The Sixer Sense
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Issue With Deception is it Permeates an Entire Organization

By Josh Wilson

Jun 24, 2016; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Philadelphia 76ers President of Basketball Operations Bryan Colangelo 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 President of Basketball Operations Bryan Colangelo during an introduction press conference at the Philadelphia College Of Osteopathic Medicine. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports /
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The Philadelphia 76ers have an issue with deception at the top, but it could possibly filter through the entire organization.

Right from the start, most children are taught by their parents, teachers, and guiding figures that lying is bad, and telling the truth is good. For the most part, people listen to that advice, I would like to think.

Sure, most people will tell the occasional “white lie” or harmless half truth, but I don’t think most people outright lie on a regular basis. Certainly, most people don’t lie in their professional career.

I don’t know if Jerry Colangelo just didn’t teach his son Bryan about the harms of lying, or if maybe it was something he picked up in his time at Cornell University with all of those meddling Ithacans, but Colangelo clearly has been less than aware of how telling lies can hurt his reputability and his career as a whole.

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Jake Pavorsky at Liberty Ballers did a decent job of detailing the lying that has occurred as of late with Colangelo. Overall, it looks like the team and Colangelo knew that Embiid had a torn meniscus for weeks before letting the media know, and only revealed that to the public after Derek Bodner reported it.

The thing is, Colangelo never came out and outright lied about the meniscus. Of course, no one ever asked, “Does Embiid have a torn meniscus,” because the media assumes that the team is going to be responsible and inform the public of those things without being asked about them.

We shouldn’t have to ask, and we shouldn’t have to wait for a beat writer to go digging like he’s a member of the Mystery Gang. But good on Bodner for catching Colangelo in his lie.

The problem, however, was a half truth, a group of misleading comments, all of which may have piled on to be equivalent of many lies.

While that’s a huge issue, I don’t think that Colangelo lying is as big of a deal as people are making it out to be. Executives are sneaky, sly, and probably lie all the time, it was just a matter of getting caught. The issue is that this was a stupid lie, one so stupid that it got more than just Colangelo caught up in it.

The issue is also surrounding not where the lie started, but where the lie ended.

You see, when you have an organization, no matter what type — it could be a small office in rural Wisconsin or a Fortune 500 company, or, well, a sports team — the executives and the leaders of those company dictate the tone of the organization. There’s two types of dictation with the tone that can occur — explicit and implicit.

Explicit tone setting would be the executive talking to the next levels below him or her and telling them what they need to say, and how they need to act when the public is watching. For the Sixers, this would be Colangelo and his team setting up plans for public relations to carry out with the players and coaches.

This happens with every team, and so does implicit. That explicit tone setting has seen some issues this year, but not many. The issue has been implicit tone setting.

In his lying, Colangelo’s dishonesty has begun to permeate the entire organization. He may not realize it, and the people it has begun to permeate with may not realize it either, but it’s a serious issue.

Embiid said to Keith Pompey and the media while he was going through this injury process, “I think my [left] knee [has a] bone bruise. It’s been on and off working out. It swells up a little bit, and then it kind of slows down.”

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At this point, the bone bruise was being reported to the media. So, “I think,” my knee has a bone bruise? That’s some fishy wording right there. I don’t think we should ever consider just one quote, but the whole situation and the way the Sixers handled it from top to bottom seemed off, especially in retrospect with the report of it actually being a meniscus tear.

I don’t want to say Embiid was lying, but that quote really looks like he was battling with something internally and trying to decide what the right thing to say to the media was. In all reality, it’s not his fault. When he sees the people above him saying things that are half-truths, whether he wants to or not, he probably feels like he needs to deceive a bit, too.

We’ve seen time and time again this season where Brett Brown says something that doesn’t exactly align with what Colangelo tells the media. This misalignment from the executive down to the coaching is troubling, and could very well be a product of the facts and deceptions that are flying around the organization.

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What happens is, the coaching is misinformed or encouraged to take part in the deception, and at that point, you don’t even have to tell they players what they should or should not say. It’s evident based on their observations of the people above them.

So, to the Sixers organization, and Bryan Colangelo especially, always remember that honesty truly is the best policy.