Tobias Harris: Farewell and good riddance to The Process’ most dependable 76er (and his $180 million deal)

Nothing in Daryl Morey’s 32-minute, end-of-season eulogy Monday chilled Sixers fans more than his tribute to everybody’s favorite scapegoat:

“Tobias, for sure, can be a contributing player on a contender. … We have interest in all our free agents.”

Morey cannot be serious.

Tobias Harris scored zero points in the last game of his five-year, $180 million contract. It was the first time in his 396 games as a 76er that he did not score.

He can’t come back from this. He can never earn another paycheck from Josh Harris’s (no relation) $8.4 billion. If the Sixers re-sign Tobias, not only will they never get their arena at Market East, the faithful will march on Camden and burn down their practice facility. Sixerdom has had enough of Harris.

No 76er since Andre Iguodala has attracted as much criticism as Harris. It isn’t quite fair, but it is what it is.

Harris spent 5½ seasons in Philadelphia. The first 4½ made much of the last season untenable, but he owed his followers nothing. Unlike, say, Joel Embiid, Harris produced better in the postseason than he did in the regular season. But he was toast against the Knicks. No lift. No speed. Flat shots.

Why? Simple.

He got overused. At 31, he got old. All those miles add up.

Since the 2019-20 season, his first full season as a Sixer, no player in the NBA who is currently over the age of 30 played more minutes in the regular season and postseason combined than Harris, at 13,461. James Harden is second. You might notice that The Beard has stunk in the playoffs, too.

Most of the animosity aimed at Tobias is based on in the inequality between Harris’ B-minus production and his A-plus salary. The rest lies in the contrast between Harris and Jimmy Butler, who like Harris, arrived during the 2018-19 season, but who, unlike Harris, wanted out, and got his wish.

» READ MORE: Daryl Morey’s disappointing ride as Sixers president hasn’t been all bad

The Sixers signed Butler to a max deal and traded him to Miami, where he cemented his Hall of Fame bid with a pair of heroic playoff runs.

The Sixers signed Harris to a max deal and kept him in Philly, where, in the All-Star era of Nikola Vucevic and Pascal Siakam, Harris failed to make an All-Star team.

But he did not stink. He did not steal money.

In his five full seasons, Harris averaged 17.6 points and 6.5 rebounds, shot 48.9% from the field, hit 37.3% of his three-pointers, and played in 90% of the team’s games (Embiid played in 70%). He started all 45 playoff games. Embiid missed five, or 11% of them.

Harris wasn’t a great player, but he was a very good player, and he knows it, even if you don’t. He also hears every criticism and he feels all the heat, but he endures.

“Truth be told, the whole time here — I tell my wife this all the time — I’m extremely proud,” Harris said. “I learned a lot about me as a person. It is truly gratifying.”

OK. That’s enough Tobias hate. Like Iguodala, he doesn’t deserve it.

Iggy used to get roasted for not being Philly’s version of Kobe Bryant. This always was stupid, because Iguodala had neither Bryant’s pedigree nor his salary. The city, trapped in its Allen Iverson hangover, just wanted a superstar, and all Iguodala could muster was excellent play to the limits of his abilities. He was the centerpiece of the worst trade in Sixers history in 2012, which cost the Sixers three other first-round assets and landed Andrew Bynum, who never played a game for the Sixers.

Iguodala went on to win four titles, an NBA Finals MVP, and an Olympic gold medal. Anyone who says Philly loves well-prepared athletes who reach their potential and leave it all on the court, well, that’s not always true.

Harris is in the same boat, to a degree. He’d been a primary scorer with the Pistons and Clippers, and he got lots of money to serve as a second scorer beside Embiid, but, as it turned out, at the age of 26 and after eight years in the NBA, he’d peaked. The city couldn’t handle that.

You cannot blame him. He was offered a monster contract, which he signed. Did he return full value on investment? No. Did he come close? Well, yes.

Consider all that was asked of him.

Harris had three coaches in five seasons. Embiid was never healthy. Ben Simmons was a joke at point guard, Harden was even funnier, and Tyrese Maxey never did it before. The Sixers have been a circus, with Harris its only constant, its only professional, in the center ring.

After the 2018-19 season, the Sixers replaced Butler and JJ Redick with Josh Richardson and Al Horford and called it “Bully-ball,” but that just turned out to be a bunch of bull. Simmons declined to play in the COVID-19 playoffs, and the Sixers got swept by the Celtics.

The next season, with Horford traded and first-time coach Brett Brown fired, Simmons declined to dunk in Game 7 against the Hawks and the Sixers were eliminated in the second round.

A year later, with malcontented Simmons replaced by soon-to-be malcontented Harden, Harris was asked to change from back-down power forward to spot-up shooter. He did. When Butler and the hard-nosed Heat eliminated the Sixers, it was Harris, not coach Doc Rivers, who called for the team to get tougher, Embiid and Harden included.

» READ MORE: The Process fails again: Joel Embiid, James Harden and the soft Sixers slink out of playoffs

They did get tougher … sort of. The addition of NBA elder P.J. Tucker increased their physicality, but they lost offensive potency. The disappearance of Embiid and Harden in Games 6 and 7 of the second round against the Celtics meant another season of failure and another coach, Nick Nurse.

Harden completely disappeared this past season, forcing an October trade that took Tucker with him and forced Maxey, a shooting guard, to learn how to play point guard.

When the Sixers suffered a rash of injuries not only to Embiid but also to De’Anthony Melton, Robert Covington, Kelly Oubre Jr., and Nico Batum in the regular season, Harris did not pick up the slack.

When the Sixers needed toughness and scoring in the playoffs, Harris did not pick up the slack.

He could not. He was done.

Farewell.