The Philadelphia 76ers and Charlotte Hornets are tied for sixth place in the Eastern Conference, which is not a good thing for those who eat cheesesteaks for breakfast and boo grandma’s spaghetti sauce if she went too heavy on the oregano.
Jimmy Butler might make things better. Then again, he might make things worse.
And one of these days, he is going to get traded — perhaps sooner rather than later now that he is sitting out against the Utah Jazz tonight in an effort to get traded. So should the Sixers make a run at him?
Let’s look at the pros and cons:
YES
As currently constituted, the Sixers are not as good as they were at the end of last season.
- They miss Marco Belinelli’s shooting.
- They are force-feeding Markelle Fultz into the starting lineup with poor results.
- They are 20th in the league in 3-point shooting despite having an elite point guard in Ben Simmons who specializes in finding guys open at the arc.
- They are also ranked 18th defensively, which is more pedestrian than they are capable of.
What do all of those factors make them? A middle-of-the-road team.
Adding Butler at the proper price would fix the 3-point shooting and the defense, but the big question is: At what cost?
Here is one possible deal that might work, assuming the Sixers would throw in some of the nine extra second-round picks they are holding. (they also have Miami’s unprotected 2021 pick, but that is not going anywhere anytime soon.)
What makes that trade extra appealing to Sacramento is that they hang onto their expiring contracts (Zack Randolph, Iman Shumpert, Ben McLemore, Kosta Koufos) for use in brokering more trades between now and February.
Minnesota gets three players to replace what Butler has been providing them, keeping them in playoff contention, and they can flip Fultz to a team needing a point guard, or hang onto him and move Jeff Teague.
NO
The Sixers value chemistry a lot more than many other NBA teams do, and messing with theirs is something they simply will not do unless forced by circumstances to take a gamble on an All-Star caliber player such as Butler.
Elton Brand’s next big trade as GM will be his first big trade as GM, and he does not want to mess it up. He worked too many years in Delaware to blow it all up with one bad move.
And that is one particular critical reason why acquiring Butler would be a risk.
Covington is a glue guy in the locker room who is respected by his teammates, a former football player from Chicago who gets it done on both ends of the court — but is still a lesser offensive and defensive threat than Butler.
Saric is struggling, but Saric always struggles at the start of the season, and he spent this summer in World Cup qualifying for Croatia — and history has shown that players who spend summers with national teams often have difficulty getting their groove back in the early part of subsequent seasons.
And then there is Butler’s reputation, and this is where Brand would be taking an enormous gamble. Butler is known to he tough on his younger teammates, especially anyone he considers soft.
The Sixers have two young, impressionable All-Stars in Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons who are building blocks that Philadelphia will absolutely not trade, and there would have to be some sort of reassurance (which may be impossible) that Butler would not create a divided locker room.
Again, chemistry means more to the Sixers than it does for other teams.
But if they continue to perform well below expectations, something has to give.
We shall see.
