CAMDEN, N.J. — Daryl Morey sat at the dais at the 76ers training facility Friday holding the generous and pessimistic readings of the previous 48 hours in either hand. Fans of the 76ers could read minimal changes and the maintenance of a core rotation at the NBA trade deadline as faith in the asse mbled group. Or they could read the choice to do nothing but subtract to avoid the luxury tax as business as usual for a franchise whose streak of years without advancing past the second round of the playoffs is about to be old enough to rent a car legally. Morey knew which side of that spectrum he would land on. He had to know how many of his customers would place themselves obdurately on the other. Morey said that the 76ers tried and failed to upgrade the team at Thursday’s NBA trade deadline, which quickly became an endorsement that the players remaining were pretty good. It’s what an executive would have to say, but also came off a little like a homeowner declining to pay for insurance as a statement of faith in the structural stability of his roof. The 76ers had a narrow lane to upgrade, thanks to cap constraints, the good problem of decent talent in-house and the tax aversion of ownership. Morey had neither the ability nor the opportunity to navigate the gravity of the three-body problem those organizational obstacles presented. “I understand the reactions of the fans, but I feel like that comes from, folks are excited about this team, and that’s why we’ve had this reaction,” Morey said, with a faint Jeb Bush “please clap” energy. “And they should be excited.” Morey isn’t entirely wrong. The 76ers rebounded from last year’s 24-win campaign to sit securely sixth in the Eastern Conference, a game and a half out of fourth place. They made the moves necessary to retain their top-six protected pick last year and plucked a gem in VJ Edgecombe. Morey fleeced the Mavericks for Quentin Grimes. He found talent on the two-way market in Dominick Barlow and Jabari Walker, who set a high bar for deadline upgrades. This year, they controlled costs with an open roster spot. They didn’t rush into the breach to get a flawed star like Giannis Antetokounmpo or Ja Morant. If the instruction was to go cheap, it didn’t cost them Kelly Oubre, Trendon Watford or Andre Drummond for cheaper replacements. But neither did they improve, and you could argue short-selling Jared McCain to Oklahoma City makes them less equipped to navigate the 82-game season, if the 21-year-old wasn’t necessarily set up to be in the playoff rotation. This year’s Sixers don’t demand pushing all the chips into the middle of the table. But the stakes in an Eastern Conference without Jayson Tatum or Tyrese Haliburton, with serious questions about the Knicks, with cores in Cleveland and Orlando unexpectedly regressing: It’s wide open. And whatever Morey’s spreadsheets may say about how to approach the market, if the fact that the team hasn’t advanced past the second round in 25 years doesn’t weigh on you, you may be in the wrong business. All of which is to say that if the 76ers didn’t find the right move and didn’t feel the need to project the illusion of progress with idle busyness, that would’ve been met with a resigned sigh from fans. Disappointment morphs to rage when a beloved player like McCain, who has substantial upside, is converted into a collection of assets that don’t make a good team immediately better. Morey’s insistence that they sold high on McCain only fans the flames. Failing to get better at the deadline would’ve been acceptable. Going out of your way to get worse, that’s the 76ers. “I understand the perception, and I hoped to defeat it by finding a deal that I can go to ownership and say, We think this move is the right move to do for that and create the apron issues that it would create,” Morey said. “But I haven’t been able to recommend that move yet.” Morey trotted out the company line. Tax savings weren’t a priority, even if the club has often acted as though they are. Flexibility under the first apron of the cap was non-negotiable, allowing for Barlow to be retained on a multi-year deal and perhaps set the stage for a long-term pact for Grimes. Had a deal to improve the team been right, Morey would’ve pushed for it, he said. “For sure, if we had found an add and we were going to end up higher, we would’ve ended up above (the luxury tax),” Morey said. “We’ve done it several times when I was here. Over the history of ownership, they’ve done it many times. We didn’t see something that did that.” Morey generally resisted the logical ouroboros created by inaction: Fans are disappointed because the 76ers are good enough to be disappointed by a lack of moves to try to get over the top. Fans feeling the 76ers erred at the deadline is evidence enough that management did well before it. Faith to resist a bad deal is faith in the process — not that “process” — currently underway. Whether Bennedict Mathurin or Ayo Dosunmu would’ve warded off that existential crisis, who knows? Morey might’ve wanted to find out, but not at the cost. “I do want folks to know that this team, we think can make a deep playoff run,” he said. “It’s one of the top few teams in the East. We feel like that’s still the case going forward.” The degree to which he had to defend it seemed, at least for one day, telling. Contact Matthew De George at [email protected] ...read more read less