The Philadelphia 76ers going from Sam Hinkie to Bryan Colangelo similar to falling from a Slow Cooker into the Microwave.
When’s Dinner?
You know the smell of a kitchen just before the Thanksgiving day feast is served up. If your memories are as vivid as my own, you can smell the succulent basting turkey roasting in the oven, the smell of pumpkin pie cooling on the window sill. You can almost taste the cranberry sauce, and the mashed potatoes and stuffing rising up in peaks that are covered with freshly poured gravy. Perhaps you enjoyed the green bean casserole, the oyster stuffing, the carrots au gratin. Whatever your family memories, the mere mention of the meal will make your mouth salivate in anticipation.
So the patience shown by the Philadelphia 76ers fans these past three years is commendable, if not downright historically significant. The promise of a rebuild of the team has had the anticipation of a Thanksgiving feast. We’ve been waiting around for it, and certainly no fan base can be any hungrier than the Sixers fans. But we’ve been made to wait. Sometimes it seemed as though the team was content to mark time and wait for many years going forward.
But in the 2015-2016 season, the tone of the team changed. In events that may have been triggered by the team’s dismal opening to the new season, or by the youthful antics of their star rookie center Jahlil Okafor, the ownership decided that the team needed to expand their decision making diversity, and brought Jerry Colangelo on-board to serve as Chairman of Basketball Operations. While the team continued to navigate a season with only a glimmer of success – eventually ending at just ten wins – the machinery was already in place to bring in Colangelo’s son Bryan Colangelo as President of Basketball Operations and relegate former president Sam Hinkie into a well-paid but meaningless position out of sight and out of mind.
Sam Hinkie resigned instead.
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But the resignation was simply window dressing. By all accounts, the power had already been shifted by Chairman of Basketball Operations Jerry Colangelo from the President and General Manager of the Philadelphia 76ers to an unfilled new role. It was not until after Hinkie’s resignation that we had learned the true timeline of events. NBA executives pressured the Philadelphia 76ers ownership to change course. The ownership reached out to NBA commissioner Adam Silver. Silver placed the Sixers brass in touch with Jerry Colangelo.
"“His getting directly involved with the 76ers was in part due to my reaching out to Jerry,” Silver said. “Not because it was necessarily my idea that the 76ers needed an adviser. But once Josh Harris, the principal governor of the 76ers, said he would like to have a sounding board, someone with league experience, I was the one who connected him with Jerry Colangelo. I would say I feel a little bit of an obligation to defend Jerry here, because he was not looking for that opportunity.” – Adam Silver interviewed by Philly.com’s Keith Pompey"
The Sixers approached Jerry Colangelo, who tried to divert the team to his son Bryan Colangelo multiple times. Eventually, the team wore down Colangelo, but immediately began discussions with son Bryan about the new role. Jerry’s role, in the meantime, was to assess the team’s strengths and weaknesses and lay the groundwork for the new President. While the number of candidates remains a mystery to this day, the team had negotiated virtually everything but the starting date when Sam Hinkie caught on to the shift.
When the story broke, many events had already taken place out of sight. And so, the team had already shifted it’s direction long before there was a change of personnel.
Next: Sixers Grew Teamwork
Sixers grew teamwork in the process
That’s just the history. Now for the rest of the story. Until now, the only excitement for the Philadelphia 76ers fans for the past three years was the NBA draft. Yes, the team traded players, and absorbed contracts of the overpaid players from other teams. But the moves drove towards one objective: the NBA draft. On draft night, former general manager had no equal. He would select a player known to be coveted by another NBA team, merely to trade that player at a premium and end up with his own coveted player plus draft picks. It was a fascinating and entertaining display of complete command of a draft by any professional sports team.
But it was a crock pot. It merely continued the slow cooking in our own juices. We knew that players drafted would not be making an immediate impact. Nerlens Noel had his knee injured, Joel Embiid was injured in his foot – a dangerous place for a big basketball center to undergo a surgical knife, Dario Saric was playing internationally, and even players drafted in the second round or even signed to the team as undrafted free agents were hoped to give a few productive minutes off the bench.
With the exception of Michael Carter Williams (who was himself eventually traded) and Jahlil Okafor, the impact of the Hinkie drafts were long term in nature.
Slow Cooker.
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But with the arrival of Bryan Colangelo, the team has already changed their off-season objectives. The team has gone from the slow cooker to the microwave. But there is a trade off. You know that microwaves simply heat rapidly. There is no true “cooking” with that process. Slow cooking, by it’s nature, allows seasonings to combine, succulent juices to baste the meal, preserving the true taste while giving a perfect blending. These Sixers, young and inexperienced, have been allowed to learn, grow, and combine their learning experiences together. Of all teams in the NBA, they are perhaps the most unified, as they have endured what few other NBA players have. But school is over, and the Philadelphia 76ers have graduated this off-season
Let’s discuss how those objectives will change:
Next: Player Retention
I. Player Retention
There was no confusion about it. If you were an expiring contract with the Philadelphia 76ers under Sam Hinkie, you were unlikely to get a call to return to the team. He didn’t believe in it. Fortunately, the team did not face the risk of expiring contracts of core players. But when the team was assembling a roster for the 2015-2016 season, they had an opportunity to retain any player from a group of seven players. In the end, no player was retained.
Eventually, the team would double back and recoup their former point guard Ish Smith by trading two second round draft picks to the New Orleans Pelicans.
But the events illustrate a basic assumption of the Philadelphia 76ers. The team was willing to audition virtually anyone, but was awfully selective over who they might retain. They parted ways with Luc Mbah A Moute, a player personally responsible for bringing Joel Embiid to the NBA. Yes, he was a Philadelphia 76er for a single season but in that season he established himself as a solid wing defender – an area the team has seemingly abandoned in the 2015-2016 season. But the most shocking element of the dissolution is the apparent change of the overall value the team had placed on the development of centerpiece Joel Embiid. It was this fact that forced the team to reset the rebuild schedule, commit to center Jahlil Okafor at the third pick of the 2015 draft, and tap virtually all international expertise in the epic undertaking of delivering this young man’s talent to an NBA basketball court.
All that, and yet they let the man who had the longest connection, the deepest trust, and the most comprehensive understanding to walk. Go figure.
Mbah A Moute has since landed on his feet with the Los Angeles Clippers, and while his offense and playing time are not team leaders by any means, he has established himself as a keystone to the defense.
"“He may be the single most important piece from last year, just defensively. We needed another wing defender,” Los Angeles Clippers head coach Doc Rivers."
Unfortunately, the Philadelphia 76ers are seeking wing defenders now. The Sixers should have retained Mbah A Moute for an entire host of reasons. 20/20 hindsight. But we will know soon enough if the team is moderating in the search for perfection. Their is an important decision to make regarding point guard Ish Smith. He was another player the team parted ways with, only to find themselves in desperate need of a veteran point guard, forcing the team to trade two second round picks for Smith with the New Orleans Pelicans.
Next: NBA Draft Strategy
II. NBA Draft Strategy
In the NBA Draft, there are three factors which play a role in which player is selected: Empirical Value, Immediate Impact, Team Needs. Empirical Value is the ceiling of that player if they are healthy, trained well, and follow a normal trajectory. Immediate Impact is how “NBA ready” that player is and how quickly will they be expected to master their position in the NBA. Team Needs are simply the needs of the team for that players position and skill sets.
When Sam Hinkie drafted, he simplified the focus to one attribute – Empirical Value. In the past three years, the NBA draft strategy had taken on a quality of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The Sixers did not shop for players for their own roster, but rather bought low and sold high. That pattern was not expressed once, but rather multiple times in a draft, even in the same draft.
Investigating the potential Sixers strategy of the upcoming 2016 NBA draft, we looked back at the pattern of draft selections. What we uncovered was a tapestry of transactions, exchanges, buying and selling draft currency to a point where it was nearly a real life emulation of online GM simulators. The Sixers inserted carpet drafting – a strategy of drafting players whom would be immediately traded to successive teams to multiply the number of available draft selections in the future.
But that pattern of playing the draft like a commodities market did little to impact the immediate needs of the Philadelphia 76ers. Employing a “tomorrow” value system ensured the Sixers continued to find a steady stream of multiplying their draft position and selections. But the premium of today’s needs had no champion. The 2015-2016 roster, even to the staunchest supporter of Sam Hinkie, had little resemblance to a complete NBA team. Even if you disregard carrying the injured Joel Embiid on the roster for the second year, the team began the season completely understaffed due to injury.
"“Going into tonight’s game with nine and a half players. It’s just part of the situation we’ve been dealt with.” – head coach Brett Brown after an opening night loss to the Boston Celtics."
The team was an explosion of youth, and the most experienced player on the court in a Sixers jersey on opening night was Hollis Thompson, a young man who was just beginning his third NBA season. Why?
Previous NBA drafts focused on players for their eventual value. Nerlens Noel was delayed a year. Joel Embiid and Dario Saric were drafted but have not appeared in a Sixers jersey for two years. Drafted players, like Michael Carter Williams and K.J. McDaniels, rose in their value to the point that they were traded at their peaks. More savings. More placed away for a rainy day. But less on the plate today.
That will change. The most significant difference will be the draft philosophy. In this year’s NBA draft, the team will undoubtedly avoid prospects with questions as their health or to their availability to join the Sixers this season. While that could limit the team’s options if the lottery is unfavorable, the team is no longer willing to bank on the future.
Next: NBA Trades
III. Use of NBA Trades
For the past three years, the Philadelphia 76ers have been involved in any number of trades- with the predominant version resulting in the Sixers absorbing significant salary cap of a player or players in exchange for draft picks and/or high ceiling prospects. In fact, it was a presumption if the Philadelphia 76ers were involved in a trade, the conditions were an NBA team dumping an excessive player contract to the Philadelphia 76ers along with draft pick(s) incentives.
It was one such salary dump, a move which brought both Carl Landry and Nik Stauskas to the Philadelphia 76ers from the Sacramento Kings, which epitomized the types of trades involving the Philadelphia 76ers.
As a result of the trade, the Sixers received Stauskas, Landry, and power forward/center Jason Thompson. Of the three, Thompson was the sole player whose inclusion in the trade to Philly was akin to a homecoming for him, as he was originally from Mount Laurel, New Jersey. But the team followed up by trading Thompson to the Golden State Warriors for another salary dump of Gerald Wallace and the rights to swap first round picks with the Warriors.
FanSided
But the winds of change had already shifted for the Sixers. As previously mentioned, the Philadelphia 76ers traded two draft picks to reunite with point guard Ish Smith. It was a change in that the Sixers spent, rather than received, draft picks in an exchange with another NBA team.
At the trade deadline in 2016, an “almost” trade was reported which involved the Philadelphia 76ers hot pursuit of Atlanta Hawks reserve point guard Dennis Schroder. The chapter is not complete, as reports included interest of both the Hawks and the Sixers to reengage in trade talks at the conclusion of the playoffs. But the philosophy of bolstering the teams roster with available talent from other teams was now firmly established. Which teams, and which players, will the Sixers pursue this off-season?
Without a true track record to fall upon, anything we suggest is speculative at this point. But it’s clear that if the Sixers feel that the team can improve, and if the means to do so are not available via the draft nor the free agency methods, the team will deal to improve.
Next: NBA Free Agency
IV. NBA Free Agency
The Philadelphia 76ers have not been active in the NBA free agency market for three years, a fact that some attribute to bad blood between agents and former 76ers GM Hinkie, but the reality is that the Sixers were simply not shoppers in the past. Instead, they used their salary cap space as a lure to attract draft picks away from other NBA teams. But that salary cap space will find a different use this year – simply a fat wallet ready to buy up NBA talent. But spending is not shopping wisely, and that is the key to this Sixers franchise.
We’ve had years to contemplate the shopping list for the team, and we think we’ve got some areas to consider unleashing the power of the dollar upon. One such area is the need for wing defense, and to do so, the team needs to consider some established two-way players. In our view, two such players worthy of consideration are Charlotte Hornet Nicolas Batum or Golden State Warrior Harrison Barnes. We’re just getting started folks.
In an excellent piece by Michael Kaskey-Blomain, we’ve identified Batum, Barnes, as well as Jordan Clarkson, Bradley Beal, Arron Afflalo, and Courtney Lee.
Not to be outdone, another compelling article by Dalton Lanoza singled out Demar DeRozen, Mike Conley, Batum, Ryan Anderson, and Brandon Jennings as worthwhile free agent targets for the team this off-season.
Why so many? The team is coming out of a ten win season, much of which is not for a lack of talent, but simply a lack of developed players. Fast forward the current roster ahead by five years, and you’ve likely got a very competitive team. But too many players fall under three years of NBA experience, and are not prepared for the fast moving game time situations non-stop action in an NBA game. Seasoned veterans know what to expect, while less experienced players are guessing, improvising, and missing the moments that can change a game’s momentum.
Next: How will 2016 NBA Playoffs Impact the Sixers?
The team cannot improve the win column rapidly without infusing seasoned veterans into the current youth filled roster. The only reason, true reason, for bringing in Bryan Colangelo is to speed up improving the win column. The team was already set up to improve, even by Bryan Colangelo’s own admission. The distinction is that Sam Hinkie, focusing on tomorrow, was content to let the team’s immediate future fall where it may.
But three years is long enough to wait it seems. So the team is switching to the microwave to heat things up rapidly.
Bon Apetit’ !