James Harden uncertainty complicates these Sixers story lines

Though 76ers training camp opens in less than a month, the team’s primary issue remains unresolved.

And might remain unresolved for months.

James Harden does not want to play for the team run by president of basketball operations Daryl Morey, after a trade request accompanied his decision to exercise his $35.6 million player option for the 2023-24 season. But the Sixers are not in a hurry to make such a deal, after deeming the initial trade market unsatisfactory when the transaction cycle began earlier this summer.

How this Harden saga unfolds could define the Sixers’ season. It’s already having an immediate ripple effect for a team with a new coach in Nick Nurse, the reigning NBA Most Valuable Player in Joel Embiid, and aspirations to remain a championship contender.

With that uncertainty still looming, these preseason questions are currently more difficult to answer:

Nurse is known for concocting creative schemes. Having an elite playmaker like Harden — who led the NBA in assists last season — would certainly offer even more opportunity for Nurse to experiment offensively.

Instead, this conundrum puts Nurse, his staff, and his players in a tricky spot right off the bat at training camp, when everybody from Embiid to Jaden Springer will be learning new concepts. How much should Nurse craft things around Harden’s abilities? And how much should the coach craft things around how he thinks the team will look if/when Harden is gone?

This will be in an immediate test for Nurse in adaptability, a sometimes-daily requirement for coaches because of injury, load management, and other quirks throughout the course of a long season.

The Sixers also don’t exactly fit the profile of Nurse’s most recent Toronto Raptors teams, which were anchored by forward Pascal Siakam, point guard Fred VanVleet, and a bevy of interchangeable wing players.

With or without Harden, it’s reasonable to expect another significant leap in Tyrese Maxey’s fourth season — perhaps to an All-Star level. Last season, he set new career marks in scoring (20.3 points per game) and effective field-goal percentage (.568), while managing his first significant NBA injury and a sometimes-rocky stint as the Sixers’ sixth man.

His exact role moving forward, however, depends on how — and when — this Harden saga evolves. If Harden holds out, or is eventually traded, Maxey would almost surely slide into the job of lead offense initiator.

» READ MORE: Why the Sixers have flexibility to remake their roster around Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey

Maxey as an every-possession ballhandler is a seemingly positive development for a player who uses his explosiveness to attack the rim and create separation to pull up from beyond the arc. Yet when asked about his continued development, Maxey often talks about sharpening his decision-making and distributing when he gets into the paint. Maxey also has excelled while playing off Harden — or in three-guard lineups with Harden and De’Anthony Melton — by making 43.4% of his three-pointers last season on a blend of shots off the catch and off the dribble.

Maxey is certainly more prepared to be the starting point guard than the last time he assumed such a role, when Ben Simmons sat out two seasons ago. Some could argue that it’s simply time for Maxey to take this step — and that there is value in making that shift this season versus (potentially) a year from now, when Harden hits unrestricted free agency. Another potential positive: Nurse previously helped develop a young, undrafted VanVleet into an All-Star.

If Maxey can help the Sixers stabilize — and/or transition to post-Harden life — that could vault him from young star to star star.

For the sake of this exercise, let’s bypass the possibility (or, for fans, fear) that another round of drama could turn Embiid into the next disgruntled NBA star and instead only examine the basketball impact.

Embiid is a masterful basketball player, blending power and skill that made him virtually impossible to stop while leading the NBA in scoring in each of the last two seasons. Yet Harden absolutely made life easier for the big man, creating a fantastic pick-and-roll combination and getting Embiid the ball in prime spots on the floor to operate.

It took Embiid and Harden some time to sharpen that chemistry, however. One could argue that kinks still existed even during last season’s playoffs. Embiid will again need to exercise patience if Maxey (or somebody such as newcomer Patrick Beverley) takes over the lead guard role, either immediately or eventually.

And could Harden’s absence or departure put even more of the load on Embiid? That would prompt more concerns about his workload and health for the playoffs.

No Sixer adjusted his role more following Harden’s arrival than Harris, who became more of a spot-up shooter as the fourth offensive option (38.9% from three-point range last season) and an improved multi-positional defender.

Now, Harris is entering the final season of a lucrative contract that has often drawn vicious criticism from outsiders. Could that coincide with a return to more offensive responsibility, on par with the seasons before the Harden trade and Maxey’s emergence?

Harris can be an efficient bucket-getter with the ball in his hands, flirting with a 50/40/90 shooting season during the truncated 2020-21 season. He also averaged more than three assists per game from 2019-22, meaning he could shoulder some more playmaking responsibility if needed.

The reason Harden took a pay cut last summer was so the Sixers could sign bruising veteran P.J. Tucker, one of Harden’s close friends and primary basketball confidants with the Houston Rockets. After a slow start with the Sixers, Tucker provided the defense, hustle, and leadership that has made him a coveted role player on title contenders.

But shortly after Harden spoke out against Morey last month, Tucker posted a photo of him and Harden on Instagram with these lyrics from rapper Lil Baby: “I’m not acrobatic, I’m not flippin’ on my bros.” And they are so closely tied that hypothetical Harden trade machinations have often included Tucker.

Tucker is a stand-up professional, and unlikely to disrupt the Sixers on the floor. But he is also candid. It’s fair to say his media-day comments will be fascinating.

(Worth noting: After Harden was traded from the Rockets to the Brooklyn Nets, Tucker was dealt at the deadline to the eventual-champion Milwaukee Bucks.)

Uncertainty about Harden also means uncertainty about who could potentially come back in a trade, if and when that happens.

Morey has said on the record that, in return, the Sixers must get either a standout player, or assets that could be turned into one. Some role-player depth could actually provide immediate value to the Sixers, after rangy wing Jalen McDaniels and outside shooter Georges Niang departed in free agency. Combo guard Shake Milton is also gone, leaving Melton, Beverley and Furkan Korkmaz as the ballhandling options.

Besides Beverley, the Sixers’ other new additions are big men Mo Bamba and Filip Petrušev and veteran wing Danny Green, who returns to the Sixers after spending much of the 2022-23 season recovering from a serious knee injury.