The First Step to Recovery Is…

I’m finally getting this post done. Meanwhile, throughout last week, Dante provided you with his three-part mini-series about which Sixers past and present deserved their significant NBA awards. I suggest you check it out: Dante is so well-versed in the team’s history that you could call him a Sixers historian. Meanwhile, I’m finally posting part 2 of something I started almost two weeks ago: why the Sixers have trouble with drawing fans to games and what they could do to draw more. 

– Sean

The Sixers haven’t had the most well-attended home games for a few years now. This surprises no one that is reading this, I imagine.

While 25th in overall home attendance among NBA teams, the Sixers can boast that they have the most empty seats, though usually teams are reluctant to boast about such things. On average, over 27% of the seats at the Wells Fargo Center are unpaid for. Even more are empty, the results of fans now showing up for games despite paying for tickets. Plenty are available on StubHub hours before games start. Empty seats are just as visible on the television broadcasts as filled seats. While the Sixers could contend for a playoff spot upon resolution of the lockout, I don’t expect things to change for an uncertain season.

Alas, as many long-time fans know, this was not always the case for what is now called the Wells Fargo Center. And that’s why I’m writing about it. First, I need to prove that there is, in fact, an attendance problem. Then I need to uncover the cause of the problems and propose some sort of solution.

Let’s take a step back through time. In 2000-01, the year the Sixers made the finals, they averaged 19,651 fans per game, 5th highest in the NBA. On the road, they were a huge draw, averaging the second most fans drawn on the road behind the LA Lakers. The team was all the rage, with Allen Iverson leading the way. The Sixers were the talk of the town during the NBA playoffs, especially so when they upset the Lakers in the first game of the NBA finals.

So what’s the difference? Did Allen Iverson mean that much to the team’s attendance?

Well, he did, for a while. Attendance slowly but surely fell off through the middle of the decade. In 2004-05, the Sixers dropped by around 2,000 fans from their peak in 2000-01. The next year, average attendance fell by another 1,000 fans. Why? Well, at this point, it was difficult to imagine winning the NBA title without major improvements to the roster. This wasn’t for a lack of trying – the Sixers tried to acquire players to make playoff runs after the 2000-01 season. Trades include misguided attempts to make Glenn Robinson, Keith Van Horn, and a one-legged Chris Webber the top sidekicks. Other trades include the one where we picked up Rodney Rogers^ and Jamal Mashburn’s dead contract* for Glenn Robinson’s dead-but-expiring contract**. Coaches came and went. Entering and exiting were Randy Ayers, Chris Ford,  Jim O’Brien, Mo Cheeks, Tony DiLeo, and Eddie Jordan.

^ If you don’t know the story of Rodney Rogers after retirement and paralysis, click here.

* Jamal Mashburn was still listed as a Sixer going into the next year’s training camp, which once upon a time gave me false hope that he would be able to contribute alongside Webber and Iverson. 

** Robinson was only dead to the Sixers. He later “recovered” and signed on to win a championship with the Spurs. In truth, he lost his job to Andre Iguodala and had some sort of dispute with Jim O’Brien or someone else in the organization. 

Eventually, everything fell apart. The complete breakdown began with the fan-appreciation night fiasco at the end of the second Webber-AI season, when AI and C-Webb decided to not appreciate the fans to the point of (a) not playing and (b) not being on time for the game. Then Iverson was traded and Webber released, and the Sixers fell to 29th in attendance, according to Basketball-Reference.com. Since then, the team has not risen above 23rd overall in the NBA. Even when the team was deemed “ready” to take the next step, with the Elton Brand signing and everything surrounding it, the Sixers didn’t draw much. There was certainly hype – heck, John Hollinger had the Sixers rated as the third best Eastern Conference team in the first Elton Brand season. But that hype faded away with a slow start, Elton’s injury, and a disappointing finish to the season.

And now, we have a team without a clear direction, unsure whether to trade its best player to hand off the reigns of the team to its fiery coach and his crew of assorted youngsters with varying degrees of potential. Ownership never really stopped spending money to make the team go, so it doesn’t have the salary cap space to attempt a complete overhaul just yet. Also, the lockout and three other good teams in the city that have always out-ranked the Sixers in popularity stand in the way. Yes, we have a slight problem.

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So by now, you must be wondering: “Okay, so he’s pointed out that the Sixers have had attendance problems, yet he hasn’t proposed a real solution. What’s the point of this?” Well, I’ll get to it. But the first part of solving a problem is discovering that there is, in fact, a problem. While normally the second part involves calling Mystery Inc., I’m going to get down to the bottom of this in the next installment, coming up tomorrow. Or at least as far as I can go.