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Sixers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey has agreed to a contract extension through the 2027-28 season, the team announced Friday morning.
ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski first reported the news.
Morey officially joined the Sixers on Nov. 2, 2020. The Sixers have been a top-four Eastern Conference seed in all of his three full seasons, but they’ve lost each time in the second round.
His time on the job hasn’t been short of drama and activity.
Morey and the Sixers’ front office had an exceptionally productive draft night about two weeks after he joined the organization. The Sixers took Tyrese Maxey 21st, Isaiah Joe 49th and Paul Reed 58th. They also made major trades that sent out Al Horford and Josh Richardson, acquiring Danny Green and Seth Curry.
Since then, Morey has traded for James Harden and then dealt him away a season-plus later (after Harden called Morey a “liar.”) He’s also fired Doc Rivers as head coach and hired Nick Nurse.
Like all executives, Morey’s had some hits and some misses on non-star moves. Trading for De’Anthony Melton and signing Georges Niang (two-year, $6.7 million contract) and Kelly Oubre Jr. (one-year, veteran’s minimum) look to be especially strong transactions. Pre-trade deadline deals for George Hill and Jalen McDaniels didn’t work out well.
The spotlight will again be on Morey ahead of this year’s trade deadline. The Sixers are set to have substantial cap space next offseason, and Morey has indicated the team will seriously explore possible ways to add a high-caliber player via trade before the summer.
“So I think for cap space, (outside) people think about it in more of this narrow way,” he said on Nov. 1. “Ideally, we would actually use that cap space early. That’s generally better, because then you both have the front-end flexibility and (also) the back-end flexibility to re-sign them, and you can see who’s available. In the parlance of how teams talk, we would like to use it early, if we can. In terms of acquiring the people we might re-sign or bring back early, it gives you more flexibility.
“That said, the nice thing is we do have the back-end optionality that if we don’t use (cap space) early on players we want to re-sign or have longer deals, then what we want to do is go after the best players who are in free agency, which people are too down on. It’s not the famous years like 2011 or whatever, but it’s a normal free agency year with quite a few good players that we would be excited about if they became available.”
For now, the Sixers are 16-7 and on a four-game winning streak behind reigning MVP Joel Embiid. The deadline looms on Feb. 8.
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