How Many Wins Will Philadelphia 76ers Get in 2017?

By Josh Wilson | May 21, 2016

May 17, 2016; New York, NY, USA; Philadelphia 76ers head coach Brett Brown (right) poses with NBA deputy commissioner Mark Tatum after the 76ers receive the first pick in the 2016 NBA draft during the NBA draft lottery at New York Hilton Midtown. Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports /

The Philadelphia 76ers are set up for success in the future, but just how much immediate impact can fans expect?

The future is clear for Philadelphia 76ers fans — winning is coming. Following the results of the NBA Draft Lottery, the team’s plan to be a disaster for three seasons straight paid off as they won the top overall pick in the 2016 NBA Draft. Although some claim that the team shouldn’t be rewarded for their actions, the fans are the ones who are truly deserving of the reward. They got what they deserved.

Sam Hinkie, the former president and general manager of the team, built up a ton of assets for the new president Bryan Colangelo to use moving forward. The thing about assets though, is that they often take a while to come to fruition.

Even once the Sixers turn all of those assets into real players that can build an actual roster that can win games, can we truly expect them to win right away? Hopefully, they could win at least more than their average over the past few seasons: 15.7.

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Despite the expectation that the team will improve from this offseason to next, there is a stage that will be a growing pain stage. Even with more good players, and even with a solid starting five — that the Sixers may still not have next year — any team will struggle as far as chemistry goes at first with a lot of new players learning to play together.

For any team, having a group of players that are unfamiliar with each other can be troubling at any stage. The Miami Heat failed to win the NBA Finals in their first season of the “Big Three” era with LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh.

Just this year, the Los Angeles Clippers struggled when they brought in new faces in Paul Pierce and Lance Stephenson.

Sure, these teams were teams that were competing for a playoff spot just a year prior to their roster shakeup, so the narrative is a little bit different, but at its core its easy to see that having new players on teams can be troubling for chemistry. It may take a while to get things figured out for the Sixers.

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Consider their potential foundational pieces: Jahlil Okafor, Nerlens Noel, Ben Simmons, Dario Saric, and Joel Embiid.

All of these players, not even just as athletes, come from very different walks of life. Simmons came from Australia, Saric from Croatia, Embiid from Cameroon. Okafor and Noel both born and raised in America.

The language barrier will be an issue — although one that other teams have worked out and the Sixers will as well, eventually — with Saric and the team. According to Brett Brown he speaks broken English and has a tough time communicating over text with Brown other than one word replies.

Embiid luckily speaks well, despite his primary language being French.

Going back to the five foundational players mentioned, three of them will be completely new on the court next season. Figuring out how to play these guys together, to accentuate each of their skill sets at the same time will be a task for Brett Brown.

Given that, I think we may see another experimental season from Brown. Brown experimented a lot last year, as he tried to get Nerlens and Jahlil to work together and play together better. He tried Nerlens at the four, Jah at the four, and also tried playing them in opposite lineups.

Throw in three new players and you’ve got a lot of figuring stuff out to do. How does Embiid work alongside established big men in Noel and Okafor? Can Saric truly be a stretch-4 in the NBA? Will Ben Simmons cause spacing issues right out of the gate?

The Sixers have a lot of questions to answer, and they won’t be answered before the first game of the season, which will cause them to lose some games.

It’d be naive to think that this team can make the playoffs in its first year together. Still, I don’t want to undersell the talent that will take the floor for the team.

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Looking at the potential problems, bad fits, and losses that will come for Philly, I think we can expect somewhere between 25 and 30 wins next year, which I know Sixers fans do not want to hear. Despite the idea that the Sixers were supposed to go from worst to first under Sam Hinkie’s rule, that won’t happen. There’s work to be done before the team is winning 50 and 60 games per season. The demolition has been done, this starts the construction phase.