He’s been called Mentor, Head Coach, Life Trainer, Keystone, and by critics Anchor. But Which Is It? In this second part of the five part series, we look at the Philadelphia 76ers Position Analysis Under Brett Brown – the Power Forward Position
Whatever it is, whenever a complete rebuild is the ultimate goal, demolition is the first step. Reducing what was into rubble, to be pushed aside and from those ashes build from as much experience and lessons learned from the past mistakes. That’s the game plan to this Philadelphia 76ers team, whose woes have made headlines, and not in a good way, for the past three years. But as we had discussed in our part one of this five part series, fans have found the strength and the patience to endure through various methods. To some, this strategy has become something to ridicule, other’s have accepted the strategy in blind faith, while to others it represents the intricate chessboard strategy deployed by president and general manager Sam Hinkie to take a team on a ridiculous unavoidable decline and use that slope to create a team which, for the second straight season, has become one of the last to taste victory.
Each NBA rebuild has it’s share of detractors, but due to the pioneering effort of the Sixers to make this rebuild over multiple years, the Philadelphia 76ers have had more than their share. Despite his own team crumbling around him, Sacramento King’s George Karl felt righteous enough to slam the Philadelphia 76ers rebuild efforts as far back as 2014. Neither the Kings nor the Sixers have appeared in post-season play over the past three year span.
Despite the detractors of the how, there is a consensus that the what – restoring the 76ers to success, is a worthy endeavor. And there is no doubt that a strong Sixers franchise translates into a stronger NBA. The Philadelphia 76ers have a long standing history in the NBA, have won, and have been the birthplace of such NBA stars as the late Daryl Dawkins, Allen Iverson, Julis Erving, Maurice Cheeks, Bobby Jones, Andrew Toney, Wilt Chamberlain, and the list of NBA greats goes on and on. On a team with such long-standing history, time is relative. Perhaps it requires a team with such a lengthy history to develop the template for other NBA teams to follow going forward. Now the Sixers have added drama to the bottom of the NBA pecking order as well.
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But the team does have a distant goal of building a championship team. To be honest, that goal is not as distant as it was in 2013. So after blowing the roster up, and then gathering young overlooked talent to fill the roster, the team must grow, and prune, and grow some more, and prune even more. The team has shown incredible patience while they await the maturation of true NBA potential stars like Jahlil Okafor, Nerlens Noel, Nik Stauskas, and even rehabbing Joel Embiid. But eventually head coach Brett Brown must transition away from player development. When the team begins to win consistently (sprouts are already blooming), can Brown coach a winner?
The ultimate test of any NBA head coach comes down to four elements: Does he have the vision of a championship team? Is he able to communicate that vision to his players? Does his vision align with that of the general manager/ personnel decisions? Can he maintain a team focus through a rising frequency and magnitude of success? So far the only remaining question is the success. But despite the team’s evolution, the team will only improve when the players improve. So we are breaking down the five starting positions of this Sixers organization, and then project what it could look like next year in 2016 (I admittedly will be forced to make some assumptions to do this. But that’s what makes this so fun, right?) In this article, we take a look at the “other” big position on that 76ers roster, the power forward.
Next: Hawes/Young