NBA free agency 2022: Overpaying P.J. Tucker is a chance the Sixers have to take

It was the strangest of times. It was the most ordinary of times. It was the summer of 2017, five years ago. The Eagles were less than a month away from beginning training camp — the starter’s pistol for a season in which, for the first time in the Super Bowl era, they would cross the NFL’s finish line first. The Flyers had missed the playoffs. The Phillies were on their way to missing the playoffs. Nothing surprising there. Everyone had long forgotten that Villanova had failed to defend its 2016 national championship, losing in the NCAA Tournament’s round of 32 to Wisconsin. People liked Carson Wentz. People were eager to see Ben Simmons play basketball. Again, the strangest of times.

And the 76ers were about to spend money.

It sounds common now. It wasn’t then. This was new. This was different. At least during Sam Hinkie’s tenure as team president and general manager, it was. The point of The Process had been to bottom out for a while, hoard those precious draft picks and assets, and rebuild the Sixers from the ground up with young players on team-friendly contracts. But one of the major drawbacks of Hinkie’s strategy was that it rendered Philadelphia — already a less-desirable free-agent destination than, say, L.A. or South Beach — positively radioactive. What decent player would sign there, knowing for certain he would be on a losing team?

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To change that reality, then-GM Bryan Colangelo and the rest of the franchise’s leadership entered the 2017 offseason prepared to overspend on certain players. The results were that the Sixers signed JJ Redick to a one-year contract worth $23 million and Amir Johnson to a one-year deal worth $11 million.

Johnson was here for two nondescript seasons. But with the Sixers, Redick had the two best and most productive years of his career, averaging more than 17 points a game and shooting nearly 41% from three-point range. That 2017-18 team went 52-30, the best 82-game season since they went 56-26 in 2000-01 and a 24-game improvement from the previous season. Redick helped the franchise turn a corner that it needed to turn.

It’s worth keeping that context in mind during this free-agency period and throughout the rest of this offseason. The Sixers are prepared to pay P.J. Tucker $33 million over three years. That’s a steep price on paper for whatever toughness and three-point shooting Tucker, who turned 37 in May, might provide. But the Sixers are past the point of having salary-cap flexibility be their highest priority. They have Joel Embiid, James Harden, Tobias Harris, and Tyrese Maxey. They’re trying to win now, and they should, and after stumbling so many times, they’re at the stage of their championship chase that necessitates a measure of risk. If the cost of turning this latest corner is a contract that’s a little too long and a little too expensive for a veteran who’s a little too old, so be it. The Sixers have to take this kind of chance.

So Kevin Durant wants the Nets to trade him, which means that whatever team he ends up with will be the fourth of his career and third in the last four years. And Kyrie Irving reportedly wants to play for the Lakers, who would be the fourth team of his career and third in the last five years. And Harden is taking less money this season to re-sign with the Sixers, who are … the fourth team of his career and third in the last four years.

Is it any wonder why the Nets reached such unprecedented heights and played with such joyful effervescence once they got these guys together?

No discussion of the Sixers’ free-agency history is complete without mentioning what is probably the franchise’s most infamous signing of all: Charles Shackleford.

In July 1991, after having been eliminated in the Eastern Conference semifinals for the second straight year by the Chicago Bulls, the Sixers signed Shackleford, a center, to a three-year contract worth a reported $1.3 million. He had washed out with the Nets after two seasons before spending a year playing in Italy, where he averaged 19.7 points and 15.8 rebounds a game and helped his club, Phonola Caserta, win the Italian A-1 national championship.

“Shack is a bona fide 6-11, has extremely long arms, and can rebound,” Fred Carter, then a Sixers assistant coach, told the New York Times. “No one has ever questioned his ability to chase down the ball. Who was our starting center last year, Rick Mahorn? Shack is a much better rebounder.”

No, he wasn’t. Over two years and 120 games with the Sixers, Shackleford averaged 5.5 points and 5.2 rebounds a game. In The Great Philadelphia Fan Book, authors Glen Macnow and Anthony Gargano tell the (perhaps apocryphal) story of how Charles Barkley — then the Sixers’ star player — learned of Shackleford’s acquisition.

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One night, management woke Charles up to inform him the team had just signed “Shack.” In his half-conscious state, Barkley heard it as “Shaq,” as in Shaquille O’Neal.

“I was dancing around the room, saying, ‘We got Shaq! We got Shaq!’” Charles later recalled. “And then Gene Shue had to tell me it was Charles Shackleford.”