The Sixer Sense
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Thank Bryan Colangelo If Negotiations Falter At NBA Trade Deadline

Bret Stuter|
Jun 24, 2016; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Philadelphia 76ers number one overall draft pick Ben Simmons (R) and President of Basketball Operations Bryan Colangelo (M) and number twenty-fourth overall draft pick Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot (L) during an introduction press conference at the Philadelphia College Of Osteopathic Medicine. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports
Jun 24, 2016; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Philadelphia 76ers number one overall draft pick Ben Simmons (R) and President of Basketball Operations Bryan Colangelo (M) and number twenty-fourth overall draft pick Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot (L) during an introduction press conference at the Philadelphia College Of Osteopathic Medicine. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

The NBA Trade Deadline meant surprise moves and last minute deals to Sixers fans. Bryan Colangelo yields lots of talk and not much trade. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, he must take full responsibility

Bryan Colangelo arrival to the Philadelphia 76ers resulted in a clearly defined three-step process for the next year.  Those priorities were:

I – Create Winning Culture   II-Infuse more veteran leadership to both mentor and patch team until younger players earned starting minutes III-Unload one or more of the three starting caliber centers accumulated by the former regime.

Let’s pass on number one.  The 76ers ARE winning.  How much of that is due to the “steady as she goes” input from the front office so far is not up for debate, today. Infusing more veteran leadership has had pretty mixed results.   The 76ers loaded up on three back court veterans in the off-season, Gerald Henderson, Sergio Rodriguez, and Jerryd Bayless.  To date, the team has gotten 66 starts from the trio, and the team has played 56 games.  So the jury is still out on how much of their play has improved this team.

But the unloading of one or more of the three starting caliber centers has not happened, even in the shadow of the NBA Trade deadline.  It may not happen.  Trading either center has not happened yet.  Even in the face of “it’s imminent!” nothing has happened.

And the only person Bryan Colangelo can point the finger at is Bryan Colangelo. It’s the NBA Trade Deadline. Now or never, Bryan.

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Hoisted By His Own Petards

Before the handful of BC believers come at me over this, I do not have a dog in the race. I am simply holding Bryan Colangelo to the standard set by… Bryan Colangelo.  I approved of the performance by Sam Hinkie because Hinkie was very specific about his goals for the team, and he met them all.  Hinkie never claimed to “win xx games” in any given year.

To be fair, I did not believe the 76ers have a true “logjam” at center.  I wrote as much months ago. The myth of a front court logjam presumes many things: all healthy, all at peak production, no other position to play. In the case of the Philadelphia 76ers, none of those factors are relevant.  The three centers have started 60 games, and played in a total of 98 games. The team has played in 58 of 82 games so far this season.

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    • But the team has struggled to find a player to get time at center often this season. Richaun Holmes, Ersan Ilyasova, and Dario Saric have all found minutes to play at center.  At the NBA Trade Deadline, I am not a “gotta do it or the team will suck” opinion.

    Proof In Pudding

    Jerry Colangelo made it a point when examining the team’s basketball operations to suggest “basketball-minds” needed more representation. Touting better relationships with agents, players, and other basketball executives with the inference that those ties facilitate trades, signing valuable free-agents, and improving the team overall.

    I think the goal of improving the team is note-worthy. I like the creative way the team sought and signed Rodriguez from the Euroleague, and the risky trade of Jerami Grant for Ersan Ilyasova to help balance the team.

    But there is no way to grade of a curve to assess the bungling of the center position as anything more than a complete failure to this point. Utter complete failure. It’s the NBA Trade Deadline for crying out loud. If you want to deal a player, you have 29 teams willing to talk about it right now.

    Failure Teaches Open Minded Folks

    The players have gone this season in the dark.  Nerlens Noel expressed that “I don’t know what the plan is” in the early stages of this season.  Jahlil Okafor and Joel Embiid have been playing a majority of the time on minutes restrictions.  Embiid, when he plays, is still on minutes restrictions.

    Communication to players must be a priority. It remains random.

    More from Rumors

    The team learned early on that spouting the intent to trade a center arms potential trade partners of your desire to do so. That foreknowledge gave NBA teams incentive to lowball any possible trades. As the trade deadline approached, several teams were rumored to be in deep trade talks. Once more, Colangelo signaled the team’s intentions by grounding Okafor, sitting him rather than play and risk an injury.  The result? Team’s walked away, and the Philadelphia 76ers restored Okafor to the roster to play.

    Revealing your hand in trade negotiations, or transparently bluffing, is a deal-breaker. It should be avoided at all costs, but appears to be the 76ers strategy.

    On one hand, the team needs a fallback plan. A position to hold if the obvious clumsy attempts to trade a player or players failed. On the other hand, no effort has been made to retain Nerlens Noel. Similarly, not much effort has been made to play Jahlil Okafor in a favorable spotlight.  The tactical operations has yet to line up with the strategy employed in the front office. As trade deals fall through, the standard response is “We won’t trade (insert name here) for nothing” is not truly positive feedback for the winning culture efforts.

    Changing the response to “We see (insert player name) as a highly productive component to the Philadelphia 76ers future. We will conduct trade negotiations from that position” 

    Trade Deadline May Come And Go As Is

    In the end, our “basketball-minded” execs must be more open-minded. In the end, setting goals that were not met by the last guy had better be quickly addressed by your guy. I am somewhat convinced that Sam Hinkie had a parachute in place to trade Jahlil Okafor to the Boston Celtics last season, but that trade was kiboshed by Jerry Colangelo.

    That trade likely had the Brooklyn Nets pick as the Celtics bargaining chip. It translated into the third pick of the 2016 NBA Draft, a draft that was not particularly strong beyond the top two players selected.  But that is history.

    In the present, the Philadelphia 76ers will lose center Nerlens Noel, Sergio Rodriguez, and Ersan Ilyasova to free agency at season’s end. The team already has Furkan Korkmaz and Vasilije Micic stashed overseas, plus three or four draft picks in a good 2017 NBA Draft. The team doesn’t need to do anything but stay the course and let events with the Sacramento Kings and Los Angeles Lakers play out.

    You Should Also Read: What did the Blazers Offer the Sixers for Jahlil Okafor?

    In summary, the 2017 NBA Trade Deadline has come and is nearly gone. Unless a gift falls into his lap, the best strategy may simply be to learn the lesson and move on.