Well, it’s all over.
No, not just the Philadelphia 76ers season. This might mean more than the 2023-24 campaign coming to a close, in fact. Finally, we have reached the end of Tobias Harris’ contract with the Sixers. The forward is set to become a free agent after five-and-a-half years with the team, creating a significant chunk of cap space for the franchise as he goes.
Let’s rewind. Back in February of 2019, Harris was traded to Philadelphia from the Los Angeles Clippers. About five months later, after playing 27 games for the Sixers and averaging 18.2 points in 35.0 minutes per outing, Harris signed a near-max contract with the organization.
Five years, $180 million. At that point, it was the biggest, most expensive contract the Sixers had ever given. In fact, it meant he was making more per year as a Sixer than Joel Embiid up until the 2022-23 season when the center’s four-year, $213 million contract kicked in.
And for what?
Well, at the time, hopes were high for the then 26-year-old. He had just played all 82 games of the 2018-19 season between the Clippers and Sixers, averaging a career-high 20 points per game and shooting 39.7 percent from long range. The Sixers front office obviously saw the potential in the forward to continue to improve his game and production over years to come.
That wasn’t exactly how it played out. In 378 regular-season games for Philadelphia, Harris averaged 17.6 points, 6.6 rebounds and 3.1 assists in 33.8 minutes per game. It’s not a complete collapse of production, but it certainly wasn’t an improvement worthy of his paycheck or a starting spot on a team looking to contend for championships. He never developed his offensive skillset beyond his few repeated moves, never got more aggressive and never was impactful when he needed to be.
The Sixers easily could have gotten the same out of another player for a fraction of the cost.
That lopsided proportion of what he provided for the team compared to the lucrative amount paid to him is the obvious main point of contention, of course. Some might say “well, that’s on the Sixers for offering him that much,” and maybe that’s somewhat valid.
But let’s be clear, even if he was on a lesser contract this entire time, Harris would still go down as having been a bad Sixer.
Sure, 17.6 points per game over the years sounds alright, but it can be misleading. The stat sheet doesn’t account for the crucial times he all but evaporated from the court or the times he was actively a detriment to the Sixers’ play.
One such issue that won’t show on a stat sheet but was egregiously evident in watching his play was a lack of hustle. Sure, in some individual games throughout his tenure he would have a hot hand from long range or a timely burst of scoring that looked good on paper, but Harris was never a hustler. He seldom dove for a loose ball, hardly ever battled for offensive rebounds and a large percentage of defensive rebounds were completely uncontested. He avoided contact like the plague and, at times, looked like he was doing the bare minimum.
You want a good stat for that, actually? In 435 games across regular season and playoffs, Harris drew zero charges as a Sixer. Not a single one. Kyle Lowry, who arrived in Philadelphia in the latter half of February, drew nine as a Sixer in just 23 regular-season games.
That has been the theme of Harris’ career as a Sixer: not an ounce of hustle and seemingly no desire to improve himself to help the team. And if the first four years of his contract were the straw that broke the camel’s back with Sixers’ fans, this season was an anvil dropped on the poor camel for good measure.
Harris averaged 17.2 points, 6.5 rebounds and 3.1 assists this season. On paper, it was a slight improvement over a rough 2022-23 season that saw the forward post just 14.6 points, 5.7 rebounds and 2.5 assists in 32.9 minutes per game, but not by much.
The real problem with Harris is that, in the moments when the Sixers needed him to step up even a little, he stayed stagnant or completely deteriorated. The first opportunity for that came when Joel Embiid went out for two months across February and March with the meniscus injury that ultimately required surgery. With the league’s reigning MVP sidelined, Harris had a golden opportunity to step up for his team. He would have to score more and absolutely get more aggressive on the boards to try to compensate for Embiid’s absence.
But nothing of the sort happened. Embiid, the route through which almost all of the Sixers’ offense ran through up to that point in the season, was out of the picture. And yet, Harris’ production was just as inconsistent as before. In 23 games Harris played during that Embiid hiatus, he averaged 16.3 points and 7.1 rebounds in 34 minutes per game and posted a -4.7 +/-. In 11 of those games, he failed to break 20 points. In four instances, he didn’t even score in double-digits despite playing nearly 30 minutes each time.
He was the same as he had always been — unreliable, especially when it mattered most.
And the saga finally ended in a way that makes it even easier for Philadelphia to say goodbye, if not good riddance. In the six-game, first-round playoff series against the New York Knicks, that dropped to just 9.4 points in 37.4 minutes per outing. With games coming down to the wire throughout the series, the Sixers may be in a completely different position right now had Harris provided even a modicum of support, let alone nearly $40 million worth.
In the perfect punctuation at the end of five years of disappointment, Harris posted a grand total of zero points on just two attempted shots in the Sixers’ do-or-die Game 6 vs. the Knicks on Thursday night. Not a single point in 29 minutes on the floor in a game that the Sixers ultimately fell short by just three points of pushing the series to a Game 7 and keeping their season alive.
To say Harris went out with a whimper would be giving him too much credit.
This is a light at the end of a long tunnel for the Sixers. Fans of the franchise may still be experiencing the disappointment of falling out of the playoffs in the first round — and that’s understandable — but it’s true. With the money freed up by Harris’ departure, a world of opportunities opens for the team to build a better supporting cast around Embiid and Maxey, maybe even including someone who will spend their 34 minutes per night putting in every ounce of effort to help the team be better.
The future is brighter for Philadelphia without Harris in the picture.
