As a two-time NBA Executive of the Year, it is hard to believe that Bryan Colangelo could not get the upper hand on some of the trades he made as general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers. However, you can judge for yourself how he did (Warning: Worse than you remember)
When Bryan Colangelo was named the President of Basketball Operations and General Manager of the Philadelphia 76ers on April 10, 2016, the fans (many upset with the change from Sam Hinkie) were told Colangelo would be able to facilitate trades better than Hinkie.
The GMs of other NBA teams, as well as agents, hated dealing with Hinkie, who was famously tough to get in touch with, cold and tried to wring every ounce from any transaction. Colangelo, along with his father Jerry, an NBA legend and serving as an adviser to Sixers owner Joshua Harris, knew everyone and trades would, in theory, be a lot easier to facilitate.
The Sixers had just gone 10-72, one loss shy of tying the NBA record for worse season ever, so no one was untouchable for a trade (although it was doubtful anyone would want Joel Embiid, who still had yet to play an NBA game after sitting two years with a broken foot)
Colangelo had made trades to acquire stars Jason Kidd and Kyle Lowry in previous stops in Phoenix and Toronto, so his trade record was not bad. Most people, if anything, had more a problem with his draft history.
Being handed (by daddy, Harris or, for conspiracy theorists, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver) a team with nowhere to go but up and a ton of assets thanks to Hinkie, it was interesting to think at the time what wheeling and dealing Colangelo would do.
Now that he has been gone for over a year, thanks to Eric Jr., it is time to look back on all the trades Colangelo made as GM before leaving on June 6, 2018.
In totality, it is pretty bad . It is hard to find even one deal where one could say ‘Yep, Bryan fleeced them’. This might be a big reason the Sixers bench was so thin this season (although the summer after Bryan left management team also had a part in it). If you keep trading away good players and do not get any in return, eventually it will catch up to you.
The first moves
All trade information is courtesy Basketball-Reference.com
Colangelo’s first official trade as Sixers GM came on JULY 15, 2016 when he traded Process favorite Chukwudiebere “Chu Chu’ Maduabum to the Cleveland Cavaliers for Sasha Kaun and cash considerations.
Grade: Incomplete. Neither helped either team.
AUGUST 26, 2016: Traded Kendall Marshall to the Utah Jazz for Tibor Pleiss, a 2017 2nd round draft pick (Jonah Bolden was later selected) and a 2017 2nd round draft pick (Alpha Kaba was later selected).
Grade: B-. Marshall was disgruntled (or at least his father was) due to lack of playing time. Pliess never did anything but the Sixers got a draft pick who became Jonah Bolden, at least a promising player for the future.
NOVEMBER 1, 2016: Traded Jerami Grant to the Oklahoma City Thunder for Ersan Ilyasova and a 2020 1st round draft pick. (2020 1st-Rd pick is Top-20 protected & turns into 2022 & 2023 2nd-rd picks if not conveyed)
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FEBRUARY 22, 2017: Traded Ersan Ilyasova and a 2017 2nd round draft pick (Alpha Kaba was later selected) to the Atlanta Hawks for Tiago Splitter, a 2017 2nd round draft pick (Sterling Brown was later selected) and a 2017 2nd round draft pick (Mathias Lessort was later selected).
Grade: D. A hyper-athletic defensive-oriented power forward/small-ball center was not needed by the Sixers, according to Colangelo, as he traded Grant to the Oklahoma City Thunder for Ilyasova and a top-20 protected first round pick.
While Grant is now firmly established as a starter for the Thunder, the trade could have been graded a wash as Ilyasova fit perfectly with Embiid as a power forward with his outside shooting and defensive guile.
However, Colangelo proceeded to screw it up. Ilyasova wanted a multi-year deal and Colangelo would not give him one for cap flexibility reasons. Ilyasova was after 54 games shipped to Atlanta for what turned out to be nothing. Ilyasova would return late in 2018 after being bought out by Atlanta, not via trade.
Colangelo would later use the No. 1 pick he got from OKC for disastrous purposes.
FEBRUARY 23, 2017: Traded Nerlens Noel to the Dallas Mavericks for Justin Anderson, Andrew Bogut, a 2017 2nd round draft pick (Jawun Evans was later selected) and a 2020 2nd round draft pick. (Pick is top-18 protected in 2017 and will turn into 2 2nd-rd picks if it does not convey)
Grade D. Colangelo did not create the clogged center problem as Hinkie was the one who drafted Noel, Embiid and Jahlil Okafor, none of whom could play with each other. However, he badly overrated their value, waiting so long for a good deal he finally had to basically give away Noel to the Mavericks. The Sixers phrasing it as if they were receiving a first-round pick for Noel, although the protections made it almost impossible that would convey (it did not), upset fans as well.
Anderson was a tough cookie but ‘Simba’ was a fringe player during his brief stay with the Sixers.
The Fultz trade
JUNE 19, 2017: Traded a 2017 1st round draft pick (Jayson Tatum was later selected) and a future 1st round draft pick to the Boston Celtics for a 2017 1st round draft pick (Markelle Fultz was later selected). (Future 1st-Rd pick will either be LAL’s 2018 pick if it falls between 2 & 5, or the better of PHI & SAC’s 2019 picks, unless it is the #1 pick)
Grade: F. Markelle Fultz might turn into a very good NBA player but it is not going to be for the 76ers. The misguidedness of this trade has been hashed and rehashed. Basically, Colangelo gave Boston a future first-round pick (which will be No. 13 this year) to move up two spots to the first spot and take Fultz, while the Celtics settled for Tatum, who has been a much better player, at No. 3.
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One thing to point out is, at the time, Colangelo was praised for the move while Boston GM Danny Ainge was roasted for giving up a chance to add Fultz.
To whiff on a trade for the No. 1 overall pick is about as egregious a mistake a general manger can make (some argue this was Colangelo’s second strikeout, having taken Andrea Bargnani at No. 1 with Toronto in 2006),
Believe it or not, there was another Colangelo trade on the same draft day that might have been even a worse error in judgement:.
JUNE 22, 2017: Traded a 2020 1st round draft pick and a 2020 2nd round draft pick to the Orlando Magic for Anzejs Pasecniks. (2020 1st-rd pick is OKC’s pick and is top-20 protected. If it doesn’t convey, it will become OKC’s 2022 & 2023 2nd-rd picks) (2020 2nd-rd pick is less favorable between Nets and Knicks picks)
Grade: F-. The talent evaluation was so off, one has to wonder if Sixers personnel director Marc Eversley‘s candidacy to replace Colangelo was damaged by being part of this debacle.
Colangelo took the first-rounder from the Jerami Grant trade and threw in a second-rounder from the large Hinkie stockpile to Orlando for the No. 25 selection in the 2017 draft.
Talented players like Kyle Kuzma (recently picked for the USA Select team), Derrick White and Josh Hart were still on the board but Colangelo picked Pasecniks, a 7-foot-2 stringbean who was a nonentity on a Spanish League team. Three years later, Pasecniks is still playing in the Spanish League, where he does not even average double digits.
In the entire 2017 NBA Draft, 31 out of the 32 first round draft picks have played in the NBA – Pasecniks is the only exception.
Making the pick even more egregious, if possible, is the reasoning Colangelo gave for picking him. He said the Sixers had to ‘draft and stash‘ because they had no spot on the roster for another young player.
Yeah, he thought the Sixers were just too darn deep after that big 31-win season. Who needs promising young players?
As a side note, Elton Brand recovered the Oklahoma City first-rounder in the Markelle Fultz trade.
Unclogging the middle
JUNE 28, 2017: Traded Shawn Long to the Houston Rockets for $100K cash.
Grade: Incomplete. Long is in Australia playing now and, well, money is money.
JULY 6, 2017: Traded Jawun Evans to the Los Angeles Clippers for $3.2M cash & traded Sterling Brown to the Milwaukee Bucks for $1.9M cash.
Grade: D. I would give it an ‘F’ but, hey, $5.1 million to Harris and the rest of the ownership’s pockets can’t be dismissed entirely. Evans has struggled but Brown, a 6-foot-6 shooting guard, would have been a nice depth piece for the Sixers this season. The Cash for Picks Era was over quickly. The Sixers before the 2018 draft made it clear they were either going to use or trade their second-rounders from now on.
DECEMBER 7, 2017: Traded Jahlil Okafor, Nik Stauskas and a 2019 2nd round draft pick to the Brooklyn Nets for Trevor Booker. (2019 2nd-rd pick is NYK pick)
Grade: F. Colangelo’s final trade was another stinker. He sent the Nets two players selected in the top eight of the NBA Draft for a role player (Booker) who was a bad fit style -wise and lasted a whole 40 games before being let go.
The cherry on top came at the end of the 2018-19 regular season. To get Brooklyn to take what the Sixers considered excess baggage, Colangelo threw in a 2019 second-round draft pick. But not the Sixers’ second-rounder, no one would care about that now. It was the rights to the Knicks that the Sixers had acquired.
Guess who has the first pick in the second-round this year? Yup, the Nets, courtesy of Colangelo.
Overall
On the face of it, the Bryan Colangelo Era was really successful for the 76ers.
He took over a team coming off one of the worst seasons in NBA history and left following a 53-win year and making the second round of the playoffs.
However, none of that success came via his trades.
No one every referred to him as ‘Trader Bryan’ and he did not make that many moves in the little over two years he was in charge. That might be a good thing.
Outside of his first one, Marshall for Ilyasova, basically every trade Colangelo made, blew up in his face and the Sixers are paying for it dearly … to this day.
What would the result of Game 7 against Toronto been like if Brett Brown had Jerami Grant to play center for three minutes instead of Greg (-12) Monroe? Would Kyle Kuzma or even Sterling Brown’s shooting have been a difference maker?
If new GM Elton Brand had the Knicks second-round pick as a bargaining chip, could he have pried away DeWayne Dedmon from Atlanta or another decent center or shooter from another team?
We will never know the answer to those questions. What is true is that not a single player acquired by Colangelo via trade was even on the Sixers roster for the 2018-19 season.
Even Eric Jr. on Twitter might have had a problem with that.
Overall grade: D-.