are doing no favors to would-be trade deadline buyers. While the top teams in the Eastern Conference are beginning to gain some separation from the rest of the pack, there are only five games separating the No. 6 seed Miami Heat from the No. 12 seed Toronto Raptors. The Charlotte Hornets and Detroit Pistons are the only two teams that sit more than three games out of the final spot in the play-in tournament heading into Friday’s action.

The standings are somehow even more bunched together in the Western Conference. The Denver Nuggets and Memphis Grizzlies are head and shoulders above the rest of the West, but only three games separate the No. 4 seed New Orleans Pelicans and the No. 13 seed Los Angeles Lakers. The Lakers are only one game behind the No. 10 seed Utah Jazz for the final spot in the play-in tournament, leaving the San Antonio Spurs and Houston Rockets as the only obvious sellers in the West.

Much can—and likely will—change over the next two weeks. The Indiana Pacers, who were expected to rebuild this year and are in free fall since star point guard Tyrese Haliburton suffered a knee injury in mid-January, could decide to pivot to seller mode as well. Vultures leaguewide are also circling the Chicago Bulls and Toronto Raptors, both of whom are under .500 and are falling far short of preseason expectations.

The lack of obvious sellers isn’t the only impediment for the Sixers at the trade deadline, though. They’re also operating with a dearth of available trade assets and have luxury-tax and hard-cap considerations to keep in mind, too.

Since the Sixers used the non-taxpayer mid-level exception to sign P.J. Tucker and the bi-annual exception to sign Danuel House Jr. in free agency this past offseason, they aren’t allowed to exceed the $157.0 million luxury-tax apron at any point this year. They’re currently sitting roughly $5.5 million below that threshold, so they aren’t in imminent danger of crossing it, but that does limit the types of moves they can make at the deadline.

The Sixers are also only $1.2 million above the luxury-tax line at the moment. Since they’ve been taxpayers in each of the past two seasons as well, remaining above the tax line this season would make them subject to the repeater tax next year. The Sixers might look to duck below the tax line and push back the clock on the repeater tax by one year, especially with harsher luxury-tax penalties perhaps looming in the NBA’s next collective bargaining agreement.

The Sixers’ top-heavy salary structure is yet another impediment for Morey and Co. as they pursue an upgrade at the trade deadline. Tobias Harris ($37.6 million), Joel Embiid ($33.6 million), James Harden ($33.0 million) and P.J. Tucker ($10.5 million) are the only four Sixers players with eight-figure salaries this season. Furkan Korkmaz ($5 million), Matisse Thybulle ($4.4 million) and Danuel House Jr. ($4.4 million) are their most realistic trade chips.

As a taxpayer, the Sixers can take back no more than 125 percent of the salary they send out in a trade, plus $100,000. Unless they’re willing to trade Harris, Tucker or De’Anthony Melton ($8.3 million), their salary structure will make it difficult for them to acquire a player earning $15 million or more such as Houston Rockets guard Eric Gordon or Detroit Pistons swingman Bojan Bogdanovic.

That won’t stop the Sixers’ front office from looking for ways to upgrade their rotation, but Morey hinted Friday that it’ll be easier said than done.

“You see that as you get down to guys 10, 11, and 12, these guys can really play and would be starting or playing big minutes on other teams,” he told Gargano. “And that’s a very difficult situation for a coach to handle. I think [head coach] Doc [Rivers] has done an incredible job with that. It also makes our job at the trade deadline very difficult.

“Our only goal is finding someone who can contribute to this team. Look, it’s our job, but it’s hard. Because we look around the league and we go, ‘That guy’s not better than our 11th guy who just won the game in Sacramento for us.’ It’s a harder year, but we’ll find somebody, I think.”

Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac or RealGM. All odds via FanDuel Sportsbook.