Rearview Mirror
It’s not uncommon for a new executive to distance himself from his predecessor. But that strategy works best when taking over for a team with depleted currency, with few draft picks, with little to no young talent.
The Philadelphia 76ers were brimming with young talent.
"“Now that we can put the word ‘rebuilding’ in the rearview mirror, this is about taking those proven steps toward creating and developing the right culture. Adding the right kind of pieces, bringing in the right talent to take incremental steps forward going into the future. How quickly [a turnaround] happens sometimes is an unknown. I don’t think it’s fully predictable. I think you can put a certain amount of science to the process and guesstimate how it might play out, but there are so many variables that it’s hard to be in the prediction business here. So I think what we’re doing is we’re just preparing ourselves to make the best possible decisions to make sure that those incremental steps are actually taken, not just talked about.”-Bryan Colangelo in an April 2016 interview with Jessica Camerator of CSNPhilly.com"
And so, the die were cast. The incremental steps that were to be taken are still being talked about. The team has this moment. Bryan Colangelo had the off-season. What has truly changed about this team that was not already in the pipeline?
Not much. The only difference is time… and it’s not on the side of Bryan Colangelo any longer.