Paul George was the Sixers’ only hope for a title. The risk is big. The odds speak for themselves.

Give Daryl Morey credit. You may not like the game that he plays, but he plays it better than anybody in the National Basketball Association. It is a game where regrets can be indefinitely postponed, where downstream risks are upstream opportunities, where the future is no less uncertain a place when prioritized over the present. It is a counterintuitive game, one that forsakes many of the fundamental tenets of traditional roster-building. It is also a game that has consistently delivered to the Sixers a better chance at a championship than they had the year before. This year will be no different.

Forget the risks, for a moment. Forget the multitude of ways this can blow up in their faces. Forget the age of the player, forget his motivations for signing, forget the challenge of filling out a roster with three massive salaries and little room to maneuver. In Paul George, who agreed to sign a four-year, $212 million contract on Monday morning, the Sixers have added a player who offers them a chance at winning a title. No other avenue would have allowed them to say as much.

That’s the key point. It is a philosophical one. Is signing George a good move? It depends on your definition of good. In fact, it depends on whether you even believe in the concept of “good” in the first place. In Morey’s world, “good” is just another word for “not the best.” It is a middle ground that distracts from the zero-sum reality of chasing a championship. Good is not an objective. It is a consolation prize, a coping mechanism. Good is the refuge of leaders who cannot handle the zero-sum reality of chasing a championship. It is an artificial construct created by those who need a more attainable objective than becoming the best.

» READ MORE: Daryl Morey lands Paul George, free agency’s biggest star, in pivotal Sixers summer

In Morey’s world, the risks of signing George, considerable as they are, pale in comparison to the risks of not signing him. The downside of George is more spectacular than the downside of a more conservative roster-building strategy. But the downside of the latter strategy is that there is no upside. Which makes it nonsensical.

In Morey’s world, there are only optimal strategies and suboptimal ones. Every suboptimal strategy has the same likely outcome: You don’t win a championship. You might as well choose the one that offers the most upside.

George offers that upside. Nobody should debate that. Even at 34, he is coming off a season in which he was among the best two-way players in the league. He shot 41.3% from three-point range, converted 70% of his shots at the rim, scored more than half of his two-point buckets without an assist, got to the foul line. All that to go with his defense.

Swap that player in for Tobias Harris and the Sixers beat the Knicks. They beat the Pacers. They give the Celtics a run for their money. There was no other move, no combination of moves, that would have given the Sixers as good of a chance in 2024-25 as they will have with George.

That’s the thinking. It is sound. Look at the betting markets. With George, the Sixers are suddenly the third betting favorite to win the 2024-25 NBA title. FanDuel has them at 8.5-1, behind only the Celtics (3-1) and the Nuggets (7.5-1), ahead of the Thunder (9-1), the Knicks (9.5-1), and the Timberwolves (9.5-1). Only one other time in the Embiid Era have the Sixers begun a season at better than 12-1. That year was, improbably, 2019-20, when they went off at 7.5-1 after trading away Jimmy Butler, signing Al Horford, and re-signing Harris and Ben Simmons to contract extensions. Take from that what you will.

The downside is just as big as it was that season. It comes with the philosophy. The odds that the Sixers won’t win a championship are probably greater than more conventionally built teams that currently rank behind them on the Upside-o-Meter. Their path is narrower. They have fewer outs. The deeper the team, the more diffuse the risk. If OG Anunoby goes down with an injury, the Knicks still have the team they had last season, plus Mikal Bridges. The Celtics won a title in a postseason when Kristaps Porziņģis missed 12 of 19 games.

The Sixers will not win a title in a world where George and Embiid are not both healthy. That’s a daunting statement given their track records. George has missed more games than Embiid himself over the last four regular seasons. He has missed an entire postseason.

But the upside is what matters to Morey and the Sixers. When they looked at the various ways they could deploy their cap space and draft picks, they saw only one where a championship was a potential outcome. By the time the offseason officially began, they were all-in.

It began as it always does, with billowing smoke and raging fire and a commissioner standing in the midst of the inferno announcing, “Gentlemen, start your matchbooks.” Less than four hours into the official start of the free-agent signing period, the Clippers released a statement that all but announced that George would become a Sixer. The All-Star wing, coveted by Morey and his front office as the one and only attainable player who could legitimatize their title aspirations, had rejected his hometown team’s best offer. The Clippers would not budge from the three years and roughly $152.4 million they felt was prudent to offer a player who will turn 35 next May. The Sixers had no such qualms.

» READ MORE: Paul George agrees to sign four-year, $212 million deal with Sixers

For much of the last two months, the idea of George suiting up next to Embiid and Tyrese Maxey was little more than the latest fit of fantasy that envelops the Sixers front office every few years. We’d heard it before. We’d seen how it plays out. Their belief that George would consider a move to the East Coast, that the Clippers would allow it, was difficult to accept as grounded in reality. Therein lie Morey’s strengths. He understands how the NBA operates.

Think back to when he arrived. Everyone said the Sixers were stuck. They let Butler walk, then watched him walk the Heat to the NBA Finals. Horford was one year into a four-year contract. The cap room was gone. The draft picks were dwindling.

Out went Horford, in came Maxey. The Sixers finished 2020-21 as the top seed in the Eastern Conference. Simmons passed up a dunk. The Sixers passed up a legitimate opportunity at the NBA Finals. Simmons demanded a trade. They were stuck again.

Out went Simmons, in came James Harden. One year later, the Sixers had the Celtics on the ropes. They chunked Game 6 and no-showed Game 7. Harden opted in and demanded a trade. They were stuck again.

The fear now is that they are about to sign a contract that will lead to a conclusion only fools would ignore. The most logical reason George will sign with the Sixers is because he knows how unlikely it is for him to be worth the money that they are willing to guarantee him through his 37-year-old season. He will do so knowing that superstars always have outs, as long as they perform at a superstar level, or anywhere close to it.

But, then, the same goes for teams.

Therein lies the logic. The Sixers are not at a point where they can build in a deliberate manner while also maximizing their chances at winning a title with Embiid. The optimal strategy is not available to them. If they do not sign George, they end up with the same sort of team that they had last season, one that enters the season well shy of the Celtics and Knicks in the East. With George, they at least have an upside if everything breaks right.

Maximize the present, and deal with the rest of it as it comes. It is not an ideal game. It is simply the one that must be played.

Join Inquirer beat reporters Gina Mizell and Keith Pompey, as they recap the flurry of initial signings for the Sixers and around the league at noon on Monday. Watch the stream here.