Sixers president Daryl Morey reveals his vision amid ‘disappointing year’

CAMDEN, N.J. – The assessment of his maneuvers at this week’s trade deadline, Daryl Morey is well aware, can’t be fully evaluated for some time. But the 76ers’ president of basketball operations approached Thursday’s deadline with a clear vision.

Morey wanted the Sixers, who have struggled to a 20-30 record entering Friday’s game in Detroit beneath an avalanche of injuries, to get younger. He aimed for more dynamism, on the court and in his flexibility to wheel and deal down the road.

Morey got those things, even if many of the problems he solved were of his own making in a summer where his free-agent shopping tended toward the older and less-than-dynamic.

“We wanted to accomplish three goals: Get younger, get players who can help us now and into the future, and then the ability to retain them,” Morey said Friday morning at the club’s practice facility. “And all those moves in concert did that.”

Younger, by swapping 29-year-old Caleb Martin and his three-plus years under contract to Dallas for 24-year-old Quentin Grimes. More dynamic, by turning Reggie Jackson into Jared Butler. More flexible, by forsaking the potential trade exception that KJ Martin’s contract could’ve produced by gifting that to the Pistons in exchange for salary relief.

All told, the 76ers swapped three players for two, opening roster space and plenty of money to avoid luxury taxes. They gave up three second-round picks and a first-rounder to get back five second-round selections, effectively cashing in a low-value first-rounder (the lowest pick of the Clippers, Oklahoma City or Houston in 2026) for second-rounders that can be mobilized in multiple ways.

There’s a lot of moving pieces, but Morey emphasized his belief in the core the 76ers have built by not only keeping it intact but by opening space to retain the piece they did add this summer in Guerschon Yabusele who might bring the most value moving forward.

Grimes fills a need. The 6-5 shooting guard brings defensive toughness and a career 37.6 3-point percentage, which has risen to 39.8 this season. Morey is convinced his journeyman past is due mainly to cap-casualty moves. With two smaller point guards in Tyrese Maxey and currently injured Jared McCain (for next year), Grimes is an on-ball defender to pair with more offensive-minded guards.

“We love his fit with Tyrese, his ability to hit shots, his ability to be the primary defender of the guards on the perimeter,” Morey said.

Butler is more of an upside guy who’ll bid for backcourt minutes. The emergence of Ricky Council IV and Justin Edwards – the latter of whom Morey said converting off a two-way to a standard contract is a priority – made both Martins expendable.

Morey admitted the obvious, that this has been “a disappointing year” due to injuries. He’s focused on getting the team into the playoffs and hoping a squad that is finally healthy can perform there at a level exceeding its middling regular season. That reality made KJ Martin, signed to a two-year, $16 million deal using his Bird rights and who could’ve created a trade exception to overinvest in the squad, not worth keeping for the cap implications.

“With KJ, we both felt like he could help us and would be a potential path for us to upgrade the team, primarily this year,” Morey said. “I think this is where, if you look at all our trades in whole … we were sort of looking at a holistic plan of both getting younger, getting players we think are ones that can help us now and in the future, and also create flexibility to keep the key players on this team going forward. And we prioritized that over what KJ CBA-wise was able to do from a trade perspective.”

In a matter of weeks, the team went from seeing Yabusele as a likely trade departure thanks to his outstanding production and affordable contract to a valuable long-term piece. That won’t be easy, given his attractiveness on the market, should a team throw money and term at him in the offseason. But the moves had an eye toward retaining the Frenchman easier.

“I don’t think you can ever be confident on an unrestricted free agent. But I feel very good,” Morey said. “He loves it here. We love him. With Caleb’s contract going out, we freed up more room in the future. So we feel very good about retaining Yabu.”

The moves also avail the 76ers of buyout market options, though Morey has said nothing has enticed them there yet. (That would include Ben Simmons, in the process of being bought out by the Nets). The team could also add 10-day contracts, as with forward Chuma Okeke.

Hanging over the trade deadline was a sad reality: The Sixers never got to see what the 2024-25 team would look like on the court. Morey was widely believed around the league to have had a successful offseason, adding Paul George, Caleb Martin, Eric Gordon, Andre Drummond, Jackson, Yabusele and three rookies to a core including Joel Embiid and Maxey.

In 50 games since that slew of July moves, Embiid has played 14 times, George 31. Caleb Martin was only on the court for 31, KJ Martin 24, Drummond 28. Both Gordon and Jackson fell out of the rotation only to re-establish themselves, and the move to get older and more experience morphed into looking more staid and injury-prone.

Morey said the temptation to ride it out and prove the summer’s logic correct never weighed on him. With one eye on the present and one on the future, that left little time to appraise the past.

“We just have these very short windows to upgrade the team,” he said. “I feel like we almost always have to upgrade the team if you have a chance, and usually you do.”