The Philadelphia 76ers’ 2024-25 season was not one to remember, but it will be hard to forget for fans who had high hopes for the trio of Joel Embiid, Paul George, and Tyrese Maxey. And Bill Simmons is already thinking of trades to split up the threesome.
Once the 76ers signed George in the offseason, fans and analysts begged Philadelphia, like most years, as a contender to get out of the Eastern Conference and potentially compete for a championship. Unfortunately, nothing even resembling that happened, as Embiid and George both began the year injured, and it never got much better from there. All three of Embiid, George, and Maxey missed time due to injury — they missed a combined 134 games this season — and rarely shared the court.
As a result, the 76ers sunk to near to the bottom of the Eastern Conference and never recovered. Philadelphia finished the season 24-58, which was bad enough for fifth-worst in the NBA. The bright side is that the record, as well as some lottery luck, landed the Sixers the third overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, which could prove to be valuable in a trade.
That last part is especially intriguing to Simmons, whose infatuation with hypothetical trades is well-documented. And in this case, the popular NBA podcaster wondered aloud if a trade of Paul George and No. 3 pick for Utah Jazz star Lauri Markkanen would be mutually beneficial.
“I don’t even know if that makes sense for Philly, but I just wonder if Philly is looking at trades like that with the third pick,” Simmons said.
“I hate that trade for everyone involved,” Zach Lowe responded, before expanding how he might tweak it.
“Now, if you tell me I’m the Jazz and I can reroute Paul George somewhere else for something less damaging to my cap sheet for the next three years and I get the number three pick, then it starts to be somewhat interesting to me,” Lowe said. “But Markkanen is pretty good, and the Paul George contract is not so good, although I think it will get rehabbed this year. I think we’ll think differently of Paul George in about six months.”
The Jazz’s recent hiring of Austin Ainge as president of basketball operations, as well as Ainge’s comments, signal the organization is shifting away from tanking and into a more competitive direction. How George would fit in that, particularly due to his injury history and age, is anyone’s guess, but Utah could be an interesting player to watch this offseason regardless.
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