The Philadelphia 76ers 2015-2016 Season Was Snake-Bitten

As we prepare for the 2016-2017 season, too many still see a struggling team. The Philadelphia 76ers have already improved a great deal.

As the Philadelphia 76ers concluded their last preseason game of 2015, it was not the way the team wanted to enter the 2015-2016 season. The team had already conceded a second year of no Joel Embiid, a factor which would limit the team’s roster to just 14 active players all season. Nerlens Noel and Jahlil Okafor did not see much court time together, as both were nursing minor injuries.

The team had traded for Nik Stauskas and Carl Landry in the deal that also brought a draft swap and first round draft pick to absorb excess salaries. Landry was recovering from a wrist surgery in June 2015, and would not play for the 76ers until December 23rd.

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Stauskas would miss the opener, but would be forced back to service for game two of the new season out of necessity.

Robert Covington was injured on that last game against the Boston Celtics, and would not return to the team until November 16th.

The point guard situation began the season in utter anarchy. The team had hopes set for the debut of Pierre Jackson, but he suffered a groin injury and could only play about 70% of his potential. In the end, Jackson never made it to the final 15 man roster. So too the team had their hopes set on the return of Tony Wroten, but he had injured his ACL to end the previous season, and did not play until December 5th. He could not shake off the rust, and only played eight games for the 76ers in 2015 before the team traded for Ish Smith, forcing Wroten to be waived.

A third point guard, Kendall Marshall, suffered an ACL injury similar to Wroten, and he did not play until December 11, 2015.

The mounting injuries even caused normally optimistic head coach Brett Brown to feel a little despair:

"” It’s not like we were a high-scoring team to begin with, so you take a real punch in the guts. So we take the group that we have and we’re injured and we’re behind [schedule] on so many things and we’re especially behind offensively. So with Robert Covington it hurts, but we’ll just try to do the best with the group that we have. We can move this group further along than any group we’ve had here, but there is no group that hasn’t started more behind than the group before than this one just because of injuries and they haven’t played together. We have a long, long ways to go offensively.”-head coach Brett Brown interviewed at the end of the 2015 pre-season"

The team never landed their starting point guard until Christmas, when the team finally traded for point guard Ish Smith. Smith arrived and played his first game with the Philadelphia 76ers on December 26th, 2015.

Two months later, on February 28, 2016, the Philadelphia 76ers leading scorer, center/power forward Jahlil Okafor would play his last game for the Sixers before injuring his knee.

The 2015-2016 season, while many claim as a purposeful tank, was just as snake bitten by an injury bug that had the team scrambling to find ten healthy players at times.

When we assess a rookie center who was also shifted to power forward in the span of 53 games, and begin to make career projections on his deficiencies, we’ve lost credibility. When we assess the record of the 2015-2016 season, and gloss over the fact that this was a young team, tossed into the deep end of the pool with less attention to the complimentary fit with each other’s skills nor to the overall scheme designed by Brown, we do the team an injustice.

But when we stand at the edge of a new season, and fail to grasp at the struggles to stay healthy of last year’s roster, we sound naive. It may be that the 2016-2017 roster will have some injuries, and the team is still being assembled. But one of the greatest challenges to last year was simply keeping enough players healthy to finish out the season.

Fielding a full 15 man roster this year will help tremendously. With five or more new rookie faces arriving to the team – not just anyone – but five players whose skillsets and expertise are complimentary to one another and to the type of team envisioned by Brown, the team has already upgraded.

Finally, the youth of this team just aged a year. The inexperienced players of last year’s roster just gained a year’s experience.

No, this is not a ten win team this year, not even close. While we may not get close to the playoffs, we’ll improve significantly – even with the current stable of big men. The team has already improved to 20 wins, not because we signed an all star free agent, but due to the fact that we have 15 healthy ready to go when the season begins players who will begin to work as a team the moment the gun sounds.

Next: Was Sam Hinkie's Triple Tank Worth It For The Sixers?

I tend to lean a little to the optimistic side, but the belief that this team hasn’t improved at all until we sign big name back court players is off target. The Philadelphia 76ers are looking at Ben Simmons, Joel Embiid and Dario Saric to join the lineup. They may not start the season in a flourish, but they’ll end the season that way.