Tanks for Nothing, Philly

All that 76ers losing… for what??

The 2011–12 Philadelphia 76ers finished just a game short of the Eastern Conference finals. Their core of Andre Iguodala, Jrue Holiday, Elton Brand, Lou Williams, Evan Turner, Thaddeus Young, and a handful of young guys seemed like a team on the rise.

Instead the team chose to amnesty Brand and let Williams leave in free agency and then swung for the fences on a franchise-altering trade. They gave away Iguodala, first round pick Moe Harkless, and previous year’s first Nikola Vucevic. In return they got their presumed franchise player: 24-year-old center Andrew Bynum. Bynum was the supposed second best center in the league but had averaged only 56 games a year over seven seasons and had just one year remaining on his deal. He never played a single minute for the Sixers after a tumultuous injury-riddled year and left the team that summer.

The ‘12-13 Sixers finished just one spot out of the Eastern playoffs but were 34–48. They fired failed general manager Tony DiLeo and brought in Sam Hinkie to do the clean up the mess. Hinkie decided to burn the entire thing down instead and start from scratch. And so began #TrustTheProcess.

In the three years since Sam Hinkie was hired, the 76ers have won 46 games and lost 190 of them. The team has tanked, and it has tanked hard. They’ve gotten worse each season and have a chance to finish with the worst 82-game record in NBA history. They’ve lost 20 of their last 21 games. They’re losing and they’re losing on purpose. Do you realize exactly how bad 46–190 is?

46 wins in three years is… not good. The Golden State Warriors have 46 wins since the start of December! And 190 losses is a whole lot of losing. Do you realize that the San Antonio Spurs have lost fewer games than that since the start of the 2009 season? That’s almost seven entire seasons AND postseasons. During that time they’ve won 447 games, 400 more than this putrid Sixers stretch. 190 Spurs losses ago, Kawhi Leonard was a high school senior getting ready for prom. The Sixers have lost that many times in under three seasons.

And the saddest part of all that losing is that the Sixers can’t even lose right. This year they’ll surely finish with the worst record and have the best odds at the #1 pick, but they had only the 2nd and 3rd worst records the past two years. The teams with the worst record each of those years drafted Jabari Parker and Karl-Anthony Towns. The Sixers used their slightly-lower draft picks on Joel Embiid and Jahlil Okafor instead. Even when the 76ers only job that season was to lose lose lose, they screwed it up and hurt the team.

So where has all this tanking left the bumbling Philadelphia franchise?

Well, there’s a war chest of draft picks, but it’s not as deep as you’d think. They’ll have their own pick this year, guaranteed to be in the top 4. Including the swap rights they own with the Kings, the Sixers will have around a 55% chance to secure a top-2 pick in what is widely believed to be a 2-player draft with Ben Simmons and Brandon Ingram atop the charts. Of course that also means that there’s a 45% chance that, even with all this losing and trading, the Sixers could miss out on the two marquee prospects in this year’s draft.

The Sixers also own the rights to the Lakers pick, but only if it’s outside the top 3. The Lakers have the second worst record so there’s about a 44% chance of the Sixers getting that pick this year… and a 56% chance the Lakers keep it. If the Lakers do keep the pick, the Sixers still get it in the future but it’s sure to be a much worse pick and less valuable asset at that point.

In a perfect world, the Sixers would get their own top-2 pick and the Lakers pick at #4 or #5. Unfortunately there’s only around a 32% chance of that happening, less than one in three. There’s also the nightmare scenario, where the Lakers keep their pick and the Sixers miss the top two, which happens around 12% of the time. Basically, for all their maneuvering and top pick hopes, a lot will still come down to ping pong balls.

The Sixers will also get two late first round picks this year from the Heat and the Thunder, probably around the 21st and 26th picks. They aren’t owed any future 1sts at this point unless the Lakers and Kings trades convey into the future. They do have an impressively useless collection of seven future 2nd round picks, as far out as 2021. And that’s the war chest.

So exactly what are all those draft picks worth? It’s anyone’s guess at this point, but the Sixers haven’t exactly shown much in their recent history of choosing the right players and/or knowing how to develop them.

All those second round picks? The Sixers used an incredible 11 second round picks in the last 3drafts on Richaun Holmes, Arturas Gudaitas, Guillermo Hernangomez, JP Tokoto, Luka Mitrovic, KJ McDaniels, Jerami Grant, Russ Smith, Vasilije Micic, Nemanja Dangubic, and Glen Rice Jr. The one potential gem KJ McDaniels, probably because of the 76ers’ incompetence, would only sign a one-year deal. After one season, he was traded to the Houston Rockets for Isaiah Canaan and, yep, another second round pick.

As for those first round picks this year, the Sixers have drafted 5 guys in the last 3 lotteries: Nerlens Noel, Michael Carter-Williams, Joel Embiid, Dario Saric, and Jahlil Okafor.

The best production of the group came from ‘13–14 Rookie of the Year MCW. The Sixers promptly traded him for the aforementioned Lakers pick- a pick which, if it conveys at #4 or #5 this year could well be used on Kris Dunn or Jamal Murray, PGs several years behind the development curve of MCW.

Noel has been solid so far, but he and Saric are only on the team because the Sixers traded All Star PG Jrue Holiday to get them. Even with injuries, Holiday has unquestionably been the best of the trio. Embiid and Saric have yet to play a minute for the Sixers. Noel missed his entire first season to injury. Okafor played 53 games before being sidelined with a season ending knee injury. When healthy, Noel and Okafor both look like useful NBA players.

Ah but Embiid and Noel have been hurt! And Saric hasn’t come over from Europe yet! That’s hardly Philadelphia’s fault, right?

The Sixers knew what they were getting on all three guys. Both Noel and Embiid had been potential #1 picks but, at the time they were drafted, had serious injury issues that would end up keeping them out of their entire first season. And Saric was a question to come over when drafted too. The Sixers drafted both the talent and the question marks, a package deal. They’re responsible for the risk, and it obviously hasn’t paid off yet.

So in a best case scenario, the Sixers might hope to add Simmons or Ingram with their pick and Dunn or Murray with the Lakers pick, then take some shots later on with the late 1sts and 2nd rounders. Simmons/Ingram and Dunn/Murray would add to the current roster of “talent.”

And what’s left for “talent” on this roster? The Sixers’ nine most used guys this year have been Noel, Okafor, Canaan, Hollis Thompson, Jerami Grant, Robert Covington, Nik Stauskus, TJ McConnell, and Ish Smith. That includes four players that were undrafted and two second round picks.

Thompson played the most minutes of any Sixer this year. He’s got a 9.1 PER (an average PER is 15) and does not look like an NBA player. Grant has the next most minutes and a PER of 12.3. Smith was a fun spark for a few weeks but has already proven he’s not long for the NBA. Stauskus seems attractive as a recent lottery pick but has done very little. The cupboard is pretty bare.

Robert Covington is one player on the roster that looks at least useful at an NBA level. He averages 12 points, 5 boards, and 1.5 steals with 36% from three. On another team, he could probably be a useful rotational player.

Noel has posted pretty steady numbers both years, which is both good and bad since he hasn’t shown much improvement. He’s taking smarter shots in year two and is easily the best defender on the team, but he struggles with turnovers and certainly doesn’t seem to have star potential.

Okafor averaged 17 points and 7 boards this rookie season and showed off an array of impressive footwork and post skills. His 69% free throw percentage was much improved from 51% in college, and he increased his field goal percentage from a miserable 45% in 2015 up to 59% in 2016 before his season-ending injury. He had a nice enough rookie year, but in a ridiculously good year of rookies, it’s doubtful he’d even be a top 7 pick in a draft reset.

For now Okafor and Noel look like potential NBA starters, but probably back-end guys. There’s no reason to believe they’d be the 2nd or even 3rd best player on a legit contender. And there’s a huge problem- Philadelphia’s only two useful players can’t play together. For all the terrible players on the roster, the Noel-Okafor combo ranked 131st out of 133 2-man lineups the Sixers have used this year. With both on the court, the team hemorrhages points, down 16 points to the opponent over 48 Noel-Okafor minutes.

Of the 40 2-man lineups that have given up the most points in the NBA this season, Noel-Okafor rank dead last. Playing them together for a whole game is roughly the equivalent of spotting an opponent Steph Curry and Draymond Green, the NBA’s best 2-man lineup, for 36 minutes every game. So the Sixers only have two semi-useful players and can’t even play them both at once.

That brings us to today. The Sixers have lost and lost for three years now. Where has all that tanking left them?

Okafor looks like a nice offensive player. Noel is a solid defender but not much yet on offense. Both are potential long-term starters, but not both at once. By the way, Noel will begin negotiating for an extension already this summer.

See that’s the other hidden problem with all of this. The whole point of accumulating draft picks is to take advantage of the cheap contracts that young talented players have, allowing the team to spend extra money elsewhere on the roster. Well the cap is about to jump like never before so just about every team has cap room, and no decent free agent in their right mind would choose Philly right now. And by drafting injury-riddled players and waiting them out, the Sixers are throwing away their cheap contract years.

They’ve already lost 2 valuable years of Embiid, and Noel’s rookie contract is near its end. Saric has looked impressive overseas and is not using up his contract years yet, but most signs point to him staying in Europe until 2017 when he can negotiate a deal independent of the rookie scale. So that lottery pick could turn into three years of waiting for a two-year above-market-value deal on a player they’ll end up developing for probably another NBA team. If Embiid ever plays at this point- and he’s doubtful already for summer league- he too could play just a couple Sixer years, developing for another team.

So you have Okafor, a couple more years of cheap Noel, Covington, and possibly a couple future years of Embiid or Saric and the draft picks. That’s it. That’s what three years of tanking has amounted to.

The Sixers have tanked for three seasons. They’ve somehow managed to fail even at losing properly. They’ve had good draft picks but spent them on players that have yet to pan out- guys with ???s and …s but no !!!s yet.

Even when they make trades that look good at the time, it just ends up turning into a never-ending cycle of roster churn. Holiday for two lottery picks seemed smart, but will Noel or Saric ever be as good as Holiday already was? Thad Young went out the door for a first in a sweet move, but will the #21 pick this year be as good as Young already was? MCW was moved for the pending Lakers pick, which could well end up being a new point guard that the Sixers can only hope is as good as MCW was his rookie year. Perhaps soon Noel will head out for another lottery pick. Churn baby, churn.

After three years of tanking, why does it somehow feel like the Sixers need to throw away this hinky plan and start all over again? Lucky for them, there’s not much to burn down. The math is simple:

Loss + Loss + More losses = Two possible starters + draft picks + that’s it

All that losing for a bunch of injured big dudes and more draft picks?

Tanks, Philadelphia. Tanks for nothing.

Most stats and data in this article found on Basketball Reference.com.

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