The Sixer Sense
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Losing Culture Can Help Sixers in the Future

By Josh Wilson

Dec 11, 2016; Auburn Hills, MI, USA; Philadelphia 76ers forward Ersan Ilyasova (7) high fives teammates during the fourth quarter against the Detroit Pistons at The Palace of Auburn Hills. Mandatory Credit: Tim Fuller-USA TODAY Sports
Dec 11, 2016; Auburn Hills, MI, USA; Philadelphia 76ers forward Ersan Ilyasova (7) high fives teammates during the fourth quarter against the Detroit Pistons at The Palace of Auburn Hills. Mandatory Credit: Tim Fuller-USA TODAY Sports /
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The Philadelphia 76ers were looked at as setting their future up for failure with a losing culture, but it actually might prepare them best.

The Philadelphia 76ers have had some really important games where they came together and won as a team this season. That was demonstrated most recently on Monday night, as they won 105-99 over the Charlotte Hornets, despite the fact that Nicolas Batum guaranteed a Hornets win earlier in the day.

These wins have been great for the Sixers. But that’s not how it’s been over the past three years. In fact, it’s been quite the opposite.

Looking at the years leading up to this season, starting with the 2013-14 season, the Sixers won just 47 games. This year, they’ve won 21, closing in on half of their total from three seasons combined, and the season hasn’t even hit the All-Star break yet.

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I wouldn’t stop someone from describing the three seasons leading up to this one as a “losing culture.” That was the trade-off the team had to make to get all of their high draft picks. Sam Hinkie knew that going into his rebuild, and was willing to take that risk. Some analysts and writers calculated that Hinkie forgot about the human aspect of the losing culture, and pointed to all of the negatives that come about from that.

For one, you put a lot of young and impressionable players in this culture of losing from the start, and as they’re molded into NBA players, it’s all they know. Sort of like Bane in the final recent Batman trilogy, just as he was molded by the darkness, some of these Sixers players were molded by the losing.

There’s an argument to be made about a losing culture being negative. I would calculate that players who see a lot of losing early on in their career can be quick to accept that that’s how the NBA is, that despite all the success they likely saw since they were kids playing basketball, the high level of basketball was just too much to sustain that success any further. And that’s that, losing is okay.

But what those detractors of Hinkie failed to realize is that the losing culture wasn’t a full-on losing culture, and failed to acknowledge that there are actually long-term benefits to having  the very specific type of losing culture the Sixers had, and having players face that at a young age, despite the immediate impacts a losing culture has on a team, can be good. It’s all about how the incubation is run out during the losing. The Sixers seem to have done it right, but only time will tell.

How to approach a losing culture

There is a right way and a wrong way to approach a losing culture. It’s a bit in-depth, but at its core, the right way to approach it is to implement a losing culture intentionally, and the wrong way to do it is to have it come about unintentionally.

Still, a GM could implement a losing culture intentionally (otherwise known as a tank) and do it the wrong way.

The biggest element to the Sixers doing this the right way is the coaching hire. All throughout the losing, head coach Brett Brown was fired up for his team, and always pushed them to win, no matter how high the odds were stacked against them. He never expected his team to lose, and certainly didn’t expect his team to accept the losing.

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The Sixers, throughout the three years that they intentionally lost, could have hired a low-level coach that didn’t care a whole lot about the losing. Had they have done this, however, players would have been hurt immensely.

Sure, the losing hurt the players. I’m sure that will stick with plenty of them for a very long time. But having Brett Brown be their leader throughout those years of losing probably helped them keep their chins up, and probably helped them develop into really solid players.

So what is the wrong way to implement a losing culture? The wrong way is to lose and not care about the development. The right way? Lose, but keep an attitude of winning. Brett Brown helped the team do that effectively.

Long term, how a correctly approached culture helps

It’s easy to talk about how a losing culture hurts the Sixers young players. For them to come into the league and lose a ton of games — in some cases, almost as many games as has been ever lost in a single season — could make them complacent. These players could look at the early stages of their career and get used to the losing.

If you implement a losing culture the wrong way, that’s almost certain to happen. The players will not only be losing, but will have had a coach and a leadership core that didn’t really care about the attitude as well.

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But a losing culture with that leadership in place allows the players to continue to strive for success. We have seen how that has worked in the Sixers favor this year. The attitude of winning has translated to wins almost immediately.

Long term, having faced that early adversity helps the team as well.

We see a lot of teams face devastating losses in the NBA Finals. Whichever team loses is almost always completely and utterly devastated. The Golden State Warrios, after losing their 3-1 lead in the Finals this past season, most certainly were.

While a lot of those teams can bounce back, not all of them do.

Let’s assume the Sixers get deep in the playoffs in 4-5 years, or even make it to the Finals. But let’s assume they lose at some point, falling short of the title. While some might think that they look at this and have trouble bouncing back, losing in the Finals will be nothing compared to the devastation the Sixers went through in their 10 win season. The Sixers already know how to bounce back.

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Now, there’s the argument that making it that far and losing is worse than losing right from the start, and that may be true. But the Sixers have always been able to bounce back since implementing this rebuild. Whether it be from a tough loss, to a tough month, to a tough season, the Sixers have always come into practice with a positive attitude, and with a sense of a new day and a fresh start. The Sixers may be the best team in the NBA at having short-term memory when it comes to each new day.

Part of the process is making as many things turn out in your favor as possible, even things that might not seem like they should. The losing culture will prove to be an advantage for the Sixers, despite what people said about it.