I’m going to be doing something fun for the rest of June. Fellow Sixers fan Jeremy Scheff created this awesome game Basketball GM several years ago, which as the name suggests, is a game where you can roleplay as the general manager of a basketball team. I’ve spent many hours playing this game mostly to kill time at work, but now I have an idea of how I can use it to do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time: find the perfect trade for a player who I’ve never felt like was a good fit in Philly and whose contract could be flipped to give us something much better than what we’ve gotten from him in Tobias Harris.
Using Basketball GM, I’ll simulate a trade with every other NBA team in a standard real players league. I’ll start in the 2023 playoffs with the Philadelphia “Cheesesteaks” and do the actual trade right after the playoffs ends.
Here we go:
The Bucks beat the Grizzlies in seven in this version of the playoffs. The prediction machine was way off the mark for this one.
I’ll do the trade during the draft lottery to maximize the value Harris can bring us, even though I’m well aware that the actual draft will happen before I’m finished doing these.
Just offering Harris doesn’t yield a lot of good offers, so I sweeten the deal with our 2024 first, our 2023 second, our 2024 second, and New York’s 2024 second.
Still not a lot of great offers, but this isn’t where I’ll stop. I’m negotiating with Atlanta, and I’ll remove Bruno Fernando and the first from their offer and add Dejounte Murray and Bogdan Bogdanović.
Atlanta doesn’t like this trade, so let’s see what they counter with.
They want us to take on more salary, which is obviously impossible, and add Maxey to the trade, which I’m not going to do. After attempting more trades, I realize getting Murray from them will be impossible without giving up one of our valuable players. I decide to aim a bit lower and go for Hunter and Bogi instead.
Atlanta seems more receptive to this trade, so we’re still in business. I add our 2027 second, and that’s all we need to do to push the trade through. Here is our team now:
We have a true small forward on a more reasonable contract than the one Tobias Harris had and a great bench piece in Bogi on top of that. For what we gave up, I can live with that trade. Now, it’s time to begin the 2024 season to see how this affects our team.
Hunter has stayed relatively steady, and Maxey and McClung look like they’ll take leaps this season. Let’s play the season out to see how things go:
We finish atop the East with 60 wins, but we’re absolutely dominant with Embiid and Hunter healthy. Unfortunately, Hunter missed 30 games and Embiid missed 11. We finish with the second best offense in the league (a big step up from our 2023 ranking) and the eighth best defense. Maxey does end up taking a leap and actually finishes above Embiid in the MVP voting, though it’s unlikely that ever happens in real life. Now, it’s time for the playoffs:
Though we get the best record in the East, the Grizzlies get the best record overall, to everyone’s chagrin. Our 60 win team gets a matchup with the Atlanta Hawks, just like in 2021, and they push us to seven games, just like in 2021, but this time, we finish them off to clinch our first Eastern Conference Finals appearance in 23 years, thanks in part to them. We then sweep Boston in the conference finals (please, God, let this be a reality) and take out the Los Angeles Clippers in the Finals to win the championship.
Overall, I would consider this trade a success. Also, lol Memphis. One down, 28 to go.
