De’Aaron Fox is no longer a fit with the Philadelphia 76ers

The Philadelphia 76ers are a team with defined needs.

They are in the market for shooters of all shapes and sizes, additional size/rebounding specifically from their forward spots, and, most importantly of all, a playmaker capable of running the offense when Tyrese Maxey is on the bench.

Are those needs fillable? Yes, while it may take multiple moves to get there, the Sixers could theoretically address all of their issues over the next month and exit the trade deadline a far better team but to do so, they would need to pony up some serious assets to take aim at the title.

And who, you probably aren’t asking since you already know, is the biggest pony of them all? Yeah, that would be Ben Simmons, who could quite literally swing the fate of multiple teams depending on how the first half of February shakes out. If he’s moved to a middling team, his insertion could be enough to break a long playoff drought (more on that later). Similarly, the assets returned to Philly could supercharge their rotation at the most opportune time, as they are quite literally getting nothing out of Simmons on the court right now.

Needless to say, Daryl Morey needs to knock this one out of the park to keep the Sixers’ championship window open, let alone actually take steps forward in the top-heavy East. Securing star power would certainly help to make the Sixers salient yes, but to truly supercharge the roster, the team needs to fill as many holes as possible, as opposed to going after name recognition (John Wall for example) over everything else.

De’Aaron Fox, once fell into the former camp, but now? Now his assertion onto the Philadelphia 76ers would create more holes than it would fill.

De’Aaron Fox isn’t even the best fit with the Philadelphia 76ers among the Kings.

Allow me to present you with three guards with their names removed and allow you to pick a favorite. For the sake of comparison, let’s use Per 36 stats but know that all three players play roughly 34 minutes of action per game.

Player 1: 23 points, 5.3 assists, and 1.3 steals on 45-24-75 shooting.

Player 2: 14.6 points, 7.3 assists, and 1.8 steals on 47-44-81 shooting.

Player 3: 17.2 points, 4.6 assists, and .7 steals on 47-38-87 shooting.

Pretty tough call, right? Player 1 is scoring the most points of the trio but doing so inefficiently, whereas Player 2 is scoring the fewest points but has the best efficiency numbers and is clearly an effective distributor. And as for Player 3? Well, he sort of splits the difference between the two, in that he’s scoring the middle amount of points on the middle shooting splits but with the fewest assists and steals of the trio.

Now, what if I were to tell you you could pick two of the players? Which two would you choose? Players 1’s warts look a little more attractive when paired up with Player 3, right, as would Player 2 but how many folks would opt for Plays 1 and 2?

Probably not very many.

So who are these players? Well, as you can probably infer from the premise of this post, the players are De’Aaron Fox, Tyrese Maxey, and Tyrese Haliburton, three players who could be mix-and-matched together via trade between the Philadelphia 76ers and Sacramento Kings.

On paper and in theoretical practice, Maxey and Haliburton are a perfectly composed backcourt. Maxey is a great driver with infectious energy and a potentially elite transition game, whether as Haliburton is a bigger, longer shooter with great touch and a pension for plus passes. Paired up T2 (Judgement Day) would be the Sixers answer to Thunder and Lighting, the complementary attack that turned the USC Trojans into one of the best college football teams in NCAA history during the Matt Leinhart era.

Maxey and Fox, by contrast, would be like putting pink milk on top of Frankenberry cereal with a strawberry grandma candy as dessert; a mono flavor overload that might just yield the worst-spacing backcourt in the NBA.

Now granted, adding Fox to the fray in a trade for Ben Simmons wouldn’t be all bad. Fox is maybe the fastest player in the NBA and watching him go to work with another Kentucky Wildcat a few years his junior would surely make for a lethal fastbreak attack. One could also make a case that having Fox and Maxey stagger minutes would also benefit the Sixers, as it would allow Doc Rivers to maintain a legit point guard on the court at all times, instead of having to roll with Shake Milton or Furkan Korkmaz in an unnecessarily expansive role for long stretches at a time.

But one doesn’t win games based on pace and playmaking alone. No, to win games, especially when your best player is an unstoppable post presence, a team needs to space the floor and Fox is one of the worst shooters in the association. Fox is a below-average overall 3 point shooter, catch-and-shoot shooter, and has poor marks from quite literally everywhere around the arc, from the left corner to the right. That isn’t the worst-case scenario if he headlines a lineup with three more shooters on the court but could you even imagine trotting out a lineup with Maxey, Fox, Matisse Thybulle, and Tobias Harris around Joel Embiid?

The results would be ghastly.

Haliburton, by contrast, is one of the NBA’s best shooters, the Kings’ best passer, and equally capable of running a second unit if his minutes are staggered with Maxey. With three position versatility and an ability to be successful both on and off the ball, Haliburton could play alongside any player on the Sixers roster and make the team better, versus the new challenges presented by Fox.

Factor in the, well, fact that either Harrison Barnes or Buddy Hield would have to come back in a deal to make the money work, and targeting Haliburton is unquestionably the move when negotiating with the Kings.

Had Tyrese Maxey remained a fun sparkplug player who wasn’t quite ready for a playoff rotation then yeah, De’Aaron Fox might be an interesting point guard to pair up with Joel Embiid. Had Fox taken a step forward instead of back in this the fifth year of his NBA career then he probably wouldn’t even be on the table in trade conversations for Ben Simmons. But Maxey took a step forward and Fox didn’t and once could now argue the former holds more trade value than the latter due to his age and agreed upon financial compensation. If the Sacramento Kings want to make a deal, it has to be centered around Tyrese Haliburton, as he is quite literally the best fit of the realistic players available to the Philadelphia 76ers.