Philadelphia 76ers: The Doc Rivers to LA dreams are done

Breaking news: Darvin Ham has officially been named the Los Angeles Lakers’ head coach.

Who, you may ask, is Ham? Well, I’m glad you asked! A 48-year-old native of Saginaw, Michigan, Ham is a small forward by trade who played his college ball at Texas Tech before bouncing around the NBA as a journeyman from 1996-to 2005 and then transitioning to the coaching ranks, first with the Albuquerque/New Mexico Thunderbirds. Since then, Ham officially re-joined the NBA ranks as an assistant coach, first with the Los Angeles Lakers and then with the Atlanta Hawks, before finally settling with Mike Budenholzer and the Milwaukee Bucks from 2018-22.

Ham is one of the few people in NBA history to win a championship both as a player and as a coach and will now be tasked with adding a third to his resume as he attempts to re-tool a roster featuring LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and Russell Westbrook on the fly save most of their draft picks or the requisite assets needed to re-shape the team in his preferred image.

But why, you may ask, are we discussing the Los Angeles Lakers on this, a Philadelphia sports blog? Well, because for a time, the rumor mill linked Doc Rivers and the only Los Angeles-based NBA team he hasn’t coached for. If you were in the small but vocal segment of the fanbase hoping that somehow, against all odds, the Philadelphia 76ers would find a way to secure a new coach this fall, well, those dreams are officially dashed.

The Philadelphia 76ers have to re-tool around their current nucleus.

At this point, talk of “The Process” should be near-exclusively linked to the player who took up the moniker as his own, Joel Embiid.

Why? Because the assets, the potential, and (almost) all of the players associated with that weird, Big Brother-style experiment in roster building officially ended when the Philadelphia 76ers traded Ben Simmons to the Brooklyn Nets, maybe even earlier. No, with three of their next seven first-round picks already traded away and a roster destined to be over the cap for the foreseeable future, the Sixers’ team we’ll be watching for the next few years will largely be comprised of the same players on the roster right now, with only so many ways to upgrade the team outside of the margins.

Fortunately, ‘only so many ways’ isn’t the same as ‘no ways,’ and the Sixers still have a decent number of ways to get better both on the margins and, believe it or not, in a big swing or two.

If the Sixers do, in fact, want to go star hunting, their biggest assets are Matisse Thybulle, Danny Green(‘s guaranteed contract), and their 2022 first-round pick, assuming it isn’t sent to Brooklyn and can then be traded immediately after used. Say what you will about just how valuable each of those assets are – the beauty is in the eye of the beholder, after all – but there should be a decent enough return available to Daryl Morey if he’s willing to get creative and play to the market. Tobias Harris can certainly be traded too, and his contract certainly opens up some big cap numbers returning to the team. With that being said, there will certainly be some teams who believe Harris is a negative asset and, thus, could require surrendering assets to get off of his contract instead of bringing back more assets.

And other than that? Well, according to Spotrac, the Sixers have a mid-level exception worth $6.339 million and a trade exception from the Andre Drummond trade with the Brooklyn Nets worth $1.669 million.

Not great, but hey, not not great either.

By my estimation, the Philadelphia 76ers will be able to secure three solid players this summer, one with their draft pick – either via the draft or trade – one with the mid-level exception, and another via the trade assets they already have. Is that going to be enough to magically take the team up a notch and break the glass ceiling that is the second round of the Eastern Conference Playoffs? I… guess it depends on who Daryl Morey targets with the picks and players. If he can secure a top-tier sharpshooter, a three-and-D wing, and a rebounding, hard-nosed forward, then yeah, maybe a better-fitting supporting cast will be enough for Joel Embiid and company to take a step forward. And if not? Well, at least Doc Rivers will be back, and that’s… something. Continuity is kind, right?