The Philadelphia 76ers pulled off some real head-scratchers this offseason. While their failure to bring back Guerschon Yabusele due to a cause imputable to them and them alone and the fact that the front office has yet to officially secure Quentin Grimes for next season will be their most prominent mistakes and/or omissions this summer, there are a couple of moves they made that simply cannot go unnoticed.
Just when Daryl Morey made a bold declaration to commit to getting younger this offseason, he and his cohorts went ahead and re-signed Kyle Lowry to another deal, almost functioning as some sort of an eleemosynary shelter. And that is not all — the front office also did not bat an eye to bring Eric Gordon back after a rather unproductive year marred by injuries and one-dimensional play, merely spruced by a fluky stretch.
Now, those rather worthless moves are slowly getting exposed as other teams in the league start to make some really heady and low-cost moves which the 76ers themselves could have executed had it not been for those mystifying decisions which even a rookie executive would have never even made.
The 76ers could have gone after Thomas Bryant if not for their pathetic decisions in free agency
As recently reported by ESPN’s Shams Charania, the Cleveland Cavaliers have signed free agent center Thomas Bryant to a one-year deal, allowing them to shore up a frontcourt rotation that was already one of the more formidable ones in the league.
Now, don’t get me wrong — Bryant is nowhere near a messianic addition for the 76ers had they been in the position to even chase him. But having said that, With the team in need and want of a reliable big man off the bench, he would have been a perfect depth filler to give the coaching staff some more variance off the bench.
Unlike Andre Drummond, Adem Bona, and Johni Broome, Bryant is a stretch-five who is not a liability on defense. He was an important part of the bench last season for the Indiana Pacers, which nearly snagged the championship, hitting some pretty important shots for them in the playoffs.
At the very least, Bryant would have been a more purposeful and sensible use of a roster spot than Lowry and Gordon, who offer very little at this point in their careers. But instead, the 76ers front office let their judgment get clouded by sentimentality, and for that, they will have to deal with the consequences and the incoming opportunity costs.