Andre Iguodala Trade Rumors: Are Sixers Fans Caught in Groundhog Day?

When the Philadelphia 76ers limped off to a 3-13 start this season, hope abounded in the City of Brotherly Love for all the wrong reasons.

The Sixers hadn’t quit on new coach Doug Collins yet, but they couldn’t manage to finish out close games and looked completely removed from the playoff picture.

Worse yet, Andre Iguodala and No. 2 draft pick Evan Turner couldn’t manage to coexist on the court, fulfilling the fears of countless NBA draft analysts.

Turner’s most productive games of the early part of the season came with Iguodala on the bench, when Iggy sat out a few games with the same Achilles tendon issues that have been plaguing him as of late.

And when the No. 2 overall draft pick is most successful without you being on the court, chances are that your days are numbered.

True to form, only trade rumors about Carmelo Anthony swirled more than Iggy rumors around Thanksgiving.  One week, Iggy was headed to Houston; the next, Cleveland.

Regardless, it appeared all but a certainty that Iguodala would be on the move by February, which would free the team up to hand the reins over to Turner, Jrue Holiday and the rest of the Sixers’ youngsters.

Then the Sixers caught a breath of fresh air, and they’ve charged off to a 14-10 record ever since. They rang up victories against Orlando (the night where the Magic traded all their players and dressed eight for the game) and Denver (missing Carmelo Anthony), and because they’re in the Eastern Conference, they’ve got the inside track to the eight seed despite being six games under .500.

Naturally, as the Sixers’ front office always tends to do when the playoffs are even remotely in reach, Rod Thorn and company got exuberantly, irrationally excited. 

And as of now, they’ve dramatically reduced their trade talks, wanting to see what the current roster can put together this season before making changes.

Groundhog Day?

In Bill Murray’s classic movie Groundhog Day, Murray’s character finds himself waking up and repeating the same day over and over again, no matter what he does to try and change his fate.

Sixers fans can relate.

For years, the Sixers have been trapped in NBA limbo—also known as falling in the late lottery/late-teens of the NBA draft. Since 2001, they haven’t been good enough to legitimately challenge in the NBA playoffs, but until last season, they also hadn’t been terrible enough to earn themselves a top-five draft pick.

With their highest pick in the past decade (not counting this past year), the Sixers landed Andre Iguodala (AI2) in 2004. But if there’s one thing Sixers fans have learned in the past six years, it’s that you can’t have Iggy as your team’s top banana and expect to be contending for an NBA championship.

Yet here the Sixers are, with Iggy as their No. 1 and Elton Brand as their No. 2. As long as their two contracts keep sucking up half of the Sixers’ available cap space, the team has literally no chance at an NBA championship.  

But the Sixers do have the inside track to the eighth seed in the East right now. Round and round we go.

Collins has the team humming and buying in on defense.  Better yet, he’s finally rescued Brand’s corpse from a two-year coma.  But still, with the Miami Heat, Chicago Bulls, Boston Celtics and Orlando Magic ready to match wits in the playoffs—and that’s just in the Eastern Conference!—the Sixers can’t even dream of an NBA championship this year.

At most, they can dream of stealing one or two games in their first-round series before getting unceremoniously dumped out of the playoffs and locked into the late-teens of the NBA draft once again.

So, why continue this charade?

Do Not Salary-Dump Iggy, Do Not Collect $200

At this point, the Sixers stand at a crossroads, with the future of Iguodala and the future of the franchise inextricably linked.

The Sixers can either:

1) Keep Iguodala on the roster, see if Turner and Iggy can learn to mesh (like the once-incompatible Steph Curry and Monta Ellis), and sucker fans into buying playoff tickets for an eighth-seeded team ready to get massacred at the hands of the Celtics/Heat/Magic; OR

2) Trade Iguodala, watch the team take its lumps and lose its playoff spot to the likes of the Bobcats, Pistons or Bucks, see if Turner and Holiday can form the backcourt of the future, and try to harvest some consistency out of their young bigs, Marreese Speights and Spencer Hawes.

One route earns the Sixers a draft pick in the 16-20 range; the other gives them the remote chance of a top-five pick for the second straight year.

It boils down to this: The Sixers, at some point, will need to accept that they need a partial rebuild (at the very least) before contending for an NBA title again. Yes, that means more 25-win seasons in the near future, but it comes with the promise of 50-plus-win seasons down the road.

Thanks to the defensive showcase Iguodala put on in the FIBA World Championship this past summer, his trade value may never be higher.  And with Iguodala’s contract sucking up 25 percent of the team’s available cap space, there’s really only one option here.

That said, there’s one thing the Sixers cannot settle for in an Iguodala trade: a straight-up salary dump. You do not trade your most valuable player for solely Peja Stojakovic or Eddy Curry’s expiring contract, or only for Cleveland’s trade exception.

Beyond that, Sixers fans should be receptive to pretty much anything at this point.

Because when faced with a repeating nightmare, Bill Murray tried everything he could think of to snap out of it. First, he took advantage of his situation—seducing women, stealing money—but eventually, he wised up and realized the only way out of his predicament was to work hard and put his repeated day's lessons to good use.

Well, the Sixers seduced Elton and Iggy, and they stole Philly’s money, alright.

Now it’s time for the Sixers to learn from their repeated mistakes and move on to the next phase of their franchise, with Holiday, Turner and the rest of the youngsters as the building blocks.