The Failure of the Philadelphia 76ers: What if this Wasn’t Part of the Plan?

To nobody’s surprise, the Philadelphia 76ers lost last night. It was their ninth loss in a row, and during the losing streak, the team hasn’t even been competitive – the average margin of defeat has been over 12 points.

Defenders of general manager Sam Hinkie’s “process” are not too concerned. They say that the team expected to be bad; that it’s all part of the plan. This season is just an expected growing pain that’s going to pay off with another high draft pick which will lead to a brighter future.

I’m starting to wonder if that’s true. It may be distasteful for a franchise to intentionally make itself one of the worst in the league for three straight years (and counting!) that’s still more reassuring than the other possibility: The Philadelphia 76ers’ front office may not have expected the team to be this bad.

Thus far, young big men Nerlens Noel and Jahlil Okafor haven’t meshed well on the court. While it’s too early to write off the possibility of them developing into a successful frontcourt tandem, I wonder if the team envisioned the pairing being this ineffective.

The team might have also believed that life would be made easier on the “twin towers” when the team’s outside shooters consistently hit long-range shots. They might have thought that adding Nik Stauskas to Robert Covington and Hollis Thompson would make defenses respect the Philadelphia 76ers’ perimeter game. Unfortunately, none of those guys is a good enough shooter to overcome the other limitations in their games.

As for point guard play, they were probably right to think that they could do better than Ish Smith. The problem is that they haven’t found anyone who is actually better. Smith is a legitimate NBA point guard who would probably be a solid backup on a playoff team. But compared to Kendall Marshall, Isaiah Canaan, and Tony Wroten, he’s looked like John Stockton.

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It’s frightening that Hinkie has gone on record saying he thought Marshall was going to be an upgrade. Not re-signing Smith may not have been a sign of tanking, but rather a misjudgment of talent.

My hope is that, the Philadelphia 76ers did expect to struggle. If we have any hope that all this losing will eventually pay off, then we have to believe that the Philadelphia 76ers intentionally tried to build a losing team, and they weren’t legitimately surprised at how bad the team has played.

But then why was Jerry Colangelo hired? Sure, it’s always nice to have more respected basketball minds around, it doesn’t seem like a move that a happy owner would make.

I wonder how Hinkie sold this year’s team to owner Josh Harris. Did he give Harris the impression that this year’s squad would be better than the past two years? Was Harris disappointed in how bad the team has performed?

If the team was truly surprised by the poor play, then why should we have any faith that they’ll be able to do better going forward? Having Colangelo around should help the team’s ability to find and acquire talented players, but he’s still going to be working with Hinkie and the rest of the group who put together this year’s squad. If they were legitimately trying to field an improved team this season, then there’s a good chance that future seasons may turn out just as bleak as this one has.