The Philadelphia 76ers plan beginning to take shape

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PHILADELPHIA,PA – MARCH 19: Head Coach Brett Brown ; Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot /

Still plenty of work to do

The 2013-2014 Philadelphia 76ers were 19th in points scored, but 30th in points allowed. The 2014-2015 version found the team’s offense fall to 29th in the league, but 20th in the league in defense. The 2015-2016 version saw the team defense fall to 29th in the league, which the offense remained at 29th. But the needle moved in a positive direction last year. The offense improved to 25th in the league, while the defense landed at 24th.

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So the hopes of post season play are not obvious from that historical analysis. But there are keys available to unlocking that conclusion. The team managed just 34 total games out of three projected starters from Jerryd Bayless, Ben Simmons, and Joel Embiid last year. And when Embiid is on the court, the Philadelphia 76ers are a completely different defensive team.

Don’t ignore the coaching staff

The least discussed topic about the Philadelphia 76ers is their investment in developing young players. This is a franchise that built a state-of-the-art training center to house the young players. This is a franchise that invested heavily in basketball analytics with the sole purpose of engineering optimal performance out of the players.

But most of all, this team has build a coaching staff around the premise of developing young players. From top to bottom, coaches have an eye on bringing young basketball players up to NBA or better standards of play. The team did not stumble into this. In fact, the team placed the right coaches on the staff, and then began to add young players.