Tyrese Maxey should be untouchable in any Sixers trade for James Harden | David Murphy

Shake Milton? Sure. First-round picks? Have at ‘em. Matisse Thybulle? If they insist. But there’s a hard line the Sixers need to draw if and when trade negotiations with the Brooklyn Nets begin in earnest on a Ben Simmons deal: No Tyrese Maxey. No how. No way.

That it even needs to be said is an indication of how much the Sixers’ outlook has changed over the last 72 hours. There’s a familiar momentum to the way things work in the NBA’s disgruntled superstar market. First come the whispers that materialize out of the ether. Gradually, they build enough volume and specificity that you start to get the sense that they are more than mere speculation. Next come reports that begin to explicitly characterize the mindset of the player in question, at which point the only thing left for anybody to do is wait for word about the actual employer’s intentions. They can’t, can they? They wouldn’t, would they?

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While a deal is nowhere near imminent — a source told The Inquirer’s Keith Pompey that the Sixers still expect to hold on to Simmons beyond Thursday’s trade deadline — the Nets are reportedly open to discussing a deal that would send James Harden to the Sixers for a package that would be headlined by Simmons.

Where things go from here depends in large part on the exact nature of the relationship between Harden and the team that, one year ago, traded away a borderline-comical eight first-round picks and swaps to the Houston Rockets in order to acquire him. Back then, it seemed like a long-term contract extension would soon follow, given the number of future assets the Nets sacrificed to facilitate the deal.

But with less than a week to go before the trade deadline and Brooklyn having lost eight straight games in the wake of a knee injury to Kevin Durant, Harden is set to hit the free-agent market this summer, leaving the Nets to consider the ramifications of losing him without getting anything in return.

What should ensue is one of the easiest negotiations of either Sean Marks’ or Daryl Morey’s careers. At least, when you factor in the stakes and the circumstances. There isn’t a whole lot of mystery on either side. The most important piece of information is one that the Nets would be offering up simply by making Harden available. There are only two scenarios in which it makes sense for them to consider trading away one of their Big Three in a season in which they remain one of the NBA’s title favorites.

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Either Harden has signaled to the Nets that he does not want to re-sign this summer, or the Nets have decided that they don’t want to re-sign him. In either event, it would be fair to deduce that Brooklyn has little choice but to find itself the best available offer. Furthermore, it would be fair to deduce the offers will not get any better than the one that they themselves had to beat to land Harden in the first place. The Rockets reportedly turned down an offer of Simmons and change in favor of the Nets’ package last winter. Transitively speaking, Brooklyn has an opportunity to get out of that deal for free.

If we assume that Harden is available, then the only question is how greedy will the Nets get. If the answer is, “pretty greedy,” then the only answer is “no deal.” Over the weekend, sources with direct knowledge of the Sixers’ internal deliberations were emphatic in their belief that Morey would refuse to include Maxey in a deal for Harden. If true, he should not waver from that stance.

The Nets’ greatest leverage will lie in the fact that they know Harden is Morey’s White Whale. They know he’s been infatuated with the idea of pairing one of the most devastating isolation scorers in NBA history with one of its greatest two-way bigs. They know he thinks that it’s a recipe for the championship ring that eluded him during his time with the Rockets. They know first-hand how hotly he pursued that formula one year ago.

What Morey needs to keep in mind is that his principles are what got him here. Things change fast in the NBA, especially with a star as enigmatic as Harden. In the event of a deal, there’s no guarantee the Sixers won’t eventually find themselves in the same place the Nets would have been, be it this summer or in a year or two.

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The 21-year-old Maxey is more than a rising young star with a premium set of skills and plenty of upward mobility. He’s insurance against all the things that can go wrong with Harden. Acquiring a 32-year-old veteran with a recent history of soft-issue injuries who has forced his way out of two teams in a year? That comes with plenty of risk. The Sixers need to leave themselves with an out. Maxey is it.

It remains to be seen where this thing goes. A sensible negotiation would go something like this: The Nets ask for Maxey, Simmons, and a couple of first-round picks. The Sixers tell them to call back only when Maxey is off the table. The Nets say it’s going to take more than Simmons and picks. The Sixers’ final offer: Simmons, Thybulle, and a pick or two.

In the end, the most powerful leverage in any negotiation is a willingness to walk away. The Sixers need to act with that willingness. Maxey is not Harden and likely will never be. But he has established himself as an invaluable piece of the Embiid-era Sixers. For as long as the Nets mention his name, only two words will do: No way.

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