Risk To Sixers Of Too Rapid Fixers

Despite the Wealth of Currency, Binge Shopping Brings Far Too Many Risks To Philadelphia 76ers

Nothing exemplifies the change in society as the demise of repair shops. Sewing and seam-stressing, Shoe repair, Appliance repair, TV repairs, even home repairs have somehow become too complicated or antiquated to be a service you can do for yourself, or even hire someone to do. We’ve become impatient with repairing what we have as the price of something brand new has fallen below the cost of repair.

Disposable society.

But other things have changed as well. 1 hour Photomarts, drive up window service, 30 minute delivery pledges of your made to order pizza all have placed time out of bounds. If you are asked to wait an inordinate amount of time, you are walking away. If you are at a checkout stand and the line is more than one person deep, you begin to scan for the next cash register to open. If they don’t open one, you likely vow to never shop there again.

Time is convenience.

When the former President and General Manager of the Philadelphia 76ers agreed to build a championship team by the year 2018, he was usurped in 2016, not for failing to meet his objectives, but for not meeting them more quickly.

Time is dangerous.

The Philadelphia 76ers are speeding up the rebuild, or as I’ve termed it, moving from the slow cooker to the microwave. In that article, I discussed the three years and how the future would like be happening at a much more rapid pace. But I failed to share the risks of the acceleration, and there are risks. Speeding up the rebuilding process has a number of risk factors, some we know, some we’ve discussed, and some we have yet to discover.

Engineering a new machine is similar to engineering a rebuild of a professional sports team. It’s not something you can do in haste. To be truly effective, you design the components – or in this case define the roles of each of your five starting players – and then you focus on achieving those expectations by drafting, trading for, signing a free agent to, or developing that roster spot. As you gather players with the right individual statistics, you then start to play them together to see how well they play together. As you see how they gel, you begin to tweak the amount of time, the areas of training, to reinforce the players, and the team, where they are most vulnerable.

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The Philadelphia 76ers did not gel in the 2015-2016 season. They had players who were unfamiliar with one another. The roster if stocked with young inexperienced talent. And the lineup was a kaleidoscope due to the frequency of injuries and the attempts to combine Nerlens Noel and Jahlil Okafor on the court simultaneously in a way that was compatible to both players. A lot of experimentation happened on the Sixers lineup during the 2015-2016 season.

But entering the 2016-2017 season, the team will be activating center Joel Embiid off the injured reserve list, and will likely be signing newly returned Dario Saric to an NBA contract. Up to four new faces, all of which emerging from the first round of the NBA draft, will have logical expectations to start on their respective NBA teams. That’s as many as six new faces, all seeking 20+ minutes on the roster.

The Sixers will likely not pursue Elton Brand, and the veteran Carl Landry, despite late season heroics, will likely be dealt to another team. Ish Smith is a free agent. Joel Embiid, while being activated, is already a roster spot on this team. Based on playing time, the team will likely attempt to place Christian Wood and Kendall Marshall on their D-league affiliate the Delaware 87ers next season.

Now for the tough part. “Rapid Rebuild” suggests this team will be active in trades and active in free agency. Right now, the Philadelphia 76ers roster is filled with healthy young and talented prospects who would definitely fill the minutes and serve as very capable backups. So for all intents and purposes, the team has openings in the back court and at the small forward position for starters, which would be the only reason to explore the moves in the first place. Based on what we know right now, the team actively pursued a trade for a point guard at last year’s trade deadline, and would most likely pursue that same line when trades are back on the calendar this off-season.

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Meanwhile, the team will most definitely be showing interest in two-way free agents at the wing position. We’ve been highlighting those possibilities in recent weeks, perhaps the likes of Nicolas Batum or Harrison Barnes. But beyond that? Too much places the team at a bad disadvantage. With too many moving parts, the current coaching staff would be at a distinct disadvantage of coaching to win, and would be stuck in the mire of coaching to help the players fit together.

The other and likely more important reason is the risk of flooding the team with players who truly have no comprehension what the recent past has done to this team. Losing builds character, but losing together builds the strong bonds of teamwork. This team is a tightly knit group of covering for one another now. Outsiders will not fully know what it meant to these individuals to go through this type of season. The forging of that chemistry can be ruined by just one problematic player in the locker room. As leaders grow on the team to keep players in line, that will not be a problem.

But for today, it will be. Bryan Colangelo will need to understand that. Just because the team has plenty of money and draft picks, wisdom lies in knowing when to use them, not just how to use them.

A third challenge is the lack of understanding what this team truly is already when fully healthy. Players are young but hard working and willing to hustle. The minor change to Ish Smith at point guard ignited the team to nearly .500 level play. And despite the struggle to find wins, the team improved as the season drew on. So with the new arrivals and a fully healthy 15 man roster to begin the season, the team will have a distinct advantage over the 2015-2016 season.

So doing nothing, we improve. For a new president and general manager, the urge to get his thumbprint on the roster may be too much to resist. But ultimately, that may upset the team mechanics. If the team simply wades out into free agency, dabbles in player trades, that may be the wisest choice of all. Buying and trading for everything in sight has far too many pitfalls. As exciting as that is in the off-season, the results are the risk of a Bynum/Moultrie repeat of history.

We can do without that.