How Sixers’ Daryl Morey hatched a ‘risky plan’ to land Paul George, transform new big three

NASSAU, Bahamas — One day last week, Daryl Morey and Paul George took time to chat after a practice on a makeshift basketball court in the convention center of a luxury resort; the kind of quotidian conversations steeped with the happy vibes of training camp in paradise. In some ways, even such a low-stakes event felt triumphant for the Philadelphia 76ers.

For nearly a year, the franchise and the All-Star had been tethered to one another in a slow-motion pursuit. Nothing but the future of a franchise and the success of a high-wire strategy was on the line.

Last summer, the Sixers set course on an audacious plan to bring George to the organization. When James Harden requested a trade out of Philadelphia after his tiff with Morey over his contract, the 76ers sought an exit strategy and their next pivot. Morey began trade talks on a Harden deal with the LA Clippers by asking for George; he was rebuffed but undeterred. Always a maximalist, Morey lives by a simple approach to team building: get as many great players as possible, CBA constraints be damned. He set his eyes on his next star and the one he could pair with Joel Embiid as each seeks his first NBA championship, and the Sixers’ first since 1983.

The idea was fraught with many chances for failure. Even Morey concedes now it was unlikely; he puts the initial odds of success at less than 50 percent.  

“We were taking what we thought was the best plan to keep ourselves in title contention, but it definitely was a risky plan,” Morey told The Athletic. “They don’t always work out, but we felt like all the other plans were worse.”

George was in his fifth season of a homecoming, though a rocky one. Stars had all but stopped using free agency as a vehicle for movement between franchises — no one of George’s ilk had done it since the summer of 2019. Although George could opt out after the 2023-24 season and go, it would mean leaving his hometown team and passing on an extension. That exit path went against the rules of physics that govern the league.

The Sixers did what they could to gild his road across the country. They traded Harden in November, acquiring two first-round picks, but also players with expiring contracts who could give them max cap space after the season. Morey wasn’t shy about adding a top-flight, two-way wing, but stayed patient. The Sixers got involved in discussions for OG Anunoby before February’s trade deadline but metered their interest because they could sign him in free agency. He was the backstop to their offseason plans. George loomed largest among all.

The Clippers played hardball in contract talks with George. Ultimately, he wanted out. After the Clippers started shopping George in the offseason when extension talks went sideways, the Sixers sensed their odds improving near 50/50. But they remained at a standstill. As free agency began on the last day of June, they were in stasis. Their offseason hinged on George’s decision — by that night, he had determined he’d leave the Clippers, but had not chosen his next destination. They couldn’t call any other free agents until he gave them an answer. Morey knew the veterans the Sixers wanted to sign would only come if they could join a title contender. His first outreach, instead, was to Lester Quiñones, but he even refused to commit. The Sixers could only offer a two-way contract and he wanted more.

The wait ended in the early hours of July 1. George finally said yes. The Sixers had pulled off their moonshot.

It took a long, tightrope walk to get here, but as the Eastern Conference escalated into an arms race over the last 13 months, Philadelphia has managed to keep up.

While the Boston Celtics enter as the defending champions, the Milwaukee Bucks pair Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard for a second season, and the New York Knicks leveled up with two league-tilting trades, the Sixers arrived in the Bahamas last week with championship ambitions of their own.

“I feel like we’re one of the top few teams,” Morey said. “I think Boston’s pretty clearly the team that deserves to be called the favorite. They played great last year. They played really historically well, but I think we have a shot to get right in there, in the mix with them, and beat them this year.”

In George, the Sixers now have an elite two-way wing who can slide in smoothly between Embiid, a generational big man, and Tyrese Maxey, the homegrown point guard who developed into an All-Star last season. The Sixers added Caleb Martin, Eric Gordon, Reggie Jackson and Andre Drummond, and brought back Kyle Lowry and Kelly Oubre Jr. They also own a full suite of future first-round picks, though split between their own and the Clippers, and Morey is committed to using them if the roster needs an upgrade at some point this season.

Despite the difficulty of engineering this roster, now comes the hardest part for the 76ers. The East is treacherous, and the Sixers are not without faults. Their season will hinge on, as much as anything, Embiid and his health.

Embiid tore the meniscus in his left knee last January, which upended Philadelphia’s season. In his absence, and after he returned, it was clear the team needed more around him. More playmaking and more shotmaking were necessities. While Embiid, even with a wonky left knee, and Maxey were brilliant in the playoffs in April, they were eliminated by the Knicks because they could not match New York’s collective tenacity. As the Knicks pressed the ball out of Embiid’s hands, there was too little aid from his teammates to burn them.

Now, the 76ers add George into the operation. He and Embiid already have a relationship; the Sixers’ star center was a key part of George’s recruiting effort. Their bond is already tight enough that Morey believes Embiid may have waited on signing his mammoth three-year extension if George had not come to Philadelphia. Maxey is a cheery lead guard who has added more leadership responsibility this fall with a smile and is the little brother of the Sixers’ new big three.

Even as Maxey warned at media day that this new combination may not make for a seamless integration, few NBA stars can assimilate themselves as well as George. It is a skill and a mindset he has honed over 14 seasons.

But when George first got to the league, he sought glory and believed it had to run solely through him.

“I wanted, in a selfish way, of like, pushing myself to be great,” he said. “I wanted the team to be mine. I wanted everything to fall on my shoulders. I wanted that pressure. I wanted to be compared to the guys that took over for their teams.”

George quickly became an All-Star in Indiana and the unquestioned front man of that franchise. He made three All-NBA teams in seven years. The Pacers pushed the Miami Heat and LeBron James to the brink in three consecutive postseasons. He recovered from a devastating leg injury in August 2014 to reclaim his place as one of the NBA’s best players.

But he also learned from his shortcomings. Although the Pacers pushed the Heat, they could not surpass them. Miami had too much talent. James had too much help from Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.

George wanted that, too. He realized that his personal aspirations had a limit. That winning big in the NBA came through sharing the spotlight, not stealing it.

“You can’t do it alone,” he said. “You need star power. You need firepower. Not to say that I didn’t have that in Indiana, but you do figure out that like, all right, this is a challenge to win a championship being a lone superstar. And so it wasn’t taking the easy route, but it was just kind of understanding the landscape of where the league was going and to where I felt that I did need help at that moment.

“I couldn’t win the championship alone.”

George joined forces with Russell Westbrook when he was traded to Oklahoma City in 2017. It was a learning experience, but he finished off his second season with the Thunder with a third-place finish in MVP voting.

Then, he moved again, this time engineering a trade to Los Angeles to team up with Kawhi Leonard. The Clippers didn’t win many playoff series. Instead, George again found himself alongside a co-star, and rearranging his life to fit with someone else.

Those years serve as a foundation for what comes next in Philadelphia. The Sixers must find a way not only to make it work on the court but off of it. Each superteam is not only a basketball team, but a chemistry experiment.

But the Sixers, after so many years of noisy offseasons and internal friction, are coming into a season whole and in a good place. George said the outreach between himself, Embiid and Maxey has already begun and those conversations have left him optimistic.

“We all want each other to be themselves,” he said. “That’s the only way this thing’s gonna work. I gotta be Paul George, Joel’s gotta be Joel Embiid, Tyrese’s gotta be Tyrese Maxey for this team to work and for us to learn and figure out how to play amongst one another. So that was just a conversation to have.

”I’ve kind of never had an ego outside of my first couple years, thinking that I had to be the man from a selfish standpoint to win. I don’t have the ego when it comes to this basketball game. I know what I can do and what I’m capable of, and I can play in any system, any style, play off any player. It’s kind of one thing that I pride myself on.”

The Sixers’ ability to build continuity — quickly — may prove as vital a test to their high hopes as anything else. The last four champions all had cores that had been in place for years. It is hard to tell if it’s a trend or coincidence, but in an age of incessant player movement, cohesion may be a superpower. The Celtics and Bucks, of course, also had last-minute, high-profile additions, and the ease with which they mixed in an All-Star with their incumbent stalwarts helped propel them to titles.

George profiles as that kind of player, but the Sixers will also need him to take charge at times. Embiid seems as if he will miss some games for the sake of entering the postseason healthy and is ready to forego any awards and accolades — and the 65-game cutoff to qualify for them — to do so. He will restrain himself this upcoming season, he said, even if Sixers staffers “have to punch me and slap me and take my stuff away for me not to get on that court.” That will put an onus on the Sixers to sustain themselves without him. Philadelphia was 31-8 last year when Embiid played, but still tumbled all the way into the Play-In Tournament after he got hurt. If nothing else, that will also make George a potential safety net.

Title runs don’t come easy, as the Sixers know well. Morey saw it when he was the general manager of the Houston Rockets and fell to the Golden State Warriors several times. Embiid has seen how a few stray bounces can waylay a season.

But they have also proven comfortable in leveraging their own unease. That George is a Sixer is proof enough. Philadelphia is finally where it wants to be, and so is its new star after a scheme hatched more than a year ago came to fruition.

“It was definitely risky, yeah, but it was also the best plan,” Morey said. “A risky plan doesn’t mean it’s a bad plan. It just could be the best plan. It was definitely the best plan.”

(Photo of Maxey, Embiid and George: Jesse D. Garrabrant / NBAE via Getty Images)