Philadelphia 76ers: John Hollinger really wants to see a Paul Reed trade

A lot has been written about which players the Philadelphia 76ers should target at the trade deadline.

Some folks want to make a deal for Bradley Beal, while others – me – want to see a deal done to procure Tyrese Haliburton, and others still think the best decision would #holdingtheline until the summer when more players will become available, and the team could go all-in in their pursuit of James Harden.

But do you know what never gets much run? Which players opposing teams might want to steal away from the Sixers.

Ben Simmons aside, the Sixers have a number of fun young players that developmental teams around the association might want to acquire, especially if they have a few vets on expiring contracts that could entice the playoff-bound squad. Some of those players, like Tyrese Maxey and Matisse Thybulle, are more or less untouchable, as the team has declared in talks with Washington, but others, like Isaiah Joe, have reportedly had their names circulated in trade talks to gauge their value across the league.

But there’s one player in particular that former Memphis Grizzlies GM-turned-The Athletic Senior Columnist John Hollinger thinks teams around the NBA should be calling the Philadelphia 76ers about before the deadline, and let’s just say, his name rhymes with “BBall.”

The Philadelphia 76ers should gauge interest in Paul Reed if they won’t play him.

Paul Reed has been a member of the Philadelphia 76ers for a little over a season and a half.

The 58th overall pick in the 2020 NBA Draft, Reed has had the deck stacked against him at every turn, and through it all, he’s worked his way up from two-way contract to one-way contract, to G-League MVP despite earning less than 400 minutes of action on an NBA court.

And yet, no matter what he does, whether he’s putting in work as a defender versus Giannis Antetokounmpo or he’s dropping 10 in a nine-point win over the Chicago Bulls back in November, Reed always finds himself back in Delaware once more, where he’s clearly better than the players he’s competing against.

But why? Is it because Reed is a tweener, too small to play center in regular lineups but too offensively limited to stretch the floor as a four? Or could it be that he’s a, as baseball fans would put it, AAA player who is undoubtedly good at basketball but not quite good enough to go toe to toe with the best of the best on a thrice-weekly basis?

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s that the Sixers, or specifically Doc Rivers, just can’t get past what Reed can’t do in order to embrace what he can?

If that really is what it is and a path to the court just isn’t there for Reed in South Philly, why wouldn’t the Sixers entertain a deal to find Reed a new home?

That, my friends, is the opinion of John Hollinger, who not only mocked Reed to the Boston Celtics with the 14th pick in The Athletic’s 2020 re-draft but doubled down on his Reed love by declaring that the Detroit Pistons should look into a trade with the Sixers if they want to improve on the margins either as part of a multi-team deal for Jerami Grant or via a one-for-one deal between the two camps in a transcribed conversation with James L. Edwards III.

With Detroit specifically, such a deal is hard but totally possible. Because Reed only makes $1.5 million this year, any one-for-one deal with the Pistons could only bring back as much as $1.9 million in salary, which is less than all but four of Detroit’s players make in 2021-22. Of those four, Saben Lee is unquestionably the most intriguing, as, like Reed, he’s largely been relegated to dominating the G-League instead of running the show at the NBA level. Still, he’s a 6-foot-2 pass-first point guard who averages 29.3 points, 7.7 assists, and 5.7 steals to go with 50-40-75 shooting splits, 2.1 steals, and 1.1 blocks per game as a member of the Motor City Cruise, so there is a good bit to like about his potential on a team desperate for ball handlers.

Would the Sixers accept such a deal plus or minus a second-round pick for good measure? Sure, with Shake Milton out indefinitely, the Sixers could certainly use another player who knows how to drive, shoot, and pass off of a dribble, so I could totally see it happening. But such a deal would surely come secondary to one of the far more consequential moves potentially on the table, as the difference between Reed and Lee is basically zero for the Sixers if neither is actually on the court come playoff time. Unless the Sixers commit to giving minutes to Reed, Lee, or even a player like Isaiah Joe, their presence on the bench really has no impact on what transpires on the court on any given night.

Ultimately, it feels more like when will the Philadelphia 76ers move on from Paul Reed, not if. For one reason or another, the former DePaul Blue Demon hasn’t quite found a home in the City of Brotherly Love and will eventually have to journey elsewhere to see if his G-League success can translate outside of the First State. If that happens at the deadline, either via a trade headlined by Ben Simmons, Jerami Grant, or simply in a one-for-one deal for another AAA player like Saben Lee, great. If not, the day will eventually come, I’m sure.