PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The 76ers tried. Oh, how they tried, to find that missing All-Star, that missing piece they could team with Joel Embiid and a rotating cast of starters and that could finally lead the franchise to an NBA championship.
Jimmy Butler. Paul George. James Harden. Tobias Harris. Al Horford.
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Nothing more now in Philly than throwback jerseys in the back of some teenager's closet.
Josh Harris bought the team in 2011 and not even a year later the Sixers made the first splash of his tenure with a blockbuster deal when they landed All-Star big man Andrew Bynum in a trade with the Lakers.
Bynum with his achy knees never played a game with the Sixers. Butler, Harden and most of the rest certainly had their moments, yet they not only failed to win a championship in Philadelphia, but they also could not get the Sixers even out of the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs.
That doesn't even count the draft night disappointments since Harris' first draft in 2012. Ben Simmons. Jahlil Okafor. Markelle Fultz. Michael Carter-Williams.
The trade-deadline blockbusters and late-night deals all seemed at the time like the Sixers were swinging for the fences.
The moves were just bunts compared to the summer of 2026.
The Sixers are as all-in as they've ever been in playing for a championship after they traded for Jaylen Brown, an NBA Finals MVP and champion with the Boston Celtics, and landed LeBron James as a free agent on the NBA veteran minimum salary.
If it doesn't work now, with perhaps the best starting five in the NBA, when will it for the Sixers?
“I wouldn't say it didn't work out,” Embiid said of the second-fiddle failures. “Obviously, we didn't win. It's hard to win when you get a group of guys together for one year, two years, maybe.”
The 76ers only have to look at their last championship in 1983 to know that sometimes going outside the organization is the right call. Take 1982, when the Sixers signed reigning NBA MVP Moses Malone to a six-year free-agent contract. Malone won MVP honors again in his first season with the Sixers and helped lead stalwarts Julius Erving, Maurice Cheeks, Bobby Jones and Andrew Toney to an NBA title in 1983.
Brown and James will try to do the same in Year 1 and avoid joining this recent list of stars who left Philadelphia without a ring:
Former Sixer executive Daryl Morey had his heart set on Harden and landed the feared Beard from Brooklyn at the February 2022 trade deadline. He had been one of the league’s top players for the previous decade, having won three scoring titles and the 2018 league MVP award.
Harden essentially forced his way with trades out of Houston and Brooklyn and soon added the Sixers to the list.
His low moments with the 76ers came in the 2023 playoffs when the Sixers blew a 3-2 lead to the Celtics. Harden was 0 for 6 on 3s in Game 2 and Game 6 losses. He scored only nine points in Game 7, and he went scoreless in the second half.
Harden got into a contractual dispute in the offseason that lingered into training camp, and he was traded in October 2023 to the Los Angeles Clippers.
The Sixers made another deadline deal in 2019 to land Harris from the Clippers. Harris had a modest career, and the Sixers were already his fifth NBA team at the time of the deal. Feeling the pressure to keep Harris after trading away a slew of draft picks, the Sixers signed him to a five-year, $180 million contract that summer.
Harris never made an All-Star team over those five years, and he never delivered in playoff crunch time. His low moment came in a 2024 playoff loss to the Knicks. Harris, who averaged 17 points in the regular season, went scoreless in 29 minutes for the Sixers in a Game 6 loss that ended their season.
George was indeed the chosen one for the Sixers in the summer of 2024. He signed a four-year, $212 million free-agent contract after the nine-time All-Star spurned the Los Angeles Clippers. With the move — and a coinciding extension with All-Star Tyrese Maxey — the franchise was feeling like they had assembled a championship-level Big Three.
George's low moment in Philadelphia was a 25-game suspension last season for flunking a drug test that put a permanent blemish on his career. George returned to have a solid postseason for the Sixers against the Celtics, which may have been his greatest contribution.
The deal wasn't a total loss. The Sixers were able to use George as the offseason anchor in a trade with the Celtics to obtain Brown.
Butler was an exciting arrival for the Sixers in November 2018 when they got a four-time All-Star in a trade with Minnesota.
Butler, Embiid and Simmons were christened a Big Three — one of many attempted by the Sixers over the last 15 years — and the team was instantly considered a serious threat to win it all.
Butler finished the season with the Sixers before going to Miami. Butler was frustrated with the Sixers' organizational structure and clashed with former coach Brett Brown. Butler felt he needed the ball in his hands and was irked in the playoffs — when the Sixers lost a semifinal series to Toronto in seven games — when he switched primary playmaking roles with Simmons.
His moment in Philadelphia actually came in 2022 when he returned with the Heat. After Miami eliminated the Sixers in the playoffs, Butler yelled as he walked off the court, “Tobias Harris over me?!"
Honorable mentions to Horford, Bynum — whose wasted season kickstarted the rebuild known as “The Process” — Danny Green, Josh Richardson and, well, the list goes on.
The 76ers hope the list of fiascos ends with James and Brown — and with a parade down Broad Street.
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