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Philadelphia 76ers: Everyone wants to be the Sixers’ new GM

By Matty Breisch

(Photo by Tim Bradbury/Getty Images)
(Photo by Tim Bradbury/Getty Images) /
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After spending years trapped in the lottery, the Philadelphia 76ers have one of the best young rosters in the NBA. No wonder everyone wants to be the team’s GM.

The Philadelphia 76ers have a very unique problem.

After transforming from a 10 win team in 2016 to a 52 win team in 2018, the Sixers’ front office fell into turmoil when their then-GM Bryan Colangelo‘s involvement in a (very modern) scheme of using fake Twitter accounts to do his bidding online was exposed by Ben Detrick at The Ringer.

While seemingly everyone had an opinion on the topic, with some, like Twitter’s Eric Jr. wanting Colangelo to stay, and others, like the Woodergate billboard guy wanted him to go, the 76ers ownership group and their estranged GM ultimately decided to mutually part ways, leaving the basketball operations department in the hands of head coach Brett Brown on an interim basis.

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And just like that, the 76ers’ vacant GM spot became one of the most coveted openings in all of sports.

With two of the best under-25 players in the entire league already on the roster in Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid, a plethora of future draft picks stockpiled for years to come, and a vacant max contract slot that could be filled next month, the 76ers are a dynasty in the making, they just need the right man to help stick the landing.

Who wouldn’t want that job?

Though the team has already been linked to a number of promising candidates, from ex-Cleveland Cavaliers‘ GM David Griffin, to the triumphant return of The Process’ architect Sam Hinkie, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the demand may be even higher than some may have expected.

Highlighted on a recent episode of ESPN’s Golic & Wingo, the demand for the role is so high that there are even GM’s who already have jobs that would love to get out of their current contracts just to have a chance at landing the one in South Philly.

How crazy is that?

In the ever-changing landscape of the NBA, where a team like the Atlanta Hawks can make it to the playoffs for a decade straight, and then have the wheels fall off in route to a 24 win season, GMs often live or die by the quality of their roster, which makes the 76ers current vacant job just so rare: Playoffs teams simply don’t replace their GMs very often.

Sure, some will point to David Griffin’s recent exit from Cleveland, a move that was reportedly very unpopular with LeBron James, but that obviously hasn’t turned out very well and is a big reason why the team could very well be on the way to their own monster rebuild next month.

To have a roster already loaded with talent and the money to add even more talent is incredibly rare in the modern NBA, making this a move the team simply can’t mess up. While the Colangelo family did help to advance The Process leaps and bounds over their two seasons with the team, even if they were forced on the team by Adam Silver and the league, whomever the team selects to run the show next will either lead the team to the promise land, or drop the ball at the 10 yard line, fumbling one of the greatest opportunities to build a dynasty in NBA history.

Next: Should Tyreke Evans still be on the team’s radar?

Though this decision is daunting, at least it looks like the Philadelphia 76ers ownership will have their pick of some of the brightest minds in the entire NBA as we enter the third act of The Process.