The Philadelphia 76ers May Have Playoff Chokes

The Philadelphia 76ers, similar to the Charlotte Hornets, may have playoff chokes once they are a good team.

The goal of any NBA team is to win a championship. In the context of some teams, that goal may be long-term or short-term, but with the Philadelphia 76ers, it’s been very much long-term over the last several seasons.

At some point, though, all the rebuilding, all the tearing down and starting from scratch over the last three years is supposed to turn things around. Ultimately, winning a championship is supposed to be a near-sighted goal.

While I believe the Sixers are set up to build a roster that can compete in 4-6 years, I do think that the team is going to face some playoff hiccups and road bumps, or “chokes” if you will, before they get to that point of competing for a title.

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At the current stage of the NBA, there are top-tier teams, low-tier teams, and then there’s a “middle.” That “middle” doesn’t seem to be a 50 percent though, because it seems as if there are only one or two teams from each conference that have been title-caliber over the last few seasons.

One team that has been struggling with being bad or mediocre since their franchise was brought into existence has been the Charlotte Hornets, and unfortunately, I see a situation that could play out like the Hornets this year for the Sixers in their first year or even years in the playoffs.

The Hornets built a solid roster to compete this year, and it was one that kept up with the three-seed Miami Heat very well. The Hornets actually won three games in a row in this series, before losing the final two games of the series. The fight that the Hornets put up surprised just about everybody.

The Hornets, who have never won a playoff series, have been on a long journey to get to this point of competing in a series. They have built around point guard Kemba Walker for the last five years, and finally got pieces like Nicolas Batum, Courtney Lee, and Marvin Williams around him to help him. Several of these players locking in over the course of the season pushed them to be a good team.

Despite the great fight Charlotte showed in this series against a solid Heat team, they choked. And the Sixers may do the same.

In the final game of the series, Miami won in a huge way, 106-73. Marvin Williams had just 5 points, Al Jefferson had just 4, and Kemba Walker had just 9. They had played well in the playoffs, but a lack of confidence led to them falling apart drastically in game 7. The Hornets definitely aren’t young, with the 11th youngest team in the league, and that inexperience had to contribute to the performance in game 7.

The Sixers roster is beginning to take shape. It’s going to consist of a you-pick-two with Nerlens Noel, Jahlil Okafor, and Joel Embiid, and then probably Dario Saric, Robert Covington, Jerami Grant, and hopefully Ben Simmons and Brandon Ingram. And that’s just to start. The Sixers could bring on a lot of free agents over the next few years with the money they have saved up.

What’s tough, though, is that they will have a roster that, at its core will be developing together, and growing as players together. They will be experiencing the playoffs for the first time together, and experiencing tough games like the Hornets’ game 7 together. Sure, you can add free agents who have more experience, but it looks like the large majority will be players that are younger at the moment, and around the same general age of 27 that the Hornets’ roster from this year had.

The trouble with the “ground-up” rebuilding process is sort of like fossils. Since the whole team was torn down at the same time, there’s going to be a “fossil line” if you will, of a lot of young, inexperienced players being brought in at the same time that won’t know what it’s like to be in the big games. After they have a season or two of choking and figuring out the playoff hiccups, they will be great, but they may need to get that out of their system before they truly compete for a title.

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Choking will occur, and being a mediocre 7 or 8 seed is going to be unavoidable. It’s going to happen to Philly, but it’s a matter of making it a short period of their rebuild that will make things good. The Hornets are an example of the worst that could happen, a team that falls in the playoffs over and over, but the Sixers need to make sure that does not happen to them.