The Philadelphia 76ers went from being a lucky bounce away from possibly winning an NBA championship to getting their butts kicked in the first round by a short-handed Boston Celtics in the space of a year.
So the big question is: How did we get here?
Simplest answer: A Summer of Blunders. No doubt.
Looking at the wreckage that is the finish of the Philadelphia 76ers season, it is easy to see the many blunders (some of the extremely boneheaded variety) that the ‘collaborative’ front office owner Josh Harris likes to brag about, committed in the Summer of 2019.
While fans and the media can Monday Morning Quarterback now and point out the foolishness of what they did, no one was saying it when Sixers training camp, the unofficial end of the offseason, started up
Most of the talk was how the Sixers were going to win the title with ‘Bully Ball’ and TNT analyst Charles Barkley said ‘the 76ers will win the championship’ and even statistical site FiveThirtyEight gave them a good chance of winning it all as recently as February.
Coach Brett Brown was talking about being the No. 1 seed and GM Elton Brand about how they expected to make a long run in the playoffs, so it is not like fans did not receive some reason for being wildly optimistic — even though those reasons turned out awfully wrong.
Instead of making sweeping generalities, let’s look at all the major transactions the 76ers front office (officially headed by general manager Elton Brand, but the ownership group, coach Brett Brown, CEO Scott O’Neil, Executive VP Alex Rucker and assistant GM Ned Cohen also have a say in it) made from the end of the 2018-19 season to the start of training champ.
All transaction information is from Basketball Reference.