Sixers president Daryl Morey’s masterful summer started with the biggest coup of his career

A thunderstorm had grounded the 76ers’ private plane, scuttling a cross-country trip to Southern California on June 30. So Julius Erving and Josh Harris hopped on FaceTime with Paul George’s agent, Aaron Mintz, to provide weather updates. Dr. J may have cracked open a bottle of vodka.

“When you’re seeking Paul George … you show up when you’re told,” Harris, the Sixers’ managing partner, recalled a couple weeks later. “We were supposed to show up at 8. It was 11.”

The delayed flight was more than worth it for all sides. News broke at 3:30 a.m. Philadelphia time that George had committed to sign a four-year, $212 million max contract with the Sixers. It gave the team a perennial All-Star wing and the NBA’s flashiest free agent available. The Sixers then added a slew of proven complementary players to surround the new Big Three of George, Joel Embiid, and Tyrese Maxey.

» READ MORE: All-Star Tyrese Maxey says he’s been ‘blessed.’ The Sixers could say the same thing.

It was a masterful swerve out of the James Harden conundrum. The previous summer, Harden had called Sixers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey “a liar” and demanded a trade. It was the payoff from a year of maintaining financial flexibility to make such a swift pivot, and included acquiring a bevy of expiring contracts and using a salary-cap quirk to their advantage. And it had players watching in awe as Morey, a dedicated chess player, executed move after move. He landed starting-caliber center Andre Drummond, high-energy forward Caleb Martin, outside shooters Eric Gordon and Jared McCain, brought back Kelly Oubre Jr., Kyle Lowry, and KJ Martin, and signed Reggie Jackson and Guerschon Yabusele late in the offseason.

That makes the Sixers a legitimate on-paper contender as they aim to finally clear the second-round playoff hurdle and dethrone the defending champion Boston Celtics. Those inside the organization already are a tad cautious to reflect on the dynamite summer, and emphasize that it means nothing if they do not merge those skill sets to deliver on-court success.

Yet those massive expectations for the 2024-25 season, which tips off Wednesday against the Milwaukee Bucks, exist because of the way the Sixers’ front office pulled off its roster revamp.

“I mean, we’re talking about Daryl Morey here,” said Drummond, the first of those free agents to choose Philly. “He’s very good at what he does. So when I talked to him, he said, ‘We’re going to have a special team this year.’ I trusted what he said.

“It just became a domino effect.”

Theories of how the Sixers could successfully maneuver out of the Harden fiasco began to percolate last summer.

It is rare for a contender — with an MVP on a supermax contract in Embiid and an All-Star still on his rookie deal in Maxey — to possess the cap space to sign a max-level free agent. Harden’s and Tobias Harris’ hefty contracts coming off the books in 2024 made it possible. But it also required Maxey, who was eligible for a max extension last summer, to wait one year to sign a lucrative contract, which gave him a smaller cap hold for the 2024-25 offseason.

“This offseason wouldn’t be possible without him,” Morey said of Maxey at a news conference in July.

A year ago, possible free agents-to-be included LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Kawhi Leonard, and George — who all had player options in their contracts for the 2024-25 season. Pascal Siakam, DeMar DeRozan, and Klay Thompson also were among those set to hit the open market.

» READ MORE: Kelly Oubre Jr. shifts from Sixers wild card to veteran voice: ‘I know what we need to do’

Was it possible back then that the Sixers could lure one of those stars to Philly? Sure. Was it realistic? Debatable, given the perception of drama hovering over the organization because of the Harden and Ben Simmons sagas.

The Sixers also insisted that they would not take the basketball equivalent of a gap year during the 2023-24 season, an effort to maximize Embiid’s prime as Nick Nurse took over as head coach.

That appeared to be accurate during those initial months, when the Sixers climbed as high as third in the Eastern Conference standings. But Embiid’s February knee surgery derailed the rest of the regular season, and they lost a wildly physical and entertaining first-round playoff series to the New York Knicks.

At a news conference the following morning, Morey reinforced his plan to go star hunting during the offseason. He acknowledged that “there is a chance that all the balls go up, and they all land. Then, everyone will be mad, and that’s fine.”

When reminded of that quote less than two weeks ago, Morey told The Inquirer: “There was one money ball, and we managed to grab it.”

But first, the front office charted multiple roster-building paths during a weeks-long process Morey said sometimes felt “endless.” There were meetings. And prep before meetings. And film work to decipher which available players could best fit as part of what Nurse called a “blank sheet” around the Embiid-Maxey tandem.

They needed a backup center after the team torpedoed during the minutes Embiid rested throughout the Knicks series. And outside shooting to space the floor for Embiid and take advantage of Maxey’s attacks to the basket. And aggressive defenders, a hallmark of Nurse’s teams. And championship intangibles such as toughness, experience, and basketball IQ.

Morey acknowledges now that his group actually spent more time on the non-George scenarios, which instead included splitting that max-contract salary figure into multiple next-tier player contracts.

“We had to be ready for all of them,” Morey said.

A first step was the NBA draft. The Sixers selected Adem Bona and McCain, who joked “we had, like, three players or something” when those rookies arrived in Philly.

» READ MORE: Get to know Paul George, other new Sixers through the reporters who covered them

For that reason, the days and hours approaching the June 30 free agency opening were “pretty nerve-racking” for Morey.

Embiid had already been recruiting his friend George, with a side-eye in front of a national-television NBA Finals audience and private phone conversations. On June 29, George declined his player option with the Los Angeles Clippers, officially making him a free agent.

So the Sixers’ executives and Nurse holed up in a room, ready to monitor the “hundreds of pieces moving around the league and things that could or could not happen” for several days, the coach said. And at some point, Morey added: “it’s so complex, you just have to react” on smaller deals, even while awaiting George’s decision.

“What you have to be always ready for is, at these numbers, will you say ‘Yes’ instantly?” Morey said. “Because if you don’t, they’ll go somewhere else.”

Drummond was the first to commit, an early coup because Morey thought the former Sixer would attract a stronger market. Then came Gordon, the latest former Houston Rocket to reunite with Morey with the Sixers. And as the evening transitioned to late night, Oubre decided to return to the team where he had established a relationship and comfort.

Meanwhile, the Clippers issued a rare public statement that George was leaving after months of contract negotiations — which he later detailed on his Podcast P — reached the final impasse. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, a second-tier 3-and-D wing candidate for the Sixers, chose the Orlando Magic and eliminated that team’s ability to sign a max-level player.

» READ MORE: Paul George in, Tobias Harris out: Projecting the Sixers’ rotation after a busy offseason

All logic signaled that the Sixers were about to land their superstar. But following a family vacation to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, George still wanted to meet with the Sixers’ ownership group. Which meant that thunderstorm needed to end, and the Sixers’ brass needed to get to California.

They took their shoes off when they finally arrived at George’s home, a gesture he later joked “wasn’t no house rule … I guess one shoe came off, and everyone followed.” They showed a video of Philly celebrities and Sixers fans who “showed up in Paul’s living room,” Harris said. That George was wearing an Allen Iverson shirt indicated where his head and heart leaned.

“For them to have the commitment to make it down and show face and be here for the meeting,” George told The Inquirer from his locker in Atlanta earlier this week, “that spoke loudly to me.”

The overnight news ripped through the rest of the Sixers’ roster — and those about to join it. Maxey, who had fallen asleep in his hometown near Dallas, woke up to about 30 text messages and thought to himself, “Wow, this is amazing.” Oubre and George linked the following week for a “super organic, super fun” workout in Los Angeles.

The front office roped George into discussions about other players they could add, while watching 2023-24 contributors such as Nico Batum, Buddy Hield, and De’Anthony Melton choose to sign elsewhere. The most shocking was Caleb Martin, whom Morey previously assumed would be too costly to include as part of the George track. But when the versatile former Miami Heat player agreed to a four-year, $32 million deal while the Sixers were at the Salt Lake Summer League, “there was at least a couple fist pumps,” Morey said.

Then came the re-signing of Lowry, who told The Inquirer he had two other suitors before agreeing to a veteran-minimum deal with the Sixers. And KJ Martin, who, once he saw the two-year, $16 million deal — which also is advantageous for the Sixers because of its tradabilty — “it was something I had to take,” he told The Inquirer. The same day, the team formally introduced George and celebrated Maxey’s new contract, news broke that Jackson (Drummond’s best friend) also was joining. And following a terrific Olympics run for his native France, Yabusele had a beach vacation interrupted by a call from his agent saying he was about to get his second NBA shot.

“It kept falling our way,” Nurse said.

Following the Sixers’ first training camp practice, Oubre told The Inquirer that he wanted to ask Morey one question: “Bro, how do you feel?”

“You do all this orchestrating,” Oubre continued while standing inside a ballroom at the Atlantis Paradise Island resort in the Bahamas, “and you see it formulate and come together, like, that has to feel amazing.”

These Sixers are far from a finished product, of course. Embiid will miss all preseason games and has not scrimmaged, part of a season-long knee management plan to get him to the playoffs healthy. George suffered his own injury scare Monday when he hyperextended his left knee against the Hawks, though the team said an MRI on Tuesday revealed no structural damage. During early practices, Nurse has emphasized pushing the pace, rebounding better, and being more versatile defensively.

» READ MORE: Nick Nurse, Iowa’s favorite son, returns to the state that shaped him as a champion and citizen of the world

As the coming weeks and months unfold, Morey will evaluate how all players develop habits and adopt Nurse’s desired playing style. The executive typically is active at the trade deadline and has assets for any final upgrades. And the Sixers’ potential will be partially dictated by their rivals, as the Celtics kept their championship core intact and the Knicks also had a big summer by trading for former Villanova star Mikal Bridges and All-Star Karl-Anthony Towns.

Which means it is unlikely that the Sixers’ 2024-25 roster revamp is complete. Yet that delayed June 30 flight to see George eventually ignited a masterful summer.

Next, it is up to those players to translate Morey’s chess moves into on-court success.

“Now that we’re here,” Drummond said, “it’s time to just make it all work.”