LAS VEGAS — Over the past 24 hours, we have touched on two of the larger subjects addressed by Josh Harris and Brett Brown during their impromptu roundtable at the NBA summer league — that would be the complicated general manager search and how the star hunting will continue, perhaps with Kawhi Leonard — but you know, they talked about some other stuff, too.
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Here are some of the other notable subjects that were addressed.
About that LeBron meeting
Many of the headlines today have been about Harris’ claim that LeBron James “considered us very strongly,” which is notable because a lot of the evidence and reporting afterward has suggested that James’ eyes were set on Los Angeles from the outset.
Still, the Sixers were one of two teams that got to meet with James’ representatives at Klutch Sports (even then, though, he wasn’t present at the meeting). Shortly after that sitdown in Los Angeles ended, James announced his intention to sign with the Lakers. In describing their pitch, Harris said the Sixers put “every ounce of effort into it.”
“Any time you can get a generational player on your team, you try,” he said. “There’s no way to sugarcoat the fact that it would have been great to have him on the team.”
Asked about the potential opportunity cost of chasing LeBron (Trevor Ariza’s one-year, $15 million deal was the main example of a player and contract signed before The Decision 3.0 that may have made sense for the Sixers), neither Harris nor Brown had any regrets.
“You realize there’s going to be some things that take a little bit of a hit,” Brown said. “You can’t be half-pregnant. You’re either all-in or you’re not. It was our judgment that what we could lose wasn’t going to be that punishing in exchange for still staying in the game with LeBron.”
Brown had quite a bit of practice complementing opposing players after losses during the first three years of the Process era. This time, he was doing the same after missing out on one of them in free agency.
“I’ve gone on record, I said he’s the best player to have ever played our sport,” Brown said. “As that’s coming out of your mouth, you realize the magnitude of that sentence, and I stand by that. And then you watch him from afar, and you respect tremendously how he’s acted as he’s held that mantle of arguably the greatest player to ever play our game. He’s handled himself with class, he’s never really in controversy, his health is impeccable. Look at the volume of games that he plays.”
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I don’t pretend know if pitching James has any value to future free agents, but missing out on him has to sting when it would be impossible to make a case that the Lakers present a better basketball situation now than the Sixers. In a few years maybe, but even then, the Sixers’ future could still be pretty bright.
Their present would be much brighter with James, which is why they started free agency with their sights set as high as possible, no matter what the odds actually were. Both Harris and Brown indicated that they felt at least some of James’ choice came down to more of a lifestyle decision.
“Perhaps at this stage of his career, moving his personality and skills and business interests to the city of Los Angeles, maybe that is smart,” Brown said. “Maybe at this phase and stage of his life, maybe that is smart. I say that with a little bit of hesitance, because I know what we had to offer was incredibly meaningful and real.”
As for Paul George …
George didn’t meet with any teams besides Oklahoma City, but Brown and Harris indicated what I think logically most of us understood: He was the other “big fish” they were pursuing.
News of George sticking with Oklahoma City broke even before free agency started, and frankly, there were plenty of signs in the weeks leading up to July 1. Brown mentioned his relationship with Thunder GM Sam Presti, who he worked with for years in San Antonio, and indicated that he had a strong sense early in the process that George would be staying put.
“The marketplace speaks,” he said. “There is an undercurrent around the league. Word travels quite quickly. And every bit of information that I felt and that I learned suggested completely that Oklahoma City had done a great job.”
Brown also referenced “the L.A. tom toms,” saying that he had heard for a year about the Thunder star desiring to return to his native Southern California. So while George not even granting the Sixers a meeting isn’t all that interesting, how his situation played out does relate when they could potentially find themselves in the same position as Oklahoma City was last season.
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Quick hitters
• Brown was at least happy that LeBron made his choice quickly, which allowed the Sixers to retain J.J. Redick: “That was the funny one. How long will the LeBron thing go as J.J.’s getting pounded by real offers? That was true. That was the one that was most on my mind.”
• Brown on Wilson Chandler: “When you look at the prototype, when you look at sort of the DNA of the modern-day player, he is that. Where you can guard multiple positions, you can make a three-point shot, there’s a versatility in his game that is incredibly impressive. I think that any time you can get people in contract years and you can put them in a position where they can do well, I’m so proud of what we did for Ersan and Marco. On opening night, day dot, they got contracts. … We want to empower Wilson to play good basketball and re-enter the marketplace as a desired player. He’s a tremendous teammate, he’s highly competitive.”
• Brown on the differences in player development from now and when he started with the Spurs in 2002: “There’s probably seven or eight people around Joel. There’s probably seven or eight people around Ben. There’s probably seven or eight people around Markelle. And so that is my language, that is our language. It’s Team Joel, Team Markelle, Team Ben. We have a director of player development who coordinates, facilitates, with each of the people on the team, to ultimately produce ‘You’re going to come back in September better.’ That’s the endgame. But it’s way different than it was in 2002 for me. The pieces behind it are massive, the landscape is real and the climate has changed. It’s not like it used to be.”
(Top photo: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports)