​PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The 76ers tried. Oh, how they tried, to find that missing All-Star, that missing piece they could team with Joel Embiid and a rotating cast of starters and could finally lead the franchise to an NBA championship.Jimmy Butler. Paul George. James Harden. Tobias Harris. Al Horford.Nothing more now in Philly than throwback jerseys in the back of some teenager’s closet.Josh Harris bought the team in 2011 and not even a year later the Sixers made the first splash of his tenure with a blockbuster deal when they landed All-Star big man Andrew Bynum in a trade with the Lakers.Bynum with his achy knees never played a game with the Sixers. Butler, Harden and most of the rest certainly had their moments, yet they not only failed to win a championship in Philadelphia, but they also could not get the Sixers even out of the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs.That doesn’t even count the draft night disappointments since Harris’ first draft in 2012. Ben Simmons. Jahlil Okafor. Markelle Fultz. Michael Carter-Williams.The trade-deadline blockbusters and late-night deals all seemed at the time like the Sixers were swinging for the fences.The moves were just bunts compared to the summer of 2026.The Sixers are as all-in as they’ve ever been in playing for a championship after they traded for Jaylen Brown, an NBA Finals MVP and champion with the Boston Celtics, and landed LeBron James as a free agent on the NBA veteran minimum salary.If it doesn’t work now, with perhaps the best starting five in the NBA, when will it for the Sixers?“I wouldn’t say it didn’t work out,” Embiid said of the second-fiddle failures. “Obviously, we didn’t win. It’s hard to win when you get a group of guys together for one year, two years, maybe.”The 76ers only have to look at their last championship in 1983 to know that sometimes going outside the organization is the right call. Take 1982, when the Sixers signed reigning NBA MVP Moses Malone to a six-year free-agent contact. Malone won MVP honors again in his first season with the Sixers and helped lead stalwarts Julius Erving, Maurice Cheeks, Bobby Jones and Andrew Toney to an NBA title in 1983.Brown and James will try to do the same in Year 1 and avoid joining this recent list of stars who left Philadelphia without a ring:James HardenFormer Sixer executive Daryl Morey had his heart set on Harden and landed the feared Beard from Brooklyn at the February 2022 trade deadline. He had been one of the league’s top players for the previous decade, having won three scoring titles and the 2018 league MVP award.Harden essentially forced his way with trades out of Houston and Brooklyn and soon added the Sixers to the list.His low moments with the 76ers came in the 2023 playoffs when the Sixers blew a 3-2 lead to the Celtics. Harden was 0 for 6 on 3s in Game 2 and Game 6 losses. He scored only nine points in Game 7, and he went scoreless in the second half.Harden got into a contractual dispute in the offseas