NEW YORK – For Philadelphia 76ers fans, this is The Bad Place.

“Disgust among Sixers fans is at one of the highest levels I have ever seen here in Philadelphia,” Joe DeCamara, a Philadelphia radio host, said in a recent interview.

A confluence of misfortune and bad strategy has almost left the team where it was in the mid-2000s at the end of the Allen Iverson era: adrift with no path to be championship contenders.

Whatever plans Daryl Morey, the team’s president of basketball operations, had when he took over in 2020 seem to have unravelled.

“We feel like people are underrating the Sixers right now,” Morey said at his introductory news conference, “but we need to go out there and prove it.”

What has been proved, in fact, is quite the opposite, punctuated recently when James Harden, the team’s second-best player, publicly trashed Morey as part of his quest to force a trade to another team.

Discontent is not new for star players, but in the Sixers’ case it has become very public when their fans are at their wits’ end.

The Sixers, perhaps more than any National Basketball Association team, are poorly positioned to plead for patience. It has put its fans through a decade of stops and starts, including the rebuilding plan known as The Process.

Harden’s relationship with the Sixers became a good news-bad news situation this summer.

The good: Harden, a 33-year-old guard, opted into the last year of his contract. The bad: It was on the condition that the Sixers trade him to the Los Angeles Clippers, according to two people familiar with the request.

To make matters worse, videos that emerged on social media this week appeared to show Harden disparaging Morey while speaking at an Adidas event in China.

“Daryl Morey is a liar and I will never be a part of an organisation that he’s a part of,” Harden said in the videos.

Harden’s agent and Adidas did not respond to requests from The New York Times seeking to confirm the authenticity of the videos. A Sixers spokesman declined to comment.

The exact nature of Harden’s anger at Morey is unclear, but his displeasure is an extraordinary setback nonetheless. Harden is one of the greatest offensive players ever. He is one of a small number of players who can will a team to victory by himself – when he chooses.

Harden and Joel Embiid, the star centre who is Philadelphia’s best player and the reigning Most Valuable Player, share some of the responsibility for the Sixers’ lack of success.

They often underperform at crucial moments in the post-season, and did so again this spring, when the Sixers lost to Boston in the second round.

This has brought even more pessimism to Philadelphia.

“As a fan, it’s simple: I want the team to win,” said Amos Lee, a folk singer-songwriter and avid Sixers fan. “I want them to spend all of the money and get all of the best players... But I don’t know what this franchise is. It has been for a long time really poorly managed.”

The Sixers have not made it to the Eastern Conference finals since 2001, and Doc Rivers, who was hired as coach a few weeks before Morey joined the team, had a history of falling short in the play-offs. Still, Morey kept him for three seasons.

And after Ben Simmons, the star point guard drafted two years after Embiid, demanded a trade out of Philadelphia, Morey resisted before swinging a trade for Harden, who was trying to force his way off his second straight team. Now Philadelphia is his third.

According to a person familiar with Morey’s thinking, the plan remains to bring Harden back after the Sixers ended trade negotiations with the Clippers when they could not reach a suitable deal.

That is not a plan – that’s unjustified hope. Harden has shown that he is willing to hold out or loaf on the floor if he does not get the trade he wants.

And even if Harden returns, the team did not make any real improvements this off-season.

If the 76ers could not get out of the second round last year, how will they do next season with a less talented team and an unhappy Harden?

But the clock is not just ticking on what to do about Harden. It is also ticking on Embiid. He said recently that he wanted to win a championship, whether it was in Philadelphia “or anywhere else”.

He later suggested that he was not serious, though that has not eased the anxiety of Sixers fans.

For now, Morey does not have many options. That is partly on him.

The best option in a sea of bad ones may be to engage in some wishful thinking: Maybe Harden shows up to camp in great shape and reconsiders his desire to leave. Maybe Embiid puts together another MVP-level season and does not get hurt, as he so often has.

Maybe they can even get out of the second round. NYTIMES