Sixers Rumors: What’s the Smoke Around Tobias Harris?

One NBA Insider is confident Tobias Harris won't be on the Sixers for long.

As the Philadelphia 76ers hope to get James Harden back on the team for the 2023-2024 NBA season, many wonder what the future holds for the team’s starting forward, Tobias Harris.

The 2023-2024 season will be the last on Harris’s contract. Although there were talks about Harris being willing to discuss a possible extension with the Sixers last summer, those discussions never seemed to have come to life.

After Harris gets paid his $39.2 million for the upcoming season, he’ll become an unrestricted free agent for the first time since 2019. 

Typically, when players enter the final year of their contracts without extension talks gaining steam, their names start to get tossed in trade rumors as organizations look to find value for the player rather than holding and losing them for nothing in free agency.

This season, we could see Harris end up in the same situation, as the rumors are already beginning to surface just days ahead of the 2023 NBA Draft.

So far, there hasn’t been much buzz about Harris getting traded. However, Matt Moore of the Action Network recently mentioned Harris and Tyus Jones of the Memphis Grizzlies as two players he is “confident” will be on new teams by the end of the summer.

It’s unclear which teams could have an interest in Harris at this time. With the standout forward’s name hardly in any trade rumors to begin the offseason, it doesn’t seem the Sixers are rushing to get a deal done.

Since Daryl Morey took over as the Sixers’ President of Basketball Operations, Harris has been a frequent mention in trade rumors throughout the last few seasons. While that remained the case early on during the 2022-2023 season, they quickly faded and never returned.

Harris finished the 2022-2023 season averaging 15 points while draining 39 percent of his threes. In the playoffs, he had a stellar first-round performance against the Brooklyn Nets, putting up 20 points per game while knocking down 57 percent of his threes in the series sweep.

With high expectations attached to him for the second round, Harris came up short along with his team. In seven games, the veteran forward averaged just 12 points while struggling from three, hitting on just 26 percent of his shots. The Sixers were stopped out in the second round against the Boston Celtics.

Striking a deal involving Harris won’t be easy for the Sixers, as he’s owed nearly $40 million for the upcoming season. Considering it’s the final year of his contract, though, the Sixers might find a suitor that’s in a similar predicament and looking to make a swap.

If Harris finds himself traded this season, he will play for his sixth team since getting drafted in 2011. After getting his start with the Milwaukee Bucks, Harris had stops in Orlando, Detroit, and Los Angeles. After the Clippers traded Harris in 2019 during the final year of his contract, he found a long-term home with the 76ers by inking a max contract that summer.

Whether he’ll play out the entire contract or not remains to be seen.