The Beard got his wish. Will the Los Angeles Clippers and Philadelphia 76ers get theirs? Tuesday’s high-stakes blockbuster has the potential to boost both sides, but it also has the potential to be a finishing blow for either.
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“Opportunity,” Daryl Morey’s bio on the website formerly known as Twitter reads, “is not a lengthy visitor.” It may as well be the catchphrase for modern NBA team building, when stars are won, lost, and swapped at an increasingly breakneck pace.
On the evening that the Philadelphia 76ers dealt James Harden to the Los Angeles Clippers, both teams were operating from a position of relative strength, with early 2-1 records, top-ranked offenses, good health, and shooting luck working in their favor. But every day the stalemate dragged on was another day both teams’ window of opportunity to win a championship shrank. Sportsbooks are already offering odds on Joel Embiid’s next team. Kawhi Leonard and Paul George could be free agents this summer, with player options heading into next season. And so, with an urgency born of both desperation and hope, the two sides ultimately met in the middle.
After waiting four months after Harden requested a trade to the Clippers (and only the Clippers), the Sixers shipped him and P.J. Tucker to L.A. for Nicolas Batum, Robert Covington, 22-year-old KJ Martin, Marcus Morris’s expiring contract, unprotected first-round picks in 2026 and 2028, a pick swap, and two second-rounders. At the cost of two other rotation pieces and a young player, the Clippers clung on to Terance Mann, who once seemed like the key to the deadlock.
It’s a compromise both sides were obligated to make, as likely to end up a win-win as an era-ending domino. The trade doesn’t buy either team much relief. In fact, it creates bigger questions. How will Harden fit next to Leonard and George? Can the Sixers flip their draft-pick return for a star? The upside for both: getting a deal done more than three months before the trade deadline gives everyone some time to maneuver, a commodity both sides have precious little of.
Harden needs the Clippers, and the Clippers need Harden. Ever since landing George and Leonard in 2019, the Clippers have struggled to find the right playmaker to maximize their potential. John Wall tried and failed last season. Russell Westbrook has never been a facilitator first. The Clippers almost traded for Malcolm Brogdon and kicked the tires on Jrue Holiday. Through three games, their offense is operating at a blistering 120.5 points per 100 possessions, second best in the NBA. But that’s against three likely lottery teams, and despite a league-leading 41.4 percent clip from beyond the arc, their assist percentage is 24th in the league—three spots worse than last year. When they cool down and the competition tightens up, they’ll need to nail the finer points of offensive execution. Four injury-torpedoed years into the Leonard-George partnership, they’ve finally landed the generational playmaker they’ve been looking for.
The hitch: He’s 34 years old and ball dominant, with a consistent streak of stubborn behavior. And he’s being reunited with Westbrook, one of the superstars he’s previously failed to coexist with. But after his third trade request in three years attracted just one suitor, Harden saw how much his value around the league has dropped. His agent, Troy Payne, told Swish Cultures that Harden feels motivated by the “disrespect.” The chiseled frame he showed off through his spotty attendance at Sixers training camp suggests as much.
The Clippers just have to hope he feels motivated to fit in more than prove a point. One has to wonder how Harden will approach this season after sacrificing money and touches for the Sixers didn’t yield the result he had hoped for, in terms of either victory or compensation.
On the bright side, even though he’ll have to share the ball with two perimeter-oriented stars, as well as with Westbrook, who leads the team in touches, the Clippers might offer a more natural fit than the Sixers.
While it’s hard to imagine Westbrook, Harden, George, and Leonard on the same team, a brief simulacrum of it once existed.
At the 2019-20 trade deadline, Morey, who was still the Houston Rockets general manager at the time, tried a last-gasp small-ball experiment to salvage the struggling pairing of Westbrook and Harden, two players whose value multiplies with how much the ball is in their hands. Three seasons later, that vision could serve as a working blueprint for these Clippers.
When the season started, Westbrook’s high usage and suboptimal shooting were eating into the abundance of space and touches that Harden was accustomed to. Houston traded starting center Clint Capela to Atlanta and moved the 6-foot-5 Tucker, now—ding, ding!—a Clipper, to the five permanently.
The Rockets played five out, and Russ fell into a role similar to the one he often plays now: rolling on picks, sucking in attention with his cuts, creating second-chance points. Even before the trade (and before COVID-19 interrupted the season), Westbrook had started playing less on the perimeter and more at the rim. Westbrook got hurt during the pandemic and was traded the following offseason. The gambit was effective but short-lived.
Imagine that team, but replace Covington and Eric Gordon on the wing with George and Leonard. There’s a chance this oft-injured starting four, aged between 32 and 34, will be more than happy to relinquish the burden to one another on a nightly basis as they stave off the inevitable. Corner 3s—a shot that Harden has buttered his bread on creating—made up only 6 percent of George’s attempts last year, but he nailed 48 percent of them. At his age, it probably makes sense to spot up a little more.
The Clippers also have a traditional rim-running center, à la Capela, in Ivica Zubac, a bone-crushing screen setter who has never played with a pick-and-roll practitioner as accurate and sophisticated as Harden. But Westbrook’s new paint-oriented role, which will likely increase with Harden in tow again, has already cut into Zubac’s responsibilities. While Harden’s addition could maximize Zubac’s and Westbrook’s roles, it could also potentially complicate their positions even more.
The Clippers have an embarrassment of riches coming off the bench, starting with Mann, whose defense, positional versatility, and low usage could make him an ideal starter. It helps that they also retained Norman Powell, perpetually good for double-digit scoring off the bench.
In the Clippers’ ideal world, Harden will become the connective tissue between George and Leonard, find Westbrook and Zubac for easy looks at the rim, and thrive in a playoff environment where he isn’t tasked with being the Guy, or even the Second Guy, anymore.
But all those fascinating on-court possibilities are contingent on off-court stability. Again, the 2019 Westbrook experiment provides insight: By the end of their first season together, the duo had gone from being friends to reportedly having an unmanageable professional relationship.
Westbrook, a creature of routine and habit, bristled at Harden’s tardiness and the way the team bus and practice schedule moved at his whim. In L.A., the player-friendly Clippers will likely try to make Harden comfortable when they can, but he’s not the only superstar they have to accommodate, and they would be wise to continue to empower Westbrook, whose passion and vocal leadership have provided a necessary, culture-morphing contrast to the quiet and laid-back Leonard and George.
Presumably, Harden won’t have the kind of control over the franchise’s day-to-day decisions he had in Houston or Philly. He balked at this in Brooklyn when Kevin Durant and Steve Nash wanted to incorporate a more movement-heavy style. The way Harden responds to his place in a well-established power structure will play just as much of a role in his success as the on-court fit.
The Sixers, who had to waive Danny Green to make room for this two-for-four exchange, face the immediate task of integrating Batum and Covington into a rolling offense that’s thriving around Embiid and Tyrese Maxey. A healthy Marcus Morris, with a measure of jump-shooting restraint, could play a bit postseason role for a contender.
But any of those guys, or the picks the Sixers got from the trade, could be packaged together and traded for a star.
Is that enough to meet Chicago’s reportedly high asking price for Zach LaVine, who just dropped 51 points in a hope-draining loss to the Pistons? He’s been relatively durable in the past few seasons and averaged 27 points, four rebounds, and four assists after the trade deadline last year. What about Pascal Siakam, whom the Sixers could also target in free agency this summer? The sharpshooting Klay Thompson, a projected free agent, could be a perfect handoff partner with Embiid. Morris, Batum, and Covington are all on expiring deals, allowing the Sixers to retain their cap flexibility heading into the summer.
It’s too early to know whether the Sixers salvaged their championship hopes and, along with them, the right to employ Embiid. For now, they’re back on the other end of a game they’ve become intimately familiar with: biding their time, waiting for the clock to run out on another team’s unhappy marriage.
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