Philadelphia 76ers: 3 realistic Tobias Harris trade targets

As you may or may not have heard, the Philadelphia 76ers are gauging the interest around the association in making a trade for Tobias Harris.

Though it won’t be easy, and it likely won’t fetch a massive return, as Harris’ contract is widely considered one of the harder to move in the NBA due to its massive price tag and year commitment, Jake Fischer and Keith Pompey explicitly pointed out a desire from Daryl Morey and company to gauge the market in order to maximize the roster moving forward.

But why, you may ask? Would the Sixers want to move Harris? Easy: He isn’t a good on-court fit with Tyrese Maxey, James Harden, and Joel Embiid.

When Ben Simmons was on the Sixers, Harris made sense. His status as a tweener forward too slow to play the three but too small to defend elite fours was largely mitigated by Simmons’ full court speed, defensive versatility, and his ability to score in a variety of different ways in the halfcourt helped to pick up the slack as a second offensive option.

Did it always work? Not always, no, but when the Sixers’ entire starting lineup was designed around Simmons’ mandate to be called a point guard, with a 6-foot-2 shooting guard, a 6-foot-5 small forward, and a 6-foot-8 power forward filling out the lineup alongside Embiid, swapping him out for another 6-foot-2 guard created some very easily exploited mismatches against competent teams willing to seek them out.

The Philadelphia 76ers have options if they want to move Tobias Harris.

With three high-usage players now in place in Maxey, Harden, and Embiid, Harris’ reported desire to take on a more expansive offensive role, when linked to his middling defensive versatility, may finally overshadow the reportedly rave reviews he’s earned from the staff and his teammates for being a good locker room guy.

The bad news? There aren’t that many logical landing spots for Harris moving forward, as his $37.6 million cap hit is no joke, and few teams can easily sneak that under their caps easily. The good news? There might just be a few options out there that could realistically be in play that could make the Philadelphia 76ers’ roster better moving forward.