The Al Horford experiment lasted exactly one season in Philadelphia.
The 76ers agreed to trade Horford to the Oklahoma City Thunder for Danny Green, league sources told ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski on Wednesday.
As part of the deal, Philadelphia will also be sending the 34th pick in Wednesday night’s NBA draft, a lightly protected 2025 first-round pick and the draft rights to Serbian guard Vasilije Micic to Oklahoma City.
The Thunder will be sending guard Terrance Ferguson to the Sixers along with Green.
Horford, 34, signed a four-year, $109 million contract with Philadelphia as a free agent last summer, as the Sixers hoped the combination of prying him away from their blood rivals, the Boston Celtics, as well as pairing him with Joel Embiid — whom he’d always been effective guarding as a member of the Celtics — would pay dividends. Instead, the fit between the two was clunky from the start and never improved, to the point where Horford was removed from the starting lineup for the first time in his career in favor of second-year guard Shake Milton.
This trade also delivers significant financial savings for the Sixers — more than $25 million in combined payroll and luxury taxes, per ESPN’s Bobby Marks.
This is the first move that new president of basketball operations Daryl Morey has made since arriving in Philadelphia earlier this month after a 13-year stint in charge of the Houston Rockets.
Green, 33, has now been traded twice in a week — though, technically, he has yet to be traded once. The Thunder had previously agreed on Monday to trade guard Dennis Schroder to the Los Angeles Lakers for Green and the 28th pick in Wednesday’s draft, sources told Wojnarowski. But because the Lakers are unable to trade their pick until after this year’s draft has been completed, the trade cannot be made until the Lakers have made the pick themselves.
A three-time champion, including the past two seasons with the Toronto Raptors and the Lakers, Green, a career 40% 3-point shooter, will provide two things Philadelphia desperately needed: a better positional fit than Horford, and shooting to put around stars Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid.
Ferguson, 22, was a first-round pick by the Thunder in 2017, and he gives the Sixers another athletic defender on the wing.
Micic, 26, was a second-round pick by the Sixers in 2014, and currently plays for Anadolu Efes in the Turkish Super League, one of the top teams in Europe. He was a second-team All-Euroleague selection in 2019.
The first-round pick that Oklahoma City received, meanwhile, only adds to the massive war chests of first rounders that Thunder general manager Sam Presti has accumulated — a remarkable 17 selections through the 2026 NBA draft, including the 25th and 28th picks in this year’s draft.
The Thunder have now made three trades in the last week — all of which brought a first-round pick back to the franchise.
In addition to both deals involving Green, the Thunder traded future Hall of Famer Chris Paul and Abdel Nader to the Phoenix Suns for Ricky Rubio, Kelly Oubre, Ty Jerome, Jalen Lecque and a 2022 first round pick earlier this week.
