Philadelphia 76ers: Is Bryan Colangelo a dead man walking?

In the midst of a Twitter scandal, it appears as though there aren’t many positive results in Bryan Colangelo’s future.

Any way you look at this, there doesn’t appear to be a happy ending for Bryan Colangelo. He has lost the most important quality needed for a successful business relationship: trust.

He’s lost the trust of his players, the public and you’d have to think the organization. Imagine if your boss (or his family) tweeted bad things about you or your co-workers. How’s that for morale?

I get that the Sixers are investigating the matter and don’t want to make a snap judgment without all of the facts. The stakes are high. If he loses his job, he’s likely unemployable as an NBA GM in the future. So I fully understand that the Philadelphia 76ers need to get this right.

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BUT it appears the fanbase and players around the league have already formed their own conclusions. When LeBron James makes jokes about you from the podium during the NBA Finals, the subtext is clear: players around the league are laughing at Bryan Colangelo.

When asked about recent tweets by Cavaliers’ owner Dan Gilbert, LeBron responded:

"“I’m not on social media right now. I wasn’t aware of that. It was his account, though, right?"

To which the reporters in the room cracked up with laughter.

Becoming a laughing stock of the NBA is not the aura any GM desires. And one who either created false Twitter accounts himself, or had them created by family members — with whom he allegedly disclosed team secrets about the health of players, bashed Joel Embiid (one of the team’s young superstars), and defended his own wardrobe choices — does not inspire confidence. And the latter, while being the least consequential, reveals a vanity and pettiness beyond comprehension.

While I’m sure the NBA and the Sixers will get to the bottom of who exactly created the five “burner” accounts, the point appears moot already. Based upon the information already in the public domain, and most incredibly the fact that three of the five burner accounts went dark within hours of The Ringer’s Ben Detrick emailing the Sixers about the Twitter accounts, the end result may already be a foregone conclusion.

You can read Detrick’s full article here. Almost a week after it’s publication, it’s still national news and will not be going away until the Sixers make a decision.

Another factor to consider, aside from the Twitter scandal is Colangelo’s decision to trade away the Sixers’ rights to Sacramento’s 2019 pick to the Boston Celtics. In return, the Sixers received the ability to move up two spots in the 2017 draft, in order to pick Markelle Fultz number one overall. While only time will tell if Fultz will justify that decision, at the moment it doesn’t look very good. The Celtics picked Jayson Tatum who played like a future star this season and throughout the NBA playoffs, as Fultz inexplicably watched from the sidelines.

In my view, you DO NOT trade away a future top ten pick to simply move up two spots, especially to your long-time, interdivisional rival. It looks like Colangelo got fleeced on that one. And that move severely damaged the trust this writer has in Colangelo’s decision making.

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From all current vatange points, I don’t see this ending well for Bryan.