Philadelphia 76ers: Bryn Forbes could have been Seth Curry’s shadow

If we’re being honest, the Philadelphia 76ers need another shooter.

I know, I know, they have about a dozen other needs, too, from offensive facilitators to end-of-game two-way players, to rebounders, and even a primary perimeter offensive weapon, but don’t discount how high another shooter is on that list.

Why? Because shooters make Joel Embiid‘s life easier.

Of the 15 players on the Sixers’ roster, 17 if you count the two-way guys, only five: Embiid, Seth Curry, Georges Niang, Danny Green, and Tyrese Maxey hit 3s above the NBA’s average clip. Outside of those five, every player on the Sixers shoot sub-32 percent from deep, including “shooters” like Furkan Korkmaz, Tobias Harris, Isaiah Joe, and Shake Milton, all of whom have seasons with a 3 point shooting percentage of 38-plus on their resume.

Should the Sixers ride their “shooters” lineup harder moving forward? Most definitely, as at this point, that quintet has only shared the court for 17 combined minutes, but between a lack of health and a lack of other shooters, the lineup often gets bypassed in favor of staggering minutes to maintain some spacing at all times.

A solution to that disparity? Adding another shooter.

Is that easier said than done? Not particularly. While things would be a whole lot easier with a first-round pick in play – which probably isn’t the case, since Daryl Morey wants to maintain maximum optionally – there are still a few decent enough shooters on bad teams that could be had for a young player, a second-round pick, or a combination of the two. One player who won’t be on the Philadelphia 76ers’ list, however, is Bryn Forbes, who was just traded to the Denver Nuggets in a three-team trade for Juan Hernangomez.

The Philadelphia 76ers could have used a cheap shooter like Bryn Forbes.

Bryn Forbes and Seth Curry have a lot in common.

Both started out their careers as undrafted free agents, slowly worked their way up into more prominent playing time, and bounced around the league as an in-demand but seldom-appreciated marksman for hire.

At this point in their respective NBA lives, Forbes has a championship ring and has earned a bigger contract than Curry had earned in his Year-28 season, but to put it plainly, neither was considered a particularly untouchable piece in their respective team’s futures.

For Curry, that meant bouncing from Dallas to Portland and back to Dallas for his Year-29 season, where he signed the contract he currently plays on with the Philadelphia 76ers. And as for Forbes? Well, after starting out his career in San Antonio, he signed a two-year, $4.79 million deal with the Milwaukee Bucks, won a chip, opted out, and then signed a one-year, $4.5 million deal to return to San Antonio, where he was seemingly almost immediately put on the trade block.

Do players get put on the hypothetical trade block all the time only for nothing to happen? Sure, but that wasn’t the case with Forbes, as he was just moved to Denver in a three-team deal that sent Bol Bol and P.J. Dozier to Boston and Hustle movie star Juan Hernangomez, a protected 2028 second-round pick and $2.35 million in cap relief to San Antonio.

Would it have been easy for the Sixers to match said deal? Not particularly. Outside of trading a player making more than $4.5 million in a deal, which feels unlikely, the Sixers would have to package some combination of Jaden Springer, Andre Drummond, Shake Milton, and one of their younger, non-rotation players which is pretty rich for a 6-foot-2 shooter who doesn’t provide much in the way of playmaking or defense. But between you and me, I always liked the idea of snatching up Forbes in a multi-team Ben Simmons trade, as he could fill one of the team’s biggest needs for pennies on the dollar.

In short, do you like Curry? Well, imagine having two of him.

Seriously, per Adrian Wojnarowski’s write-up on the three-team deal, Forbes ranks third in 3 point field goal percentage over the past four NBA seasons among players with more than 1,000 attempts, trailing only Brooklyn’s Joe Harris and Steph’s younger brother. His shooting percentage of catch-and-shoot 3s, 45 percent, also ranks fifth among 102 players with 300-plus attempts in 2021-22, trailing only Harris, Curry, Marcus Morris, and Luke Kennard.

While playing Forbes and Curry on the court at the same time, even with Niang, Green, and Embiid in the frontcourt, would have formed one of the worst defensive backcourts in the NBA, having an opportunity to stagger their minutes and keep one of the two shooters on the court more often than not would have been an asset for a team that too often goes quiet from range for comically long stretches of time.

Instead, the Sixers will have to look elsewhere for a shooting upgrade, whether that comes as part of a larger deal centered around Ben Simmons or in a smaller package like the one previously stated.

If the Philadelphia 76ers opt against trading Ben Simmons in a “push all of the chips to the center of the table” sort of deal, that can’t be that. This team needs some upgrades at choice positions across the board and owe it to Joel Embiid to leave the trade deadline with some sort of upgrade, no matter how small. Bryn Forbes, though far from a household name, could have been such an upgrade, it’s just too bad he was traded before Daryl Morey could explore secondary options outside of a roster-resetting deal.