Philadelphia 76ers Experiencing A Dip In The Road

The Philadelphia 76ers had clawed up to a five win eight loss stretch, only to fall back to a one win ten loss trench. How many more dips will this team need to overcome?

It don’t come easy, you know it don’t come easy. So it was, is, and will be in professional sports. But for a flash, a brief interval, this Philadelphia 76ers team appeared to be closer than they really were. After dragging along the bottom of the NBA, the team used the return of point guard Ish Smith as a catalyst and began to play competitive basketball – even to the point of closing rapidly on teams who were near the bottom of the standings.

But as quickly as the streak of success had arrived, it has faded, leaving the Philadelphia 76ers in a 1-10 funk and maintaining a vice like grip as the worst team in the NBA in the 2015-2016 season. So what has failed? Well, the team has surrendered an average of six more points per game in the past eleven games than in the previous eleven. The offense, while improving, has only managed a single point more in the same comparison.

But there is more at work in this streak.  It’s a shift of their big men.  While Nerlens Noel had time to prepare for the 2015-2016 season to play at the power forward, he did not resonate there with rookie Jahlil Okafor as the center.   It was a comment by Philadelphia 76ers executive Jerry Colangelo that seemed to seal the fate of both soon-to-be NBA stars, as he affirmed that Noel is a rim-protecting center.   And there the dice were cast once more.  And so, despite concluding that Jahlil Okafor cannot defend at the four, head coach Brett Brown is back to trying him there once more:

"“Nerlens, we know, is best at the rim,” Brown said. “So the ripple effect is, we have to try Jahlil as a four. That was a big part of the break, trying to let’s learn that because on first glance, it is painful sometimes. Real painful, as we’ve learned. But he’s coming, I think Jahlil is coming. You have to bite your lip a lot to navigate through some of it. You try to just help them figure stuff out, not entirely scold them all the time, try to help them. That challenge, especially when they have bigs that can shoot it with Ilyasova and Smith and Vucevic, they all really can shoot. How you rotate, I think, out of pick-and-rolls apart from playing them together is part of the whole challenge.”"

And so, with just one third of the season remaining, the battle for the roster spots on the 2016 team has become the struggle to determine if Jahlil Okafor can learn to play the power forward role quickly enough. And so, head coach Brett Brown is once more thrust back to player development. Once more he is tasked with discovery, and not exploitation.

"“We’ve tinkered a little bit with it in the first two-thirds, but never really anointed him and stamped off on him as a four-man like I am now,” Brown said. “Even to the point where we have to go end games, and you’re looking out there, I hope that I stick with what I’ve just said. It would be easy to say, ‘Hey, Jerami (Grant), you’ve got Dirk (Nowitzki),’ or, ‘You’ve got Ilyasova.’ That would be easy, but Nerlens and Jahlil are sitting, one of them is sitting. I want to try this. I feel like we owe it to them, we owe it to our organization to see what we have.”"

It’s this step back into the laboratory, to see if there is life in the matching of Jahlil Okafor to a power forward role going forward, that has reshuffled the Sixers deck. Yes, the Sixers are a work in process and already in a rather fragile state this year. But as the team concludes one more season, the questions that continue to be asked will finally find the answers. The team will have solid options at the center position, and with the arrival of Joel Embiid and Dario Saric, will have solid options at the forward positions.

Next: Inevitable Moves the Philadelphia 76ers Will Make

With so many moving parts, and with the recent news of trades that “almost happened“, it’s quite clear that the Philadelphia 76ers are still willing to trade major pieces of the current roster in the belief that they have an opportunity to fit a piece of tomorrow’s roster into place.  The strength of this team, the versatility to exploit any player at nearly any position, is also a great weakness at the moment.   If Jahlil Okafor at center is not the keystone, the team is now back to determining which player suits the future roster best, and in which role. Until the team defines the center position, the remainder of the roster is in flux. But the team is looking for some signs, some reason to keep going despite a scoreboard that reveals they have come up short time and time again.

The dip in the road of any NBA basketball team is unavoidable.  The reason for this freefall is the fact that the team has gone back to the drawing board.   While the eventual roster is the ultimate goal, there was a temporary sense of improvement -of closing out the season on a high note – that is so vital to the young enthusiastic players who have born the brunt of this rebuild.  Eventually, to achieve a buy-in, they must see some results for their efforts.

And so, the game resumes.   The promise of the 2016 NBA draft shines in the distance.  The Philadelphia 76ers are not there yet. In one sense, the losing streak keeps the Sixers at their best chance of landing the top draft pick.  In another sense, the team is still trying to find itself, still searching for the core pieces, still undefined.   That uncertainty will increase when the new pieces arrive.   For now, the Philadelphia 76ers are on track for their worst season of all.  Perhaps it is darkest before the dawn.  However it plays out, the bumpy ride for fans and players will continue.