Philadelphia 76ers Must Sort Through Chaff To Find Wheat

As team prepares for 2016, many very important decisions face the front office. Who stays? Who gooes? Ultimately, the Philadelphia 76ers must sort the chaff from the wheat from a team that simply has not gelled this season

Cause and effect. The simplistic analysis of events by using ones eyes alone, without digging for root cause. The process of television centered general manager roles that all fans assume because of a busted play without knowing the design. In football, a corner is beaten for a touchdown and is vilified by a fan base. But the play called for a max blitz, a blitz that never got to the quarterback because pass rushers clogged together. The cornerback had receivers flood his zone with no help because the safety did not roll to his side. So while the cornerback is raked over the coals, it was not his effort that doomed the team on that play.

So too have the Philadelphia 76ers complicated the matter of judging the quality of basketball play of this team. Before the arrival of point guard Ish Smith, the team was a hodgepodge of players and skill-sets, all without a cohesive force to pull them together. It was not until Smith arrived, anchored the point guard position, which enabled the remainder of the roster to play more within their own roles. With clearer definition, the team was able to pull together a mini streak of some success where the team won seven games in a twenty game stretch.

But as quickly as it came, the success has faded away as has the health of the Philadelphia 76ers. Since the trade deadline, where the team waived JaKarr Sampson to make room for a never donning a Sixer jersey Joel Anthony, the team has run with just 14 players. But recently, the team has been fighting off a series of minor injuries, and fighting to find any success in the course of the now ten game losing streak.

All of this adds up to bad film, and bad film makes it awfully difficult to establish the cause and effect of bad plays without intimate knowledge of the back story. With the recent absence of center Jahlil Okafor, there was an almost tangible hope that his absence would allow the team to find a rhythm, to push the center controversy to the backs of their minds and just play basketball. But that hasn’t quite happened yet. In fact, the opposite is happening. Brett Brown and the team miss Okafor’s scoring:

"“You can more easily judge when you don’t have something. It stands out more as far as the level of importance, and yes, Jahlil’s scoring is missed. It’s not like we have a bunch of go-to, what the NBA would call, scorers, bucket-makers, shot-makers. Jahlil can score. That is his main strength. It’s the great challenge, responsibility that I have to make him a two-way player. [Wednesday] we did miss Jahlil’s scoring abilities.” – Brett Brown as interviewed by Brian Seltzer of Sixers.com"

So it goes. The team is trying to find diamonds while the cave continues to collapse around them. We recently had published an article sorting, as best we could, on the current roster and the chances of each player to make the team next year. Now granted, we do not have the organizational resources of basketball analytics at our fingertips to aid our analysis, but we do have basic statistics. Like the fact that T.J.McConnell is one of the best rookie point guards in the NBA, and he was undrafted. Like the offensive prowess of rookie center Jahlil Okafor, whose scoring has already placed him among the prospects with a potential to becoming a truly elite NBA player. Like the defensive skills of Nerlens Noel, who can block and steal , a very rare combination for a big man in the NBA.

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When the team has shifted to small ball, it has generated some success. But the team continues to build bigger, currently on pace to have a plethora of large men who can play center and will likely default to power forward in hopes to improve the overall line-up.

The off-season will be a challenging time. With so many decisions to make, the team cannot afford to use the same approach that was employed at the point guard position before the season started. Shoving a bunch of NBA hopefuls onto the roster and letting open competition dictate who survives is an effective strategy by novices, but now that the team is engaging the build, their must be a skillful hand and a discerning eye. Players can only improve to the level of talent around them and opposing them. Without a buoying effect of teammates, players risk overextending, trying to compensate for the players around them.

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Good defense yields good defense. Good offense yields good offense. Good two-way players yield both, which is why this team is fascinated at the hope of growing two way players on the team. But finding which of the players on this current roster can achieve that level of play is an arduous task, and one that will require both an understanding of the data and the limits of that data. Does this team have enough footage to make it an easy call? Perhaps. But the remainder of this season will be a critical time for each player of this roster, not only in deciding who makes the roster, but at which position and whether starting or at a reserve position.

Why so much importance now? Next season we add another minimum of six new faces to the roster, and they will be learning the game and the roster. The group who earns their place on the roster next season will automatically become mentors for all of the new faces soon to arrive. The team is already pushing the limits of the coaching staff to develop so many this season. Next season, that burden must be shifted to the returning players as well. There is plenty of optimism over the possibilities of this team next season. But the journey to get to opening day of the 2016-2017 season is fraught with peril.

It’s the realm of odds and probabilities. That happens to be president and general manager Sam Hinkie’s wheel house. If anyone can pull this off, he can. Until then, we simply trust the process. Particularly now, that it is getting so very interesting.