Tobias Harris has had an impossibly weird career. Every year, he finds ways to get better. His shooting improves, his rebounding improves, or something else improves. His game fits well in the NBA, he’s malleable enough to fit whatever role he’s given, and he’s never been rumored to be a bad locker room guy. Despite all of this, Harris has been traded during five of his eight NBA seasons. Professional basketball players do things: James Harden scores a ton of points, Andre Drummond grabs a ton of rebounds, and for whatever reason, Tobias Harris gets traded.
Whatever forces in the universe that cause this to happen conspired once more when Harris was traded to Philadelphia prior to the trade deadline, meaning his final however many games he’d play before the soon-to-be 27-year-old becomes a free agent will occur as a Sixer. There is a silver lining to this: In the short sample size of eight games, Harris has looked to be everything Philly needs him to be and more.
Prior to trading for Harris, Philly had four no-doubt starters, all of whom were different types of offensive basketball players. Joel Embiid is the indomitable and breathtakingly skilled big man in the post who can step out and hit shots. Ben Simmons is a 6’10 guy with otherworldly point guard skills who doesn’t shoot, but also doesn’t need to, because when he gets a head of steam, no one can stop him from scoring. J.J. Redick, despite a recent slump, is a lights out shooter who is somehow averaging a career-high in scoring in his 13th professional season. Jimmy Butler is a relentless attacker of the rim, mixing in a little shooting from the midrange and from deep.
That’s a really, really good group of guys to build around, as evidenced by the fact that Philly was a very good basketball team prior to their early-February trade. It was, however, missing the guy who could bring that all together, the player who can mix the ability to put the ball on the floor and attack the rim and hit shots from the perimeter and use their midrange ability to keep defenders honest.
Harris brings all of that to the table, a legitimate three-level scorer who can serve as a compliment to anyone else in Philly’s starting five. His value has been on display in each of the last two games — despite Embiid being out with a knee injury, Harris dropped 29 points in a road win over the Pelicans and followed it up by going for 32 en route to beating the Paul George-less Thunder on Thursday.
In eight games with his new squad, Harris has been fantastic, averaging 21.9 points and 7.8 rebounds a night. Shooting-wise, his three-point field goal percentage has fallen off a touch in the City of Brotherly Love (43.4 percent in L.A., 42 percent in Philly), while his overall field goal percentage has spiked (49.6 percent in the former, 55 percent in the latter). In that time, the team is 6-2, finding a way to succeed despite — as our pal Kyle Neubeck of Philly Voice pointed out — basically changing their team for the third time this season. Even with the sheer amount of talent Philadelphia boasts, that’s really, really hard.
Harris has managed to fit in by being really good at scoring the basketball, which is good, because that’s exactly what the Sixers need him to do. Really, it’s what he’s been doing all season. Harris is truly an elite scorer, as evidenced by his shot chart on the year.
Harris can fill whatever offensive role he has to on a given night. If he has to float on the perimeter so Embiid, Simmons, and Butler can have space to attack and have a guy alongside Redick to hit triples, he can do that. He can operate in the two-man game with them as well, or they can clear out and let him take dudes one-on-one. Plus he’s a great fit in Philly’s free-flowing offense — Harris is ninth in the league in distance covered per game, more than anyone else on the Sixers.
Here are three examples of things Harris can bring to Philly offensively, as evidenced by his final three buckets in the aforementioned win over the Thunder. First comes his ability as a spot up shooter. He camped in the corner as Simmons backed down Russell Westbrook and did what you’re supposed to do in this situation: Get the ball, rise, and fire.
A minute or so later, he followed this up by getting to the bucket against Dennis Schröder. Harris screened Oklahoma City’s backup point guard as he was guarding Redick, leading to a switch that had to have made him salivate. Schröder tried to pester him, but Harris was able to bully his way into the paint and score.
For what would be his final basket of the night, Harris served as the primary ballhandler in a pick-and-roll with Mike Scott. The screen was set on Schröder, leading to the bigger Steven Adams getting switched onto Harris. Adams played off of Harris a touch, but that was all the space he needed. Harris went off the bounce and pulled up from deep, extending the Sixer lead to eight.
Is Harris a perfect basketball player? Of course not, there’s no such thing. He’s not an especially great distributor, while his defense leaves something to be desired. But the thing is he doesn’t have to be a great distributor or a great defender. What the Sixers need is for Tobias Harris to be a great scorer, the kind of guy who can be handed the ball and figure out a way to get a bucket.
So far, in that regard, he’s filled a major, major need for Philly. There’s still plenty of time before we can say definitively if the Sixers would be wise to give him the major contract he’ll demand this offseason, or if it would be best for him to head elsewhere.
One thing is for sure, though: If Harris can play to the level he’s capable of playing, he’s in for a big payday on July 1, and his days of getting traded might be put on hold for a while.
