So far, the Philadelphia 76ers have followed all basketball analytics principals. They have Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, and Markelle Fultz. Now, is it just a matter of growing the team now?
Markelle Fultz, Ben Simmons, and Joel Embiid are both young and new to the NBA. The power of youth to any professional sports team has many virtues, but perhaps the greatest is the insistence upon patience among the culture of immediacy. Just ask the Philadelphia 76ers fanbase. The team has focused almost entirely upon youth to build tomorrow’s team. But it has required patience. The challenge to building a “winner-take-all” roster is to find three players who can carry an NBA team to the championship series.
The power of three is well known in the NBA. Land three elite players, and the NBA championship is suddenly within a team’s grasp. But the forces within the NBA work against any single team doing so.
NBA favors good teams
The trouble lay within the NBA dynamics. The league is rather paranoid about teams losing counter the efforts to balance the league. And so, teams rich in talent stay rich. Teams poor in talent land a good player, find minimal success, and then fall back to sub-.500. With a limit of NBA draft picks to just two players, teams cannot miss their mark in any draft. Miss one selection , and the ensuing impact of that draft pick is huge enough to cripple an NBA team’s return to success.
Good teams are in no rush to draft immediate help. Good teams focus on raw players to coach up over a course of several years. To restock their lineup, the same great teams spend far more than other team on their players, incurring luxury taxes. It’s a calculated risk for the winners, and a foolish spend for the losers.