He can draft and trade, but the word on Sam Hinkie is that he cannot build the Philadelphia 76ers a winning roster. But in the 2016-2017 season, losing is no longer an option.
If you had a choice to be on a championship team, would you take it? I think virtually any professional athlete would gladly accept that opportunity. But if the condition was that you had to put in your time for multiple years on a losing team, even to the point of being the worst team in the league, without knowing when the championship would arrive, would you still be as willing? Well that setting places us far closer to the reality currently facing this roster today. We can have our fun, accept the challenges of the team in the win loss column as we await their coming of age. But many of us are older than the players on the Philadelphia 76ers roster. With time, comes wisdom. It’s not all draft simulators, trade software, stack a team roster and off you go to the championship. There is a hard road to travel. For some, the journey seems to be weighing down the team more than expected. You’ve heard the recent testimony of the star players:
Nerlens Noel: "Losing's hard. Period. I'm just continuing to play my game. It's not easy to deal with. It is what it is." #sixers
— Derek Bodner (@DerekBodnerNBA) March 21, 2016
Another more public event happened to launch the team in many directions. That event was the public meltdown of center Jahlil Okafor and precipitated a host of changes in the Philadelphia 76ers organization.
"“It was Thanksgiving eve. Me and one of my teammates went out,” he says from his penthouse, declining to name the teammate. “As we were leaving the club, there were these guys pretty much heckling us, just normal stuff, saying, `You suck.’ I was already frustrated that we were losing. At the time, we were 0-16, and we’d just lost a close game we should have won. I can’t really talk about details [of the fight]. Pretty much what you see in the video. I was upset. I made a mistake. I let them get under my skin. I reacted. When the video came out, it was definitely embarrassing. It was hard to watch. I’ve watched the video once pretty much because I was disgusted looking at myself in the video.”- Jahlil Okafor"
The Sixers reached out to Jerry Colangelo, a 50 year NBA veteran who has seen it all and practically done it all, to come in and vet the team, tweaking the organization to make improvements to support the team, giving head coach Brett Brown an assistant head coach he could rely upon in the form of Mike D’Antoni. He also acted as a catalyst to bring point guard Ish Smith and power forward Elton Brand to the team.
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Then he, as many others, moved back to wait and watch. Who will progress, who will plateau, who will regress?
Two players have been showing signs of rapid progress, undrafted point guard T.J.McConnell has performed remarkably well as a rookie, and second year shooting guard Nik Stauskas, who has been showing signs of progress from long range. But neither has been able to off-set the loss of the team of Jahlil Okafor, whose season ended prematurely when he was diagnosed with a tear in his meniscus. While his surgery was a success, the rehab will carry him beyond the end of this season. But it is that event, amidst a series of events this year, which has brought the Philadelphia 76ers to nearly a breaking point.
Next: Break Out or Break Down