With great tanking, comes great responsibility.
The City of Brotherly Love, it’s called. However, the city that loves its teams will have to be prepared to fall in love with losing yet again. After being teased with a brief stint of unfathomable success early in the 2013-14 season, the Sixers took their place in the cellar of the NBA as most analysts predicted they would. Playing basketball in a city where Dr. J, Moses Malone, Charles Barkley, Allen Iverson and Wilt Chamberlain all spent several years of their respective careers can be tough. The expectations can be enormous to produce individual and team success. Within the next few years, we’ll start to see if this young team can start to live up to some of those expectations.
Coaching – 18/25
Brett Brown joined the Sixers’ staff in 2013 after the team finished ninth in the Eastern Conference. In one season at the helm, Brown saw his team collapse into a disaster after starting relatively strong with wins against Miami, Washington, Chicago and Houston. Met with the tough challenge of taking a young, developing roster and trying to build upon the relative success of the prior year, Brown handled the season about as well as you may have hoped. Coach Brown comes from a background of having a winning pedigree with the teams he’s coached. He was an assistant on Gregg Popovich’s staff for several years in San Antonio and also led an Australian team on an impressive, and unlikely, run in the 2012 Olympics before being defeated by the ’12 USA basketball team. Winning was something to which he was accustomed; losing was not. Without injured rookie Nerlens Noel suiting up for the Sixers, some considered that the franchise may tank on purpose in order to gain a better draft position. However, you have to give credit to Brown for really putting forth an effort the whole season to, at the very least, imitate a team trying to win games.
Free Agency & Trades – 9/25
On Monday, June 30, the Sixers waived James Anderson. That’s about it in the way of relativity when discussing Philadelphia’s scarce offseason. Jason Richardson did pick up a player option and though he was injured for most of the past two seasons, he can still shoot well enough to contribute on a team that’s competing. The only problem is finding out where he fits on a team that looks intent on developing its young core instead of competing for the playoffs. Byron Mullens has signed a contract to play overseas in China. Though Mullens was actually underrated as a player, he may have gotten in the way of the development of the team’s young centers. Adonis Thomas has not been offered a contract currently for the upcoming season. Overall, the Sixers didn’t lose anybody from their core, but they certainly didn’t add players that they think could help them win now.
Draft – 16/25
The drama of the offseason begins and ends with the draft for the Sixers. Though Andrew Wiggins or Jabari Parker would have more closely fit a need, Joel Embiid was picked third overall by Philly in this year’s draft. Some have considered the possibility of a redundancy created by Embiid, because the Sixers already had Nerlens Noel, an athletic shot-blocker who may be raw offensively (just like Embiid). However, it may be possible for them to play side by side at times with Noel playing the 4 as his offensive repertoire grows. The downside to this pick is simply that Embiid may not even be playing before the All-Star break, if he does play at all this upcoming season.
After Embiid was selected, the Sixers traded their draft rights to Elfrid Payton to Orlando for the draft rights to Dario Saric plus a 2015 second-round pick and a 2017 first-round selection. The 2017 pick could very well end up being a lottery pick if Orlando doesn’t find a way out of the gutter before then, so this could end up being a very beneficial trade for the Sixers. This trade immediately looked like a win for both sides, though I think the Magic potentially gave up much more than the Sixers did if Saric can come to the U.S. and make an impact as many believe he can. The only problem is that the Sixers yet again made a “down-the-road” move instead of making a move to make them more competitive at the moment.
Current Player Core – 10/25
The talent level of the team is building, but after being gutted for cap space, there isn’t much to build upon just yet. Michael Carter-Williams proved in one year that he’s a threat on the court, and Thaddeus Young has proven to be a capable scorer. Outside of these two, Tony Wroten may be the best player that we’ve seen play yet. Noel has looked good in a few summer league contests, but it’s too early to tell if he’ll be able to produce at the same level as he did in college. The Sixers, even with a healthy Noel and Embiid, will still need one more dynamic player around whom to build, not to mention several key role players to fill the second unit.
Franchise Outlook – 53/100
The Sixers are completely starting over. There’s no other way to look at it, and general manager Sam Hinkie can’t pretend to be doing anything besides tanking at this point. However, tanking is a relatively controversial topic currently because instead of the conventional thinking that success is built around winning and key acquisitions via free agency, trade and smart drafting, teams are starting to believe that stockpiling draft picks can turn a team around quicker and more sustainably. If the recent draft picks can pan out and Hinkie has any more tricks up his sleeve within the next few years, the Sixers could have one of the most talented young cores in the league within two or three seasons. The more likely scenario is more bad times for the City of Brotherly Love. Let’s hope for Philly’s sake that it’s the former.
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