Déjà vu has struck Daryl Morey and the Philadelphia 76ers in the 2023 offseason. Once again, the Sixers are dealing with a star player demanding a trade. First came Ben Simmons and now comes James Harden, the star guard who meshed very well with Joel Embiid but is so mad at the franchise that he wants to move on after just a season and a half.

After expecting a massive deal in 2023 free agency after taking a pay cut last offseason, the Sixers let the market dictate Harden's price. With no suitors throwing him the big bucks he hoped to receive, Philly didn’t see fit to offer him a huge contract. Harden, feeling snubbed after taking that pay cut to allow the cash-strapped Sixers to add more depth, opted into his player option and asked to be traded, setting the Los Angeles Clippers as his destination of choice.

Simply opting out and becoming an unrestricted free agent would have left Harden with a 2023-24 salary much less than his $35.6 million player option would have given him since no teams carved out a big chunk of cap space to sign him. The Houston Rockets, whose interest in signing Harden was rumored to be a leverage play to get more money from the Sixers, went on a spending spree for other veterans instead. This leaves Harden rostered on the Sixers while the team tries to figure out what to do.

Morey began the offseason saying he wanted Harden to stay with the Sixers. New head coach Nick Nurse said the same. But now that Harden and Morey's relationship is strained badly, a split seems inevitable. But when that split comes is anything but easy to speculate. After taking Simmons' trade demand up to that season's trade deadline, Harden could similarly have to wait before his trade wish is granted.

In an interview on The Anthony Gargano Show on 97.5 The Fanatic, Morey said that the situation between Simmons and Harden is not the same. He is certainly right in multiple aspects — the situations with each player are indeed unique, as is the current state of the franchise. But the bottom line is that another Embiid co-star wants out of Philly. Morey laid out the three ways for the Sixers to play out their current situation.

“Look, James is a Hall of Famer, one of the best players offensively to ever do it,” Morey said. “So, for us, it’s pretty different [than the Ben Simmons situation]. All I know is that we either are gonna move him for a player that helps us win now, we're gonna get assets that allow us to go get a good player in the short term or we're gonna continue to wait and continue to look for other players like a Maxey and a Joel to take a step forward in that situation.”

Morey did say that the Sixers will look to honor Harden's request but that he will exercise patience in it. The return for Harden will decide whether the window of championship contention with Embiid keeps its slight opening or shuts entirely. The Clippers, however, don’t have a myriad of young players or draft picks to offer and don’t seem likely to dangle Kawhi Leonard or Paul George in order to land Harden.

Embiid, for his part, recently floated the idea of winning a championship somewhere other than Philly, sparking major fear among fans. Morey made it clear that he wants to win in Philadelphia and that the two had spoken recently. After Embiid took to Twitter to mess with fans after his comments spread to every corner of Sixers Twitter, Morey said that it was “a very Joel day.”

But as much as Morey believes in Embiid, he understands that there are challenges when it comes to building around him and Harden. “I think James is a little bit hard to play with at times. I think Joel is a little bit hard to play with at times,” he said. “Both of these guys are such dominant forces that they can be a little bit challenging for other players to play off of.”

These comments weren’t made to single out the Sixers stars for their shortcomings or to solicit sympathy for his current situation. Morey noted that Harden led the Sixers to huge playoff victories and how well he altered his game to get the most out of his partnership with Embiid.

Morey is eager to take advantage of Embiid's talent and the solid supporting cast around him, which includes a budding star in Tyrese Maxey. But he also wants to make Philly an attractive place to chase greatness moving forward, which he admitted was the key reason why Maxey has not yet been extended. Morey stressed that keeping “an eye on the future” is a major part of his job.

“We need to execute better. There's really no spinning it,” Morey said, adding that Nurse's plan to make the Sixers less predictable has Embiid excited. “We're just gonna have to keep improving and give it our best go next year, continue to add talent throughout the season and see how people feel going into the playoffs. This year, we felt good. But we just didn’t get it done.”

The way Morey has built the Sixers so far this offseason doesn’t inspire much hope. Amid fury at the Sixers having four backup centers — holdovers Paul Reed and Montrezl Harrell and newcomers Filip Petrusev and Mo Bamba, plus rookie Azuolas Tubelis who is signed to a two-way deal — Morey said that the options they have are “multi-positional” and bring different skills to the table. Philly has brought in a few new players but it's clear that their current roster, even with the extra juice Nurse can squeeze out of it, is not enough.

“We know that we need more talent whether that’s James returning or what we turn James into,” Morey said. “I would just say to the fans [that] obviously, right now, things aren’t looking perfect. You have to squint to figure out how it's all going to work.” The Sixers' president of basketball operations lent credence to the idea that he has something up his sleeve by stressing that the roster makeup in July is not nearly as important as how it looks during the season.

Ultimately, anything that the Sixers could do comes down to what happens with Harden. As it stands now, a long offseason for Philly is still not even close to being finished.