Philadelphia never surrendered
The Philadelphia 76ers never quit or surrendered. Even in the midst of a ten win season, the team fought injuries as hard as they fought on the basketball court. Joel Embiid‘s second surgery aligned his return to the NBA to coincided with Dario Saric‘s arrival.
The 2015-2016 team was piloted by undrafted point guard T.J. McConnell, and the leading scorer was back-to-the-basket center Jahlil Okafor. The team’s injury list included Embiid, Robert Covington, Tony Wroten, Carl Landry, Kendall Marshall, and Nik Stauskas. Undermanned and outgunned, they played their hearts out.
@Sixers @Liberty_Ballers #ttp I love my 76ers. Never quit, always grinding pic.twitter.com/mpOx17poi0
— ashish desai (@ashishadesai) January 31, 2016
A team which never quits has significant upside when wins finally arrive.
Snake bit
It was a team fraught with banged up bodies. Was it by design, or just snake bit? After all, some players arrived to the team banged up. But other players were a complete surprise. Center Joel Embiid’s second surgery caught everyone by surprise. While that hurt the 2015-2016 team, it did lead to a domino effect of positives.
That 2016 team landed the team the top pick in 2016. We know that Ben Simmons came to Philadelphia 76ers as a point guard, and is the perfect fit for this team’s scheme. But even Ben Simmons sat a year. A year with 31 games of Joel Embiid and no Ben Simmons won 28 games. Still, this team could not settle for just any veteran additions.