The Sixers will forever stand as the poster-childs of lottery reform
As Adam Silver takes a stern stance on lottery reform, it’s the radical Sixers rebuild that ignited conversation.
There will always be a question of equal competition. For some time, the Sixers had one of the worst runs in American sports history — on purpose.
The story is one that has been theorized since it’s start. When Sam Hinkie took over the basketball operations for the organization, the often-quiet analytics man came in with a loud goal. Being so bad, to become really good.
Sure, there’s a lot of debate what is the right way to go about it. Whether the integrity of taking advantage of the NBA’s most longstanding, and relatively unchanged, loophole is justifiable by the end result. Those questions were asked all along the way, but the reason why it was so debated was because of many reasons.
The first, the Sixers being so bad for so long. Not just pretty bad, but at times a literally unwatchable fiasco. This hurt ticket sales for them, and for the NBA as the team struggled to get fans in the arena unless a powerhouse is in town. Which brings us to the second reason, the Golden State Warriors. The Warriors had one of the greatest stretches in history, paralleling the Sixers’ poor stretch. The polar opposites only intensified the debate, in an ironic way.
More from Philadelphia 76ers
- 3 Reasons the 76ers Should Poach Blake Griffin From the Celtics
- 3 Most Overpaid 76ers Heading Into the 2023 Season
- Ranking Daryl Morey’s 3 Biggest Mistakes with 76ers
- 3 Teams Crazy Enough to Trade for James Harden
- James Harden Putting Career in Jeopardy With Holdout Threat
The Warriors are the golden boys of team building. They weren’t overtly tanking, but they were one of the league’s bottom-feeders for a good stretch. Their immaculate drafting gave them a big three, which gave them a championship, which gave them Kevin Durant.
In the meanwhile, the Sixers drafted an injured Nerlens Noel, an injured Joel Embiid, and embattled Jahlil Okafor. They followed it by securing two consecutive top picks, who will be debuting this season.
In theory, what Philadelphia did worked almost as perfectly as it could. The Sixers now are standing tall as the most promising team in the NBA, which is what is getting the league nervous. Adam Silver doesn’t want teams mimicking Philadelphia to create even more imbalanced competition.
He can never get rid of tanking, but he is trying to water down the results of it. By changing lottery odds, such as the proposed bottom three teams getting an equal shot at the top pick, he won’t eliminate being purposefully bad. If he did, that would just work against what he’s trying to achieve. But this will lessen the incentive for teams to tank, albeit slightly.
It’s the Sixers, who have accumulated some of the most wanted assets in the league, that caused the reaction. It was the ousting of Sam Hinkie by the league that created split in debating the league’s intervention of teams running the organization.
Silver looked towards the Sixers, who after three years of tanking never truly found an established foundation. He saw the Sixers flailing on multiple occasions, until this summer’s trade for Markelle Fultz. For the outcome Philadelphia has reached, it took years of horrible basketball. It wasn’t like the Timberwolves, who shipped a star for a stud prospect. Who landed a sure thing right away in Karl-Anthony Towns.
The Sixers were the antiheroes of tanking. They weren’t Golden State or Minnesota, but they accomplished their goal. To set themselves up with a better future. It took years, but they finally made it. And now Silver wants to minimize the after-affects of potential Sixers success.
Sam Hinkie came in to change the face of the organization, but in doing, so he may have changed the entire landscape of team building within the league for the future.