Denver and Oklahoma City make a trade – potential Tobias Harris destination off the table?

Seemingly ever since Tobias Harris signed his five-year, $180 million contract with the Philadelphia 76ers again in 2019, a minimum of some contingent of the fan base has been speculating on methods to maneuver him by way of commerce. This line of considering is definitely comprehensible, as paying near-superstar stage cash for an excellent, not nice participant is way from an environment friendly solution to assemble a roster within the trendy wage cap surroundings.

To be truthful to Tobias, he made a concerted effort to adapt his sport final season following the arrival of James Harden. Harris grew to become a way more prepared catch-and-shoot perimeter risk and put forth a better effort on the defensive finish. He was arguably the staff’s greatest and most constant participant all through the opening-round sequence win towards Toronto. With simply two years remaining on Harris’ contract, the cash seems to be much less onerous by the day, and there’s definitely no cause the staff has to commerce him.

Nonetheless, there are these among the many fan base prepared to maneuver on, and you’ll moderately argue that some type of talent-for-depth swap the place Tobias’ cash turns into earmarked for a number of slightly-less-talented gamers would make the staff higher as an entire. It’s onerous to wage match in a commerce, although, whenever you’re speaking a couple of participant who made $36 million this previous season. Nevertheless, one vacation spot that all the time loomed as a workaround was Oklahoma Metropolis, who had the obtainable cap area to make a Harris commerce work pretty simply. Bryan Toporek succinctly laid out the scenario for Forbes earlier this month:

“If the Sixers hope to clear sufficient cap area to signal a star in free company, the Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder will probably be their greatest guess for a Harris dumping floor.

The Thunder presently have practically $22 million in cap area obtainable till June 30, however it’s going to disappear July 1 when Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s max extension formally kicks in. Because the Thunder are to this point beneath the cap for now, they wouldn’t should ship a roughly equal quantity of wage again to the Sixers in a Harris deal. They’d simply have to complete not more than $100,000 over the cap following the commerce.

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The Thunder might create an extra $9.7 million in cap area by relinquishing all of their cap holds for former gamers akin to Norris Cole, Nick Collison and Raymond Felton. In the event that they did so, they may take in Harris’ contract and would solely must ship again veteran large man Derrick Favors ($9.7 million). The Sixers might additionally embrace Matisse Thybulle ($2.8 million) and/or the No. 23 total choose this 12 months as sweeteners.

The Sixers ought to solely go this route in the event that they’re sure that they’ll have the ability to spend their cap area correctly. Favors wouldn’t do a lot (if something) for his or her playoff outlook subsequent season, they usually’d be left scrambling to interchange each of their beginning wings/forwards.”

The 2 groups reportedly mentioned a possible Harris deal again in February, so there was some actual smoke to the scenario.

But, we are able to in all probability throw all that considering out the window after at present’s reported commerce involving Oklahoma Metropolis and Denver.

With Oklahoma Metropolis’s cap area considerably decreased by JaMychal Inexperienced’s arrival, we are able to in all probability put any Harris commerce hypothesis on pause, a minimum of till the brand new league begins on July 1 and a few cap area opens up for a handful of different groups. With Tobias now even likelier to stay on the staff for the upcoming 2022-23 season, his mandate is evident: go recruit Bo Cruz earlier than Boston can snatch him up.