Sixers on Annual NBA GM Survey

By Sean Kennedy (@PhillyFastBreak)

Every year, NBA.com surveys all 30 GMs, gauging both an evaluation of the past offseason and predictions for the upcoming season. It’s a slightly more nuanced version of a preseason awards list within the inner circles of the league. You can read the full results from the NBA GM Survey here.

Of interest here in Philadelphia was the fact that the Sixers popped up in the voting a few times (note that GMs can’t vote for someone/something related to their own organizations). No, no one voted the Sixers in the top 4 of the Eastern Conference (they must have been a consensus #5 pick). There were some nice things to say about a couple of current and future Sixers though.

Jahlil Okafor was voted as the leading candidate to win Rookie of the Year, receiving 44.8% of the votes. This isn’t a surprise, as he’s one of, if not the favorite in the betting community to take home the award.

However, when asked which rookie will be the best player in five years, Okafor was just the second most frequent answer, tied with Emmanuel Mudiay at 10.3%, but behind Karl-Anthony Towns, who was the overwhelming favorite at 62.1%. On the surface this may seem counterintuitive, but it makes actually makes a lot of sense. Towns was widely considered the best prospect in the draft (he’s certainly a better two-way player than Okafor ever projects to be). Okafor may win Rookie of the Year just based on the amount of usage he’s expected to receive as a focal point of the Sixers offense this year, but nearly everyone would rather have Towns in the long run.

Okafor also received at least one vote as the biggest steal for where he was drafted. Someone else out there thinks the Sixers did the right thing by sticking with best player available, rather than drafting by need, when Okafor fell to them at #3.

Dario Saric was voted the best international player not currently in the NBA, garnering 28.6% of the vote. It’s nice to know the consensus within the NBA community is that the Sixers at least picked up a superior prospect when they used a lottery pick to stash Saric a couple years back. Philadelphia fans (and management I’m sure) are hoping they see him come stateside on the rookie-contract scale next season, rather than his waiting until 2017.

Finally, Brett Brown received at least one vote for which coach is the best manager/motivator of people. This is especially noteworthy as the only other coaches even listed were Gregg Popovich, Doc Rivers, Steve Kerr, and Erik Spoelstra. For all the talk about whether Brown deserves an extension, there’s at least one executive outside the organization that thinks Brown is doing a great job. As those that follow the Sixers closely will attest, he certainly almost always has his young guys playing hard, even when things on the scoreboard get away from them.

At the very least, there are some opposing GMs out there who think the Sixers are doing a nice job in certain areas. However, I’m sure if there was a ‘Which team is disgracing the league the most’ question, you may have seem the Sixers pop up as well. Fans hope it’s not too long before the Sixers are not only visible on these fringe questions about future prospects, but actually listed among the questions regarding the best teams in the NBA.