Tobias Harris is one of the most well-liked players in the NBA. He is loved and respected by teammates and coaches alike and is a generous contributor to the Philadelphia community, happy to give both his money and his time.
He has worked hard to improve every single aspect of his game and has been largely successful in doing so. If all that is true, why do so many Philadelphia 76ers fans, who are notorious for loving blue-collar players who embrace the city, want him gone so badly?
Ever since the Sixers inked him to a huge contract and Jimmy Butler left for the Miami Heat, Philadelphia fans have been screaming for the team to trade Tobias Harris. However, despite all of their howls, he is still here.
The untradable Harris: Is it impossible for the Philadelphia 76ers to trade him?
The most common complaint is that his giant contract could be broken down to pay for three lesser-skilled role players. Another one is that he should play like an All-Star if he is going to be paid like one. The calls to trade Harris have been non-stop for three years now, ranging from a whisper when he plays well, to a deafening roar when he doesn’t. Yet still, he has not been traded.
Being upset with Tobias because he makes so much money is silly. How many pay raises have any of you ever turned down? This means that most of the really interesting trade talk stems around whether the Sixers can add a piece that helps the team without feeling the absence of what Harris brings to the table.
The untradable Harris: What if he is actually the perfect player for the Philadelphia 76ers?
If we throw out all of the serious haters (the people who want him gone simply because they want him gone) then we are left with the notion that there are a lot of players out there who seemingly would fit here better than Harris. When the season ended and the cries began that this team absolutely had to trade him away, what followed was the endless cavalcade of potential players who could fit in a Tobias Harris trade.
This reasoning was based on both the team’s perceived needs and the impact on the salary cap.
When analyzing potential Harris trades it is important to remember that this team is not far away from seriously contending, so anyone they bring in has to be able to cover what they lose. That means they can’t be a poor locker room presence or anyone who might disrupt this team’s chemistry (and they already have two alphas in Joel Embiid and James Harden), and they have to be reliable.
Say what you like, but the best ability is availability, and over the last four years Tobias Harris is second in the NBA in games started, and first in the NBA in total minutes played.
So if anyone seriously wants to trade Harris we need to find someone who is a role model and mentor on and off the court, a community leader, is rarely injured and willing to play hurt, and still puts up numbers that rank among the best in the league. Want to argue that last point?
According to StatMuse, over the last five years, Tobias Harris has averaged 19.0 points, 6.8 rebounds, 3.0 assists, and shot 38.9 percent from deep. The only players to put up that stat line or better over that timespan are Kevin Durant, Paul George, Karl Anthony Towns, and Jayson Tatum. Harris’ defense and passing are also significantly improved in the last two years too.
The untradable Harris: Other options over Harris?
Who does the screaming public prefer over Harris in trades? There are a lot of names, and the trades where the sixers get back wings but no big forwards make no sense because there is no one currently on the team who is good enough to start for the Sixers at the 4.
The power forward position in today’s game looks like a larger small forward, but they still need to be big and strong enough to bang with the bigger fours, while quick enough to guard smaller threes. The list of guys is smaller than you think.
Let’s look at the most realistic names most commonly suggested:
- Harrison Barnes – He’s an underrated talent and he would fit here like a glove. If you want a 3-and-D power forward who isn’t allergic to rebounding, he is probably the best tradeoff for Harris. But fair or not, he has been often injured and fails the durability test. Over the last five seasons, he has averaged 56.8 games played per year. Yuck, the Philadelphia 76ers can do better.
- Bojan Bogdanovich – Similar offensive player, worse defender, and rebounder. Nah.
- Miles Bridges – Even before all of the awful legal issues this trade was problematic. Someone was certainly going to pay him in the neighborhood of $25 million or more, for four or five years, and Harris’ deal is off the books in two years. If you look at highlights, Bridges looked like a stud, but if you compare their statistics they are very similar. Now with the arrest, forget it.
- Gordon Hayward – Good guy, often injured, better shooter, worse defender, and rebounder. No thank you.
- TJ Warren – This has been a popular one because his scoring style feels so similar to Harris’ but he was making so much less money with the Brooklyn Nets. The reality is that he is wildly streaky, and a worse defender, passer, and rebounder. Pass.
The untradable Harris: A similar comparison
The fact that Tobias has never made an All-Star game is beginning to haunt him and affect how he is perceived. No one remembers how close he was or how the team he has on affected the voting. Last season is a good example.
On the Golden State Warriors, all of the narratives was about how Andrew Wiggins reinvented himself to become the fourth All-Star on the Warriors. However, if you look at all of the numbers and look at Wiggins’ improved defense, he looks remarkably like the exact same player as Tobias Harris. The biggest difference was that the media followed the Warriors and built up the Wiggins storyline.
The fact is, Harris is a top-10 power forward in this league and any trade would need to fill the enormous gap that losing a player of that caliber would create. There simply aren’t that many deals like that out there that make sense for both teams, making a Harris trade extremely difficult.
Don’t agree that Harris is top-10? The Sixer Sense’ Chris Kline recently wrote a story listing his opinions of the top power forwards in the league and had Harris 15, right in the middle. Opinions vary on such matters, and I would like to refute several of the names above him on Kline’s list. Let’s look at some of the best 4’s in the game.
- OG Anunoby, at 14th on Kline’s list, is a nice player but his numbers are the same as Harris’ (with admittedly better defense), he has averaged 45.5 games played over the last two years, and most importantly, he doesn’t play the four, he plays the three.
- Dorian Finney-Smith came in at 13th because he is a better 3-and-D guy than Harris, but he doesn’t do anything else on offense and is a much worse rebounder and passer than Harris, so give me The 76ers’ power forward all day.
- Jerami Grant is 12th on that list and is a better individual defender than Harris, but that is literally the only area where Harris isn’t better. If Harris was bad on defense this might be something, but he’s worked hard to become an above-average defender who can switch onto bigger and smaller players, so Grant doesn’t do anything for me. Harris is a better shooter from everywhere on the court, a better passer and ballhandler, and a far superior rebounder.
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- Miles Bridges is 11th, who we discussed so no need to rehash that point.
- Al Horford is ninth, who is strictly a “system” player at this stage of his career and clearly below Harris in any power forward discussions. Numbers don’t do Horford justice and he’s a better defender than Harris, but the Celtics do a great job of keeping Big Al in a box and limiting what he has to do on both sides. As Sixers fans, we have all seen how poorly it goes when Horford is asked to play too much on the perimeter. In a seven-game series, Horford can still dig deep, but for 100 games, Harris is vastly superior.
- Jaren Jackson Jr. at sixth and is the most interesting player on Kline’s list. Jackson Jr. can change the game by himself on defense for stretches, but his offensive skills leave much to be desired. Almost seven feet tall with a seven-five wingspan, you would expect him to block shots. However, his freakish quickness and athleticism gives him the ability to help and cover ground in ways that seem Thybulle-esque, and yet that athleticism doesn’t show up anywhere else. He takes almost 40 percent of his shots from deep, where he is a terrible shooter, has no inside game, and for an athletic giant, he seems oddly adverse to rebounding. Again, I would prefer Harris but this is a more interesting argument.
I just gave reasons why I believe six of the players listed ahead of him at the power forward spot should be below him, so even if you disagree with me on one or two of them, he still lands in the vicinity of the top-10, and he would be ninth on my personal list.
Being good at something makes you valuable, but quantifying that value can be tricky. The “trade Harris” group would say that the team is better without him, but that is impossible to say without factoring in whoever they got for him.
The untradable Harris: Conclusion
The fact is that this Sixers team, as they are currently constructed, needs certain things from their starting power forward. He needs to be able to rebound, which Harris does better than everyone else that I mentioned.
Embiid can’t grab them all and the team already needs to improve in that area. He needs to be able to run the floor with Tyrese Maxey in transition and be able to drive it to the rim or shoot the three when Harden hits him. He needs to be a better-than-average defender, particularly when surrounded by players with suspect defense.
*Cough*, Furkan Korkmaz, Harden, Georges Niang, Shake Milton, *Cough*
This player needs to be able to handle the ball in space and hit open cutters and shooters on time, as well as feed the post. He also needs to be reliable, in both body and spirit, willing to sacrifice ego to do what is best for the team.
The truth is that Tobias Harris is undervalued and unappreciated. He is the perfect player, with the perfect skillset and temperament, to play alongside Maxey, Harden, and Embiid. In most deals, they would lose many of the positive attributes that he provides by being the consummate jack of all trades.
Maybe the Sixers get a better scorer but they lose his defense and rebounding. Or vice versa. They might bring in someone with an ego who becomes divisive in the locker room. Trade value comes down to what he means to a particular team and he probably means more here than he might somewhere else.
The reason Harris has not been traded yet is because he is in the right place already. The Sixers listened, but at the end of the day, nothing seemed like it would improve the team. The 76ers are in win-now mode and Embiid will not be in MVP form forever.
The Philadelphia 76ers need someone at the power forward spot who can do a little bit of everything, with very few glaring weaknesses, and there isn’t anyone on the market who fits that description better than Harris. You might as well shift your trade talk to Matisse Thybulle or someone else, Tobi-haters. Tobias Harris isn’t going anywhere.