The Philadelphia 76ers have a very competitive edge with the new Two-Way Contract options this year. But rather than focus on who, let’s discuss how to optimize that new option. Here are three ways to do so
The Philadelphia 76ers are ideally positioned to take advantage of the Two-Way Contract clause in the new collective bargaining agreement. In short, the new contract between the NBA and NBPA provides the rights for a team to assign two exclusive rights players to their G-League affiliate.
While either player participates at the G-League level, their salary will match their assignment. When the player plays or practices at the NBA Team, the paycheck reflects a salary of the NBA level. In any eventuality, both players are afforded exclusive rights to their NBA team. No other team can sign either player from the G-League without trading for the right to do so.
While some NBA teams will see little impact, that is not the case in Philadelphia.
Symbiosis
The Philadelphia 76ers and their G-League affiliate Delaware 87ers are a cohesively synchronized duo of player development and coaching philosophy. In fact, they have had to be. Whether you saw the Delaware 87ers as an extension of the Philadelphia 76ers for the past four seasons, or the Philadelphia 76ers as an extension of the Delaware 87ers for the past four seasons, they have coordinated frequently and extensively.
In fact, the relationship of the two organizations is best described as a symbiosis. The Delaware 87ers has enjoyed tremendous success as an NBA talent incubator.
NBA poaching
But it has been an incubator for the entire NBA. Whether teams traded away all their draft picks foolishly, or to become the NBA Champs, their alternative path is raid other team affiliates for prospects.
Both Sean Kilpatrick and Jordan McRae were signed from the 87ers to NBA contracts with the Brooklyn Nets and Cleveland Cavaliers respectively. Brooklyn affiliates with the Long Island Nets, while Cleveland affiliates with the Canton Charge. Neither team had much access to new talent thanks to limited NBA draft picks.
Poaching Verboten
This new Two-Way Contract option empowers an NBA team to assign a player to their G-League affiliate while retaining exclusive rights to that player. That is a welcome change indeed to the 76ers, whose efforts to develop young players has often met with other team reaping the benefits of their patience and coaching acumen.
Option I : Reinforce Roster
Or
Option II : Develop Raw Talent
Or Even
Option III: Enhance three-point shooting.
Let’s examine how each option helps the team.
Option I : Reinforce Roster
In option I, the focus is specifically upon the current roster and where the team needs to reinforce the numbers. The perfect example of this would be the 2016-2017 situation with the team’s front court situation and the fact that Joel Embiid, Jahlil Okafor, and Nerlens Noel all had health limits and concerns as the season began.
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Optimally, this is not the way a team SHOULD run their two-way contract options. But realistically, the Sixers truly needed this option last year, and will likely need it this year as well.
Why?
Roster Restrictions
The NBA season roster is limited to 15 players. Healthy or not, just 15. And if you’ve followed the Philadelphia 76ers, the team has had at least one (sometimes six) player(s) injured. That pattern began in 2013 when the 76ers traded for the rights to Nerlens Noel. He had an ACL injury which would require a year’s worth of rehab. That was followed in 2014 with Joel Embiid, who needed two years to rehab his foot. That was followed in 2016 by Ben Simmons, who needed a year to rehab his foot.
Four consecutive years, four NBA rookie stars who all sat on the bench. If there is a problem with this, it’s a problem with the NBA rules.
Long Term Logic, Short Term Chaos
In the long run, it makes perfect sense. Players with huge upsides have injuries. For an NBA team with enough patience, those high upsides can mean the difference of annually picking early in the draft, or competing in the NBA Playoffs.
Busting Brackets
In the short term, it’s chaos. A head coach must read his available player roster and try to form the best lineup from the “who’s healthy” column. While some use this citation against the Philadelphia 76ers as the reason they lost so many games, the reality is that the 2016-2017 was no better health wise.
Why No IR List NBA?
In fact, the team made deliberate efforts to reinforce the backcourt in free agency. At season’s end, it was T.J. McConnell and Nik Stauskas who boasted the most games played. FA Gerald Henderson played eight fewer than Stauskas. FA Sergio Rodriguez played 13 games fewer than McConnell.
If the NBA wants to fix the NBA Draft, a food step would be to add a third round. A second way to improve the draft is to give teams an injured reserve option. that would allow teams to draft a prospect who needs a year to rehab, without penalizing the team for doing so. In order for the NBA to improve the competition from bad teams, the rules must change to give them more opportunities to level the playing field.
Option II : Develop Raw Talent
In option II, the focus is specifically on the potential. This is the strategy of bringing a raw undisciplined talent into an NBA structure, but allowing them to compete at the NBA level when they have earned the right to do so.
Another perfect example of this is shooting guard Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot. The NBA competition is a catch-22 for raw talented prospects. These young basketball stars-in-the-making are too raw to play significant minutes on an NBA team. Conversely, they are too talented not to develop. Developing players need a constant stream of playing minutes to improve.
Stalemate.
Sixers manufacture TLC minutes
The Philadelphia 76ers circumvented this the only way possible. The team kept TLC on the roster, but allowed him to train and play minutes with the Delaware 87ers. Later in the season, the team’s roster was hammered by injuries, and Luwawu-Cabarrot earned copious minutes.
Had the team not gone the extra mile for TLC, he would not be ready when the team needed him late in the season. That would have hurt both the player’s development and the team’s ability to assess future roster needs. That path leads to abandoning a player simply due to lack of playing time.
With this rule change, this is the ideal situation for talented players. They train and compete at the G-league level until they have surpassed that level of competition. By rising to the NBA level, they meet new challenges and have that much more work to train with.
Option III: Enhance player skill-sets
In option III, the focus is specifically upon fit. But in this assessment, you take a player who is grossly skewed in some skills, but underdeveloped in others. A great example of this is the 2016-2017 NBA season of Jahlil Okafor.
Do not misunderstand this option. Center Jahlil Okafor is an NBA level talent. But the 2016-2017 season seemed to be regression, or not fully recovered, or simply a team that redesigned it’s schemes to fit new starting center Joel Embiid.
As such, Jahlil Okafor stepped backwards somewhat.
Basketball Clinic Approach
The difficult thing about a great rookie season is the expectation for an encore That is doubly true for a rookie sensation who is coming off injury while competing for playing time. Whether he rushed back too quickly or simply reaggravated the knee is not clear. What is clear is that Jahlil Okafor’s play was visibly shaken at times.
Stepping back to the G-League gives Okafor the advantages of less pressure. It also allows the NBA team to steer his focus upon areas he needs to work on. Defense? Three-point shooting? Passing? Transition game?
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Any shortfalls at the NBA level can be sent back to the NBA G-League for minor tweaking. With these new Two-Way Contract options, while the NBA player works to improve, the team can call up a player to fill the roster spot until such time as health and fit have been stabilized.
Ultimately, the NBA must do more to fix the injuries/roster conflicts in the long 82 game season. But this is a great start. And if the Philadelphia 76ers focus on these three ways to optimize the new rule changes, the team will line up for playoffs that much sooner.