The Sixers Should See if There’s a Market to Trade Jerryd Bayless Over Summer
By Josh Wilson
With Jerryd Bayless missing all of his most important season with the Philadelphia 76ers, the team should look at his value in the trade market this summer.
If one were to go back and re-grade the free agency signings that Bryan Colangelo spear-headed for the Philadelphia 76ers this summer, they might be a little perplexed as to how they should go about it. It seems as if perhaps the final grade should be high for one of the signings in Gerald Henderson, decent with one other signing (but quickly plummeting) in Sergio Rodriguez, and incomplete with the final free agent in Jerryd Bayless.
Bayless came into this season with a wrist injury that he sustained at the end of the season prior. The injury sidelined him from the final seven games of the Milwaukee Bucks season.
Prior to the injury, Bayless had averaged 10.4 points, 2.7 rebounds, and 3.1 assists. His shooting, that had been at a career high last season, was the most attractive thing that the Sixers were looking at. He shot 43.7 percent from beyond the arc last season, (a career high) and 42.6 percent from the field.
He proved his 3-point shot not only in success rate, but also in attempts. While he hit the greatest rate of 3-pointers in his entire career by a whole percent more than his next best season, he also attempted one more 3-pointer than in his second-most season.
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The Sixers, in the season before Bayless’s arrival, ranked at 23 in the league in 3-point percentage.
The injury to Bayless’s wrist seemed fairly minor when the Sixers signed him. With him having sat out 7 games at the end of last year, and having the entire summer to rehabilitate his injury, one would expect that he would be nearly recovered. The Sixers also sidelined Bayless for the first 13 games of the season, making a grand total of 20 missed games and an entire offseason for his wrist to heal.
Bayless would end up playing three consecutive games before he experienced more discomfort in his wrist. The team elected to keep him out of more games, and evaluated his wrist at a slow pace. Finally, in late November, the team announced that he would have surgery done on the wrist and that his recovery would keep him out for the remainder of this season. The surgery was successful and took place in mid-December.
Now, however, the Sixers need to decide what to do about Bayless. Fitting Bayless into the lineup would have been a much simpler task this season with the Sixers having constant struggles in having enough players in the backcourt. Next season, however, the backcourt projects to be one of the busiest portions of the Sixers roster.
Here are all of the true guards on the roster that are under contract for next season in the backcourt:
- Nik Stauskas
- Gerald Henderson
- Jerryd Bayless
- T.J. McConnell
Add to that that the Sixers will have at least one lottery draft pick, and possibly two, and the amount of guards on this team goes up even more. It wouldn’t be absurd for the Sixers to select two guards with two draft picks this season.
The team has also been reportedly interested in free agent guards this summer, with Jrue Holiday being one of the most important ones they’ve got their eyes set on.
And finally, we must add to the equation that Ben Simmons is primed to be the point-forward of the team, and has been said to be the main facilitator of the offense as soon as he is back and healthy.
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So if the Sixers do draft two guards, bring one in via free agency, and we count Simmons in as a backcourt member (and he’s healthy) that brings the total up to eight people in the backcourt.
Now, there’s a really simple solution to this — don’t bring in as many point guards via the draft or free agency.
With the draft, it’s simply not that simple. Draft philosophy is something tough to work through, and there have been endless debates over whether approaching draft with a strategy of best player available is best, or whether drafting for fit is best. The Sixers have drafted BPA (for the most part) over the last several years. The expectation is that they will, for the most part, draft BPA, but perhaps have a bit more leeway and potentially consider fit when looking at the prospects left on the board this year.
I don’t think the Sixers will come out of the draft without at least one, and maybe two guards.
With free agency, the Sixers could easily pass on a point guard, but for some reason, I have a feeling team president and general manager Bryan Colangelo will be pursuing players like Holiday hard this offseason.
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That makes the backcourt quite clogged, assuming the Sixers do truly go after all of those fronts.
The next thing to be done is passing on lower-level point guards like T.J. McConnell, but passing up on the upside for the price with McConnell seems a bit foolish at this point in his career, especially as he has three years left on his deal of just over $1 million per year. If he keeps putting up production similar to that of a $10 million per year player, I don’t see how you can justifying an action of letting him go.
Everyone else is a lock, including Bayless, it seems. I’m not so sure that’s the best option, though.
While, if he can perform at the level he did with the Bucks in the year before he joined the Sixers, he would be a really solid addition to the team, I don’t know if that’s a realistic expectation.
Bayless took over 50 percent of his shots from beyond the arc in 2016 with the Bucks, and the next most season was just 37.7 percent. While the Sixers’ system and need to space shooters around their core will call for more 3-pointers from Bayless, I’m just not sure we could see him closing in on 50 percent of his shots from that range.
His 2016 performance with the Bucks, although a respectable one, was very much an outlier. And while I had faith Bayless would have been able to sustain that coming into his campaign with the Sixers, I have my doubts as he’s now struggling with injury issues.
So, if he’s not going to be as effective for the Sixers, what should they do? I have two scenarios I’d like to propose with Bayless, both include trading him at some point.
Bayless makes $9 million this season, and then his contract falls to $8.5 million the following season, with him becoming a free agent in the year after that. That contract was a good one signed by the Sixers, and may be attractive to teams looking for a guard in the trade market either over the summer or once the season has begun. Having that falling cap space is a good financial move looking towards the future.
Scenario 1: Play him, but not for long
Bayless was brought in with the intention of being lined up tandem with Ben Simmons as Simmons facilitated the offense. Bayless was supposed to function as an off-ball point guard. Now, with both of them being out for the rest of this season, that obviously did not pan out well.
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The Sixers could begin next season — assuming that both players are healthy to begin the year — as they expected to begin this season, with Simmons and Bayless running the guard duties. They can evaluate the pair and see how necessary Bayless is. If Bayless is not absolutely necessary for the success of Simmons, they could consider trading him and seeing what the market is surrounding him.
If Bayless is either required for the success of Simmons, or good enough on his own to consider keeping him around, then the Sixers simply don’t attempt to trade him. This scenario gives the Sixers an advantage in that they can evaluate him prior to trading him, and see firsthand rather than hypothetically how he and Simmons fit together.
Scenario 2: Trade him before the season
The second scenario would be involving the rare, but effective, summer trade. The Sixers, in this scenario, would trade Bayless in hopes that they bring maybe a solid defender in to make up for what they lost in Nerlens Noel, and free up some space to breathe in the backcourt.
The leverage the Sixers would have here is that they can push how good his falling contract is for other teams. That said, it will be a hard sell with Bayless still coming off of a bad wrist injury and also not having played significant minutes in an entire year and a half at that point.
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Both scenarios have pros and cons, but regardless, I think the Sixers need to truly consider what Bayless can be with the Sixers moving forward as they bring in guards from all directions. Bayless’s most effective season was going to be his first with the team, so with that spent almost entirely recovering from injury, maybe they’re better off selling him before he becomes completely ineffective to the team.