Losing Is No Longer An Option For Philadelphia 76ers

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:

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

Break down or break out?

There is no more ifs, ands, or buts about it.  The Philadelphia 76ers with or without Joel Embiid, Dario Saric, Nerlens Noel, Jahlil Okafor, or even the first pick of the 2016 NBA draft are no longer able to play for tomorrow.  Tomorrow is next season.  It’s fish or cut bait time.  But the fact that the team is stuck in another losing streak cannot overshadow the fact that this is a far more improved team than the one who limped into the season.

Then, it was a cast of “we don’t know who or what we have” characters, shuffling among starters to see who can and who cannot pull the weight of an NBA opportunity. Some did not make the cuts, but did find homes on other rosters.  Some did make the cuts, but are having difficulty getting playing time.   Some are seeing playing time, but with a turnstyle of healthy players parading onto and off the court, it’s tough to get any true sense of the progress of this team.

And so, we try to isolate our favorite player and catch glimpses of him as he rotates onto the floor.   Or we can try to catch the highlights of this team and see if we can determine whether mistakes are simply those that happen in a basketball game, or egregious errors of lack of effort, or lack of knowledge, where the player sets himself up for closer scrutiny going forward.

Or we can sit back and take the words of the experts, such as those of head coach Brett Brown.

One reason I like using Brown’s commentary as a resource is that he is a fairly straight forward kind of guy. While he seldom calls out an individual player, he has been known to do so when needed. But more importantly he knows what the team is attempting to do in the game, and what the challenges are to each player. If someone plays hurt, I won’t know but the coach will.  But the stakes are simply far too high right now.  The morale of the team is shattered.   The hope is for “next year” but there are players on this team who have bled, fought even though outmanned, and kept coming back.

This is our team, and up to now I think the Philadelphia 76ers fans have been patient and willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.    But the team is on track to flirt with, if not tie, the worst record of the franchise.  The rumbles of the discord are already between the lines.  Brown has said it.  Executive Jerry Colangelo has said it.  The team is going in a  different direction next season.  The free agency avenue opens up to the team next year.  Trades are an option.  And the NBA draft is coming with potentially four draft picks.  There is hope coming down the pipeline. But is it just hope, or is the team seriously about to bust out ?

Next: Always Darkest before the Dawn

Always Darkest Before The Dawn

If you think about it, there are logical reasons why this team has bounced along the bottom of the NBA for three years. Drafting, usually a source of new energy and talent, has been placed on a “next year” cycle with the selections of Joel Embiid and Dario Saric, as well as the trade of rookie of the year Michael Carter Williams for a first round pick that has, to this date, not conveyed. And so the ability to put off rewards until tomorrow has become compounded each season in the previous two years. Finally, with the best player available in the 2015 third pick falling to none other than Duke freshman Jahlil Okafor, the team finally picked their first healthy “keeper” prospect.

But that created a different set of issues. With the Philadelphia 76ers sitting on center Nerlens Noel, and looking to bring on center Joel Embiid from rehabilitation, there is a glut of talent, first round talent, at the center position. Okafor, Noel, and Embiid cannot find enough minutes to play one position, which has forced the Sixers to audition both Noel and Okafor at the power forward role.

But as one center explodes on either the defense or offensive side in the attempt, the center turned power forward suffered from playing out of position. But that is just another in a long list of issues. The team also is challenged at the end of games by falling into patterns of vanilla offensive plays, and having too few wiley veterans who can dig out a shot in the waning minutes of a game. So too, the team needs to produce defensive stoppers who can shut down the all too many playmakers who have had season, if not career, offensive outbursts against these Sixers.

Pretty bleak, huh?

But this team is not so far from the mark. When you consider that the team is sitting on some surprisingly good prospects in T.J.McConnell, Nik Stauskas, and even the like of Robert Covington and Isaiah Canaan as contributors, you have the base of a solid, if not playoff bound, team.

They just need that rally, that one player who becomes the keystone and allows the remainder of the team to concentrate on those skills that best fit the scheme. Whether ready or not, the team has likely already adopted the build around Joel Embiid, and for good reason. He is a giant at 7’2″, had little formal experience in the game of basketball, but has the instincts and touch of a player who has been at it for many years.

Some point to his lack of formal basketball team training as a huge detractor. I don’t see it that way. He arrived to the Philadelphia 76ers very much a blank slate with command of basketball fundamentals. For two years, while his foot has healed twice over, he has been engaged by the trainers and coaches of the Sixers to set his basketball training to their style of play. I think he will be the right player to build around.

Next: Plant And Grow

Plant and Grow

The Sixers need to plant their hopes on one player, and grow around him.  I suspect that the team has been on hold because that player has taken two years to heal.  I believe that the evidence is when the team believes Joel Embiid is about to join them, the roster is shuffled and players are trained to play in supporting roles.

So if Embiid is your centerpiece, who plays around him?  Well, if he plays center, I think you assemble Holmes, Okafor, and Noel at power forward to find the right fit, and then place either Okafor or Noel into a reserve center role.  But I think his shooting eventually places him at power forward.  He is tall, but physical.  He can dominate the post game, but he has developed a disturbingly deadly perimeter shot.   That, coupled with a rim protector or a offensive tidal wave would set up the Sixers solidly in the front court.  Slide newcomer Dario Saric to the three spot, and you’ve got a front court that is better both offensively  and defensively.

But it gets better.   Four draft picks, four chances to address the back court in a “small ball draft” creates plenty of opportunity to strengthen the roster.

Next: Philadelphia 76ers 2017 Draft Options Are Limited

It’s not that this roster is void of talent.  It’s full of talent.  It’s simply that the team is heavy on backup players and light on true starting caliber players.  Isaiah Canaan is very productive coming off the bench to launch treys from long range.  But starting seems to set him too often into facing his defensive limits.  Up and down the roster, there are players that need more time to grow, to mature, and to learn their strengths and the nuances of the professional game of basketball.

Perhaps the team can find some help for a Joel Embiid led team.  You know that Dario Saric will play a part.   But if the team can snag either Ben Simmons or Brandon Ingram, or even both, that would supercharge this team going forward.  The key is not just getting the first overall pick, but drafting the best player or players who can give the Sixers production enough to begin winning the close games.  Sam Hinkie has shown that he can set up a team to succeed.  He’s shown he can make the difficult choices about who to draft, who to trade, and how to set up a team to win in the long haul.   Now there is one final leg remaining.  He needs to show he can pick the pieces who can congeal into a formidable and long running champion caliber team.

If I was a betting man, I’d put my money on Hinkie everytime.