Free Agency – Can Colangelo Bring FAs to Philadelphia 76ers

Addicted To “The Deal”

Before we proceed, we need to understand the two completely contrasting styles instilled in the most recent team presidents Sam Hinkie and Bryan Colangelo.

Sam Hinkie was a strategist.  He observed the draft board for all possible moves, and like a game of chess orchestrated a series of draft selections and trades which would result in multiple transactions, multiple draft picks, and eventually arriving at the player he had covetted all along.  His moves were a constantly evolving education session, each designed to build the overall value of the team by taking a known and getting more value in an “unknown” – whether an injured draft prospect, future draft picks, underachieving players, or simply absorbing another team’s salary mistakes for the price of draft picks.  In a rare occasion where Hinkie was thought to make an error in judgement, he would pause and examine the details that brought him to the decision he arrived at.  Learning as much as he could, he would use that new knowledge in future transactions.

Tactician

Bryan Colangelo is a tactician.  He never retreats, even in the face of an error in judgement. He is enslaved to a military battle-like mindset which some have labeled “maneuver warfare”.  In lay terms, he remains on the offensive.  He continues to deal, continues to seek a reason to trade.  In the stock market, they call it “churning”, because it gives the appearance that your stock broker is working hard for your interests.  What it does, however, is simply create more broker fees for they agent, and oftentimes with an assumption of unneeded risk.  Colangelo exhibits that pattern in his management style of an NBA team.  To a fan base eager to appreciate the talents of a younger Colangelo, the exhibition of deals going after deals translates into a plan.  But since there is an inherent risk in each deal, his eagerness to move on to the next transaction places the team in the crosshairs of unnecessary risk.

In the choice of doing something, or doing nothing, Colangelo is very much an advocate of doing something.

Double Edged Colangelo

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But the reality is that Colangelo’s tactical methods can go both ways, sometimes buying something on the cheap and getting excellent value.  But far too often he pays retail or above, and gets little value from the deal.  In those cases, rather than sit on the roster, he discards the player at a deep discount and goes right back to the NBA shelves, trying to find another bargain deal.  When you screw up a basketball decision, it can be months or years before you have a chance to fix it. You get contracts on the books that just sit there and suck the life out of the team, a contract so bad no other team will take the player, and all the while sucking good currency out of the team’s salary cap and out of the hands of more productive players.  Colangelo does not like to be reminded of those mistakes.

When you are addicted to “the deal”, you win by the deal, but you just as quickly lose by the deal.

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