Section 215
Fansided

There probably isn’t a “worst-case scenario” for the Sixers tanking

By Tim Kelly

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As it turns out, last year was the easy season to be a Sixers fan. Sam Hinkie and tanking were fresh. It was easy to get behind tanking for one season, with a loaded draft-class on the horizon and seemingly no better option. The Sixers still had Evan Turner and Spencer Hawes to start the season and Thaddeus Young for the entire 2013-14 campaign. They were really bad–they lost 26 games in a row at one point in the season–but their record didn’t indicate that of an all-time bad team. They won 19 games, which isn’t ideal, but there are always a few teams that hover in that area every season. The Bucks actually ended up having the worst record in the league with 15 wins. And the Andrew Wiggins dream was still alive and well. 2013-14 was actually the most excited I’ve been as a fan since Allen Iverson led them to an upset game one win over Shaq, Kobe Bryant and the Lakers in the 2000-01 NBA Finals.

I have to say, I was guilty of thinking 2014-15 would be more of the same. Sure we didn’t get Andrew Wiggins, but we got a  potentially better player in Joel Embiid, with a decent hope that his recent health issues would subside over the long-term. I did have my questions about how both Michael Carter-Williams and Nerlens Noel fit into the plan long-term, largely due to Embiid’s presence in the organization and an upcoming draft class loaded with big-men and a potential start point-guard, but seeing whether those two were with worth hanging onto as part of the core was what made the 2014-15 season worth watching. And in many senses, it still is. But nearly everything else is utterly unwatchable.

Carter-Williams hasn’t been back long enough to tell much of anything. Noel looks extremely effective on defense, but his offensive game is years (like four, not one or two) away from being anything worth talking about. K.J. McDaniels has been very impressive on both sides of the court, and figures to be a key cog here for some time. Other than those three, one of which comes with his own major flaws, there isn’t much to ride home about.

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Hollis Thompson played very well against the Bulls, but other than that has been ineffective. Henry Sims has regressed drastically from what made him look like he could at least be a bench piece for the Sixers in the future. Luc Richard Mbah a Moute has been one of the least efficient players in the league. And Tony Wroten, who I had high hopes for coming into the year, looks like much of the same player he was in 2013-14. Don’t get me wrong, he can get to the basket and distribute well, but he turns the ball over at an alarming rate, is lousy on defense, has a worse shot than Carter-Williams and is virtually useless without the ball in his hands. The team as a whole, has improved on the defensive side of things (mostly due to Noel’s presence), but may just be the worst three-point shooting team in league history.

To sum things up: the team sucks, and is for the most part, unwatchable. For those of you who think that just because I’m behind tanking and this plan as a whole that I don’t see things like this, I do. In a perfect world, the Sixers wouldn’t have to do this. In a perfect world they would have won the draft lottery last year, and taken Andrew Wiggins who would have turned out to be the best players in the draft since LeBron James. Hell, in a perfect world they could have just signed LeBron. But this isn’t a perfect world, which is exactly why Sam Hinkie and company need to continue along with this plan and I am still fully on-board with it.

A few nights ago, local radio host Tony Bruno continued his Twitter campaign that the Sixers tanking is unfair to the fans and they shouldn’t do it. Full disclosure, I like Bruno and have said many times on this site he was one of my main influences in getting into reporting. But him continuing to mock the 2014-15 Sixers is silly to me. They suck. They were built to suck. We get it. So in my mind, that means that the plan is working. National talking-heads are expected to be people that laugh at the team and laugh at the plan–good for them. They are either in cities who land major free-agents or their teams have accepted mediocrity. Like most times when outsiders voice their opinions on Philly, I don’t care. That includes the Deadpsin article that surfaced Tuesday. But locally (where Bruno is supposed to represent), we know the ins-and-outs of the plan, we know the suffering that we’ve had through the mediocrity, and we shouldn’t be feeding the trolls. I guess I can’t tell anyone that they have to blindly follow the Sixers plan, but I don’t know how you couldn’t at least be refreshed by the fact that there actually is a plan.

As the Sixers prepare to avoid dropping to 0-11 against the Celtics, an opponent who they could seemingly beat, I felt that it was time to give an answer some of these constantly asked questions or forced notions about the Sixers.

Is it bad for the league?

I love this question, because it’s as if every national NBA writer has taken it upon themselves to be an unpaid public relations consultant for the league. If you don’t work for the NBA or somehow make any profit on it, why do you care if it is ‘bad for the league’? That’s lame as hell.

A plan, whether it ends up producing a title or not, is not cheating us. It’s making a real attempt for the first time in over a decade.

In addition, last month, when it appeared that NBA lottery reform was a foregone conclusion, I trashed the league and certain teams who had built through the draft for lobbying for the reform. I don’t love how the Sixers are doing things, but what is the other option if they want to build a championship-caliber team? If the NBA dislikes what the Sixers are doing, changing the lottery system isn’t going to magically make the actual problem go away. I don’t know what the answer is, but the NBA needs to fix the issue that only certain markets can get max free-agents and consistently be title contenders, and changing the lottery isn’t going to do that. There will always be inept organizations that are incapable of building a good team, but why should a franchise that wants to put money into the team be average for 10 straight years? (That isn’t to say the Sixers had a plan for the last 10 years, but if you invest money into the team, it shouldn’t take a miracle draft pick or a hometown hero signing in free-agency for you to get out of NBA purgatory.)

Is it cheating the fans?

Cheating the fans would be remaining mediocre for 10 more years. No one is forcing the fans to buy tickets or to watch to the games. This isn’t the first, or last time, I’ll tell this story but, I’m 19 and about to finish off my first semester in college. The last time that the Sixers were in the NBA Finals, I was five years old in the Summer prior to starting Kindergarten. I felt cheated that Billy King, Tony DiLeo and Ed Stefanski kept selling us Chris Webber, Glenn Robinson, Elton Brand, etc. as the type of players that could help lead Philadelphia to a title. A plan, whether it ends up producing a title or not, is not cheating us. It’s making a real attempt for the first time in over a decade.

What if it doesn’t work?

This is really a pretty negative question. I’m

a little bit

very pessimistic, but the thing that I don’t understand is what has prompted people to think that this plan is going to fail. Michael Carter-Williams won the rookie of the year. Nerlens Noel was hurt his first year, but looks like the defensive menace we thought he was going to be. He is extremely raw, to say the least, on the offensive side of things, but that doesn’t come as a shock. Joel Embiid, I think, will be at least an All-Star caliber player if he’s able to stay healthy. K.J. McDaniels looks like a diamond in the ruff. Clearly, the Sixers aren’t a finished product yet, but they are probably going to end up with two first-round picks in two of the next three seasons. And they have a ton of cap space to chase free-agents when they feel the time is right.

I’m not “sipping the kool-aid” because it was forced down my throat, I really believe in this plan. There’s only a few outcomes, none of which have an end-game worse than the mediocrity that they were mired in for the 2000’s. Outcome one is that things work out and the Sixers ultimately turn into a title contender. Option two is that things don’t work out at all with this group, in which case, the Sixers will continue to land top five picks, and eventually they’ll have to hit on a few. Option three is that this core becomes mediocre, which is kind of what all the naysayers of the plan are clamoring to go back to if I’m understanding them correctly. If that idea sounds awful to you, the Sixers still have a ton of cap-space in that scenario and the ability to trade away their roster and try their hand at tanking again.

Can I hop on if it ends up working?

There’s a difference between laughing at how bad the Sixers are now (that’s how many of us are getting though this) and just flat-out trashing the plan. If you are one of the people going as far as calling the plan “unethical” and rooting for the Sixers to just take shortcuts and return to mediocrity, then don’t hop on in three years. If you do, don’t act like you were always on-board.

Certainly, if the Sixers are able to find sustained success, bandwagon fans will come. Probably bandwagon fans that weren’t even on when the Sixers were a game away from the Eastern Conference Finals in 2011-12, because even then the Sixers had no realistic chance of winning a title. Also, it didn’t take an NBA connoisseur to see that the Sixers were in that position because of Derrick Rose’s torn ACL and probably weren’t built for long-term success. If this plan works out, one would assume that the Sixers would be built for success for at least the better part of a decade.

As everyone within the organization continues to tell us, there are no shortcuts. We aren’t going to wake up tomorrow and the tanking is over. Joel Embiid isn’t going to show up next season and be the singular savior of the franchise. But the hope is that if you assemble enough picks and keep cap space cleared, you are going to assemble enough talent to be special. There are no guarantees, but the goal of sports is to win championships, not to annually compete for the right to sneak into the playoffs and be beaten by whatever team LeBron James is on. There’s nothing fun about that at all. I’m sure some smart ass will respond with, “and this is fun?”. No this isn’t fun, but this isn’t the finished product, and I have a feeling that the finished product will be a lot more fun than losing in the first round of the playoffs every season.