1 week Ago By Dana Gauruder, Hoops Rumors
The Sixers’ disastrous season won’t lead to changes at the top. Following the team’s season-ending loss to the Bulls on Sunday, president of basketball operations Daryl Morey said he and coach Nick Nurse will return next season, ESPN’s Tim Bontemps reports. Morey divulged that news during a postgame press conference.
“We expect more. We really feel for the fans who put their heart and soul into this team, and we know we’ve let you down,” Morey said. “Ownership gave us the resources to make aggressive moves this offseason to put a championship roster around Joel [Embiid] and Tyrese [Maxey] and sometimes those aggressive moves don’t initially work out, but we feel good about [them].
” Morey hoarded salary-cap space to make a big splash last offseason and landed the biggest free agent on the market, Paul George . The front office also added Caleb Martin , Eric Gordon , Guerschon Yabusele and Andre Drummond and re-signed KJ Martin , Kyle Lowry and Kelly Oubre Jr. with sights on a championship.
Instead, the season disintegrated due to injuries. Promising rookie Jared McCain went down early and the team’s Big 3 barely had any time to develop chemistry. Joel Embiid was limited to 19 games and eventually underwent another knee procedure.
George only appeared in half of their 82 games and Maxey was limited to 52 games. They only suited up together in 15 games. “In my opinion when you have an MVP-level talent, you need to make aggressive moves to upgrade around that talent in that window,” Morey said.
“That’s what we did last offseason, and we feel good about it going forward. I think it’s such a unique thing to have a player of that caliber. Are we somewhat indexed to talented players who are a little bit more injured? Yes, but that’s why we need to have a younger, deeper roster on them and then have them healthy going into the playoffs next year.
” Despite Embiid’s knee issues and George’s multitude of injuries in recent seasons, Morey expressed optimism that they’ll be “100%” next season. Given their contractual obligations, the Sixers can only hope that’s the case. Embiid signed a monstrous three-year extension in September worth nearly $193M that runs through the 2028-29 season with a player option.
George has three years and more than $162M remaining on his contract, which also includes a player option. Morey says he’ll retool one of the oldest rosters in the league. “If everything sets up well, we’ll have a younger, more dynamic roster around a healthy Joel, Tyrese and Paul,” Morey said.
“I never felt like coach had a healthy literally one game with all three of ’em. I know they played some games together, but they didn’t finish all of ’em and even the ones where it was like their first game back. It was tough .
.. for me personally it was obviously the toughest season of my career, and I’ll just say personally I will spend every waking hour figuring out how turn this team around going into next season.
” This article first appeared on Hoops Rumors and was syndicated with permission..
