Philadelphia 76ers: Two Tyreses are better than one

There are two players in the NBA right now with the first name Tyrese.

The duo were both drafted in the first round of the 2020 NBA Draft, are both in their second professional season, and are both starters for their respective teams, but other than that, the duo don’t have a whole lot in common.

Tyrese Maxey, as fans of the Philadelphia 76ers know very well, is a speedy right-handed combo guard who does most of his damage around the hoop and has a deadly mid-range game built around his signature floater. At 21, Maxey is averaging 17.6 points and 4.6 assists in a little over 36 minutes of action a night and is starting to develop into the closer the Sixers have been in desperate need of, as he currently ranks ninth in the NBA in fourth-quarter scoring alongside Nickeil Alexander-Walker.

And as for Tyrese Haliburton? Well, he’s a smooth dribbling southpaw with a more methodical style of play and a dagger shot from deep. Much like Maxey, he’s also a 21-year-old combo guard, but he’s more substance than flash, a perfect Robin to basically any other backcourt star in the NBA with enough two-way talent to play in any lineup regardless of the situation.

Which player is better? That’s debatable, but if the Philadelphia 76ers could somehow pair them up in the same backcourt, it’d be hard to find a better young duo in the NBA.

Fortunately, that opportunity may present itself sooner than later, as the Sacramento Kings start to the 2021-22 NBA season has taken a turn from okay to disappointing to darn near “fire everyone and start over” territory, as recent reports from The Athletic back up.

The Philadelphia 76ers could trade one position-versatile guard for another.

The Sacramento Kings have long been one of the team’s linked to a trade for Ben Simmons.

On paper, it makes sense; the Kings have one of the most prolonged playoff droughts in the NBA, only have one star player on their roster, De’Aaron Fox, and have largely failed to build a contender around him. While Simmons isn’t a magic pill that would fix the Kings’ fortunes on his own, he’d be the franchise’s most talented player since Chris Webber, Peja Stojaković, and Kevin Martin in the mid-2000s, which is incredibly valuable, considering those three are all retired.

One past hangup, however, that held up such a trade was the Philadelphia 76ers’ reported desire to obtain one of the Kings’ backcourt starters in such a deal, either De’Aaron Fox or Tyrese Haliburton.

You see, much like seemingly every other potential Simmons trade partner, the Kings didn’t want to give up one of their best players in a deal for the three-time All-Star, instead building a package around roleplayers like Buddy Hield and/or Harrison Barnes and future draft picks. Adding Simmons to a Big 3 of Fox and Haliburton surely makes more sense than splitting that backcourt up from Sacramento’s perspective, and if they could capitalize on Philly’s disfunction, it might just be the best chance to end their regular season woes once and for all.

But considering the nature of Daryl Morey, the conversation always came back to adding a burgeoning star like Fox or Haliburton, as established role players are easy to find, but future stars are not.

At the time, Fox looked like one of the best possible returns the team could ask for in a deal involving Simmons.

He’s a borderline All-Star, a 20-and-6.5 guy, and one of the fastest players in the NBA. Even if Fox is an underwhelming outside shot, the upside of pairing him with Joel Embiid looked like a very adventurous outcome if players like Damian Lillard and Bradley Beal were off the table.

But now, midway through the month of November? Securing a deal centered around Fox makes little sense because of his severe on-court overlap with Tyrese Maxey.

Like Maxey, Fox wins around the hoop. Neither player scares opposing defenders as a spot-up shooter, which would allow opposing defenders to creep into the paint, and the duo both measure in at 6-foot-3 or shorter, making for a Portland-esque backcourt pairing if they share the court together for prolonged periods of time.

Haliburton, by contrast, now looks like the clear target of a Simmons trade, as his style of play complements Maxey perfectly and could give the team another on-ball option in the halfcourt and the sort of two-way contributor needed at the end of games. While not as flashy as Fox, Haliburton looks like a grizzled vet in only his second season, with the potential to be a steady top-tier contributor for a championship contender for years to come.

Fortunately for fans in Philly, after coming out to a brutal start that saw a brutal loss to the OKC Thunder and Luke Walton’s job called into question, the Kings may be more willing to break up the backcourt duo of Fox and Haliburton, with the former more likely to stick around than the latter, especially due to the presence of Davion Mitchell, the ninth overall pick in the 2021 NBA Draft.

You see, as Sam Amick and Shams Charania pointed out in their bigger piece about the Kings’ current woes (read it here if you’re a subscriber), Fox and Haliburton have struggled to mesh so far this season, with the former coming alive in a game versus the Spurs with Buddy Hield starting at shooting guard before watching his efficiency bottom out once his typical partner returned to the backcourt.

On paper, does a Fox-Simmons backcourt make sense? Eh, not particularly, but when you’ve received a playoff mandate from the man signing the checks, sometimes a general manager and head coach will put their heads together and try something crazy.

Morey, my friend, this might just be your chance to secure a deal and move the heck on with the season free of this seemingly never-ending purgatory of leaked info and back and forth.

So what kind of packages could we be looking at in a deal centered around Haliburton? Well, considering he’s set to make roughly $4 million in 2021-22, the Sixers would need to bring back either Hield or Harrison Barnes to make a deal work. Barnes is having the better season of the two so far and would give the team a second 6-foot-8 combo forward from which to rebuild Doc Rivers’ post-Lob City pairing of Tobias Harris and Danilo Gallinari, but the Kings have long been looking to move on from Hield – he was reportedly almost traded to the Lakers this off-season for the same package Washington got for Russell Westbrook – and may be willing to attach further draft capital to get such a deal done.

In a league where shooting is at an absolute premium, a sharpshooter like Hield is one of the better assets in the NBA, even if he’s a tad redundant on the same team as Seth Curry and, to a lesser degree, Furkan Korkmaz, Georges Niang, and Isaiah Joe. Whether the Sixers would like to try to make such a pairing work or expand a deal out to three teams in order to target a frontcourt player they prefer, either way, Hield is a positive asset.

Factor in a pick or two a few years down the line and maybe a pick swap in 2022 to capitalize on the Kings’ current situation and the idea of securibg another 21-year-old combo guard to start at the two, kick inside to the point on second units Shake Milton-style, and just generally help the team win now just makes sense, even if it’s not quite the star-studded return Morey is reportedly willing to wait four years to acquire.

My goodness, can you imagine how good a two Tyrese backcourt would be in four years when the duo are in their primes? I would quite literally love to see it.

Will the Sacramento Kings blink in the face of overwhelming uncertainty and offer the Philadelphia 76ers a grandfather deal for Ben Simmons centered around Tyrese Haliburton, one of their $20 million rotational players, and a ton of picks. Maybe, for as fun as mock trades can be to make, people can get desperate when their livelihood is on the line. But would Philly’s front office actually accept such a deal? That, my friends, is the $30 million question. For as much as I’d like to believe that even a James Harden-esque return centered around Haliburton would be enough to get a deal done, let alone the more modest/realistic return I suggested, no one knows what Daryl Morey will accept, but Daryl Morey. Not you, not me, and not even the Sacramento Kings’ front office.