It’s been a long ten three years since the Sixers acquired Tobias Harris from the Los Angeles Clippers midseason during the 2018-19 campaign. The team thus rewarded Harris with a five-year, near-maximum level contract worth $180 million, during the same offseason where general manager Elton Brand would bid adieu to Jimmy Butler and JJ Redick, welcome in Josh Richardson and extend Ben Simmons alongside Harris.
It was, what we call in the biz, a “bad offseason.” It “did not go well,” as they say.
The subsequent season was a disaster from both a basketball and a global perspective — the team limped toward a sixth-place finish in the Eastern Conference and was swept by the Boston Celtics in the Orlando Bubble, which was instituted by the league out of necessity due to a horrible, deadly, global pandemic ravaging the entire world.