Philadelphia 76ers: Retaining Mike Scott has to be a priority

Initially dubbed a throw-in piece in the Tobias Harris trade, Mike Scott has quietly become the Philadelphia 76ers sixth best player and therefore must be retained come free agency.

When Joel Embiid flung the ball out to Mike Scott on the 3 point line with 20 seconds to go in the Philadelphia 76ers‘ Game 4 bout against the Brooklyn Nets, down by two, fans across the 215 sat silently in bated breath.

While in theory, Embiid’s split-second decision wasn’t a bad one per se, as Scott knocked down a team-high 41.2 percent of his 3 pointers in the regular season, he’d only made one of his three attempts from beyond the arc over the first 47 minutes of the game and was only shooting 25 percent thus far in the postseason.

As the ball left Scott’s hands, so did the 76ers final possession of the game, which made the lead flipping 3 all the more exciting; it all but ended the Nets’ hopes of tying up the series at two all.

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And amazingly enough, it almost didn’t happen.

You see, Brett Brown almost always closes out games with his starting five, which makes sense when you consider they score an average of 98.9 of the team’s 115.2 points a game, but Jimmy Butler was ejected earlier in the game due to a wildly entertaining brawl with Jared Dudley.

With Butler out, Scott was elevated into the proverbial starting five as one of the team’s two forwards alongside his former Los Angeles Clippers teammate Tobias Harris, guarding everyone from Carvis LeVert, to Joe Harris, to Philly native Rondae Hollis-Jefferson.

Spoiler alert: It worked.

Scott finished out the game with eight points and eight rebounds in 27 minutes of action, one less point than a struggling J.J. Redick on 16 fewer shots. He also scored the final, basically game-winning bucket, 30 seconds after the team’s starting shooting guard hit his own almost game-winning shot.

Add in two more free throws by Harris and the 76ers squeaked out a 112-108 win over the Nets, effectively ending the team’s hopes of postseason advancement following their own ‘Process’-esque purgatory.

But there’s a problem; Mike Scott is going to be a free agent come July, and will certainly be in the market for a new deal worth more than $4.32 million a year.

The Philadelphia 76ers should be the team that locks the 6-foot-8 swing forward in longterm.

Initially viewed as a throw-in piece in the ‘Tobias Harris trade’, Scott has developed into the 76ers best bench player in the post-Landry Shamet-era; a supersized guard in a forwards body with a 41.2 percent shooting percentage from outside.

Though the team would probably rather their sixth man be a guard-sized guard that provides extra value as a ball handler, think a 22-year-old Zhaire Smith, it’s clear Scott has immense value as a 3-and-D winger that can play a variety of different positions alongside virtually every player on the Sixers’ roster.

After watching players like Ersan Ilyasova, another former Sixers stretch forward with a knockdown 3 point shot, and Marco Belinelli, the team’s former sixth man, leave for the greener pastures of the Milwaukee Bucks and the San Antonio Spurs for $21 million over three years and $12 million over two years respectively, Elton Brand simply can’t afford to make a similar mistake in 2019.

While one could argue whether the 76ers would be better off with Scott under contract moving forward as opposed to Ilyasova or Belinelli, it’s clear they can’t allow another sharpshooter leave a team that really should be in the market for more sharpshooters.

Next. J.J. Redick has to step his game up. dark

Regardless of how the playoffs ultimately play out, be it with an untimely exit, or as NBA champions, the Philadelphia 76ers have to prioritize keeping Mike Scott around for the foreseeable future.