The Philadelphia 76ers may have just veered from their radical rebuilding strategy in a huge way

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/philadelphia-76ers-may-just-veered-215737012.html



The Philadelphia 76ers may have just veered from their radical rebuilding strategy in a huge way


Business Insider By Scott Davis
5 hours ago
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The Philadelphia 76ers appear to have put an end to their "Process" — that is, their blatant tanking to achieve high draft picks and rebuild the roster.

On Monday, 76ers owner Josh Harris announced that the team has hired Jerry Colangelo as a "special advisor" to their basketball operations.



Howard Beck ✔ @HowardBeck
Jerry Colangelo joins 76ers as special advisor.
1:40 PM - 7 Dec 2015
 44 44 Retweets   25 25 likes



This, of course, immediately raised questions about the status of general manager Sam Hinkie, who began the Sixers' radical rebuild.

Keith Pompey ✔ @PompeyOnSixers
#Sixers owner Josh Harris said Sam Hinkie will still be in charge of the day-to-day operations.
1:39 PM - 7 Dec 2015
 11 11 Retweets   10 10 likes


Hinkie seems OK with it:

John Gonzalez ✔ @gonzoCSN
Sam Hinkie said it's a good day and he feels "fortunate." Ok then.
1:42 PM - 7 Dec 2015
 6 6 Retweets   8 8 likes


While it's unclear if this is a demotion, clearly it's a turn in a different direction. Hinkie, for over two years, has been in charge of a plan where the 76ers intentionally don't win games and make any moves necessary to acquire more draft picks. Colangelo has served as the director of U.S.A. Basketball, a program with the sole purpose of winning.

It never seemed as though Hinkie's plan or job was in jeopardy, but clearly ownership wants the team to begin making moves. The Sixers have just one win this season, and despite several high draft picks, they don't seem to be any further along in their plan than when they started.

There are promising building blocks in Nerlens Noel, Jahlil Okafor, and Robert Covington (and perhaps Nik Stauskas), but nobody is certain of the future of Joel Embiid, and Okafor and Noel's long-term fit is an unknown.

It appears the 76ers want to starting bringing this rebuild along, getting closer to winning actual games, and they've brought Colangelo in to do so.

Derek Bodner @DerekBodnerNBA
Harris: "I think we're ready to go the next phase here...Jerry knows a lot of people. His knowledge will be invaluable." #sixers
1:47 PM - 7 Dec 2015
 20 20 Retweets   15 15 likes


The 76ers could be in line for several draft picks this season, and if they draft wisely and sign some players in the offseason, it will be interesting to see just how quickly the team can make a move into competitiveness.


bob
MY NOTE:  Gee, it appears tanking wasn't such a great strategy after all.  What a shame...On another note, "YIPPEEE!!!"

Ok, seriously, on another note, Danny and Jerry Colangelo go WAY back.  I believe Jerry got Danny as a player, when he played for the Suns, and then hired him as a coach when he retired.  Another name and number in Danny's little black book.  That's why he is so good.  He has played for, played with or coached everybody who is anybody in today's NBA. Sports Management is a small good ol' boys network and Danny is one of the OGs.

.

Hi,
Can Danny snatch Okafor or Noel?

AK

sinus007 wrote:Hi,
Can Danny snatch Okafor or Noel?

AK

Doubt they would give up Okafor even with his beavioral problems - seems to have too much talent. However, there have been rumblings that Okafor and Noel might not be the best pairing, so maybe Noel would be in play. If Philly wants to move from accumulating assets to being competitive, then they may not have much interest in our picks. Whom could we trade for Noel (or Okafor)??

NBA owners pushed Adam Silver to meddle with the 76ers. That's a problem.

http://www.sbnation.com/2015/12/8/9870742/philadelphia-76ers-jerry-colangelo-nba-owners-adam-silver


It is a well-known fact that the No. 1 pastime of NBA franchise owners is meddling. Ask any general manager or coach.

Now we have franchisees meddling in other teams' affairs. ESPN's Brian Windhorst reports that NBA franchise owners lobbied the league office to do something about the wonderfully tanktastic Philadelphia 76ers. That effort led to Adam Silver facilitating a connection between Sixers boss Josh Harris -- who has heretofore expressed complete confidence in Sam Hinkie's unique process -- and basketball lifer Jerry Colangelo, himself a former franchisee. (The NBA denies the owners' complaints caused any changes with the 76ers' front office.)

Why were other team owners mad about the Sixers? Well, probably the same reason everyone else outside of The Process Bubble is mad about the Sixers: This is a pretty egregious way to compete in the context of high-stakes professional sports.

But the team owners have a cover story, too. They reportedly argued that the Sixers' strategy to stink is sucking revenue out of the league. From our man Windhorst:


Owners routinely complained about the economic drag the 76ers were inflicting on the league as the revenues of one of the largest-market teams -- a franchise expected to contribute more robustly to league revenue-sharing -- sagged. For many teams, games featuring the starless and woeful 76ers as the visiting team have been the lowest-attended of the season, sources said.

For what it's worth, the Sixers have finished no worse than No. 20 in road attendance percentage during The Process, and are middle of the pack this season. That's not a perfect measure of draw -- season ticket holders are surely more likely to skip the Sixers over any other team, and that robs the home squad of parking and concessions income -- but it's something. The revenue-sharing bit is pretty funny considering a wide swath of the league fought tooth and nail against more robust revenue sharing in the first place. The teams that fought in favor of revenue sharing are largely complicit in The Process, having voted down draft lottery reforms that would have short-circuited Hinkie's grand plan.

This is the core problem: franchise owners had a chance to fix this problem the right way by changing policies, and they did not. Had the Board of Governors voted to even out the lottery odds in time for the 2015 or 2016 NBA Draft, the Sixers' incentive to be the worst would have been markedly reduced. That would possibly have led to the team spending some of its immense cap space on actual productive NBA players instead of dead weight. (The contracts of JaVale McGee and Gerald Wallace are on Philadelphia's books for $21 million of cap space even if the players are not. The entire active roster is earning $34 million combined. The actual salary cap threshold is $70 million.)

Why didn't NBA team owners vote to change the rules to prevent situations like this, situations in which it's in a team's best interest to eat the losses (on-court and on the books) for three years and rack up high draft picks? Because they were afraid they might need to do the same thing when they were down!

Brilliantly, the team owners have gotten exactly what they wanted. The option to tank shamelessly is still legal and available, but the Sixers are going to pull out of the gambit early. They have finally defeated Sam Hinkie by convincing the boss (Silver) to convince Hinkie's boss (Harris) to give Hinkie a new boss (Colangelo) who is not going to be pleased with more losing.

* * *

Here's a slight tangent. Some have argued in the immediate aftermath of the Colangelo signing that this is a PR stunt and Hinkie's Process still rules over Philly.

Here's Windhorst: "Despite Colangelo's affirming Hinkie will retain final say on personnel matters and Harris' saying this move was not a deviation from their plan, those who know Colangelo believe he will have major influence on significant decisions going forward."

Here's USA Today's Jeff Zillgitt, who was the first to report that Silver was involved: "Don't mistake this as a PR move or a consultation role. The 76ers hired Colangelo to rebuild the team faster than Hinkie."

Here's Yahoo!'s Adrian Wojnarowski: "Ownership short-circuited Hinkie's tanking process on Monday, inserting Colangelo, 76, as the special adviser to the managing general partner and chairman of basketball operations." Woj used the word "usurping" elsewhere.

This is not a PR stunt, y'all.

* * *

How this unfolded is reminiscent of another time NBA team owners agreed en masse to a problematic policy only to express outrage once it was carried out to its logical conclusion: The Chris Paul trade debacle. The Board of Governors unanimously approved the purchase of the New Orleans Hornets by the NBA, and thus, commissioner David Stern would serve as the de facto owner of the franchise.

CP3 requested a trade, the Hornets found a match with the then-dominant Lakers and the rest of the NBA expressed immediate and vociferous outrage. So Stern, as the de facto owner of the team but actual employee of the Board of Governors, rescinded his front office's agreement and traded CP3 to the Clippers. Those meddling NBA owners could have put systems in place to ensure the Hornets couldn't make major deals without some sort of firewall in place or without Board of Governors approval. (Which would have been insane, but that's basically what happened.) Instead, they went along with the status quo until it mattered enough to complain, and then they complained and got their way.

Silver caved to outside pressure and then guided the Sixers off-course instead of telling the whisperers in his ear to fix the damn policy that put the Sixers on this course. The league office has seemed rejuvenated when it comes to the health of the game since Silver took over, but the Sixers debacle shows that meddling among the team owners is still how business is done in the NBA.

It's not a good look.

I've got mixed feelings about the Colangelo move. Meddling by the owners can be a worrisome thing, like when a bunch of them said no way can Chris Paul go to the Lakers when the league was running the New Orleans franchise and Stern killed a perfectly acceptable deal.

But sports is an unusual business, where your competitors are also your business partners. If the incompetence at one franchise causes ill effects to spread like dominoes around the league, it's reasonable for the league to step in. The Ted Stepien situation in Cleveland years ago is the best example of when it's perfectly appropriate.

After three years, the Philly situation is worse, not better. There is no evidence of their tanking leading to a mediocre team, let alone a competitive one. The only way tanking works is if you draft well, and they've drafted poorly.

2013 - acquired Nerlens Noel (6th pick) from New Orleans for Jrue Holiday, a 2014 first-round pick, and another player. Noel missed an entire season and has shown himself to be a good (not great) defender with very limited offensive skills. Not a cornerstone.

2013 - drafted Michael Carter-Williams (11th pick), who becomes rookie of the year. However, he isn't a great floor general and is a poor outside shooter. They trade him in February 2015 for a Lakers' 1st round pick that is top-5 protected in 2015 (the Lakers kept it) and top-3 protected in 2016 and 2017. The pick could potentially pay off, but for now, they have nothing to show for trading away Carter-Williams.

2014 - draft Joel Embiid (3rd pick), who has yet to play a minute in the NBA.

2014 - draft Elfrid Payton (10th pick), trade him immediately for Dario Saric (intriguing European player who has yet to play in the NBA) and a 2017 1st-round pick. Payton is a limited shooter but has done pretty well in Orlando. As yet, Philly has no payoff from either of their top ten picks in the 2014 draft.

2014 - draft KJ McDaniels (32nd pick), then trade him to Houston for Isaiah Canaan, a good 3-point shooter. On balance, they did pretty well with both the initial draft pick and the trade. Sam Hinkie's one shining moment so far.

2015 - draft Jahlil Okafor (3rd pick). Despite his off-court issues, Okafor has played well, but after already acquiring Noel and Embiid, drafting another player who operates in the post is a head-scratching choice.

2015 - have five second-round picks, only one of whom has played in the NBA (Richaun Holmes).

So we have a combination of all this:

-- Blatant tanking, the spread of potentially tanking to other teams at the bottom of the standings, and increased legitimacy of tanking among the NBA fan base. Losing on purpose isn't part of the NBA's business plan.

-- Hinkie's horrible track record with using the accumulated draft picks

-- The Sixers doing terribly in a large market that should be boosting the revenue-sharing pot, instead depriving the small-market have-nots of what they consider their fair share.

-- The Sixers being a poor draw on the road.

-- No indication that it's going to get better any time soon, as in years.

So while I'm generally against league meddling, this is one time I think it's probably justified. The Philly situation is a cancer, and it calls for some radical measures.

bob I understand you don't believe in tanking, I was rooting for a better pick higher pick last year, leading to one of the potential franchise bigs and I would have preferred to not acquire IT to have done it.....doesn't mean I would want to tank to the 76ers level. Got it.

Living down here near Philly, the 76ers "tanking-for-years" has been a total embarrassment to them, the NBA and sports in general since they started this terrible direction.  Going all out to lose is just not what sports at any level should be about.

If Colangelo comes aboard and changes their approach, he will be the greatest addition to the Philly sports scene in maybe forever.

cowens/oldschool wrote:bob I understand you don't believe in tanking, I was rooting for a better pick higher pick last year, leading to one of the potential franchise bigs and I would have preferred to not acquire IT to have done it.....doesn't mean I would want to tank to the 76ers level. Got it.

cow,

I know you didn't want to get that bad. Where you and I seem to be missing each other's points is that I keep pointing out that, IT or no IT, we couldn't lose enough to where we would have gotten better than a 4-9% chance at any of the players that might have made it worthwhile, and 4-9% sucks. Losing just so you can increase your odds from 4% to 9% is not something I would bet on especially when Thomas is looking like a nice building block himself and a keeper.

Anyway, now that Sam Hinkie's plan seems to be getting taken out of his hands there shouldn't be much of a reason to talk about intentional tanking anymore.


bob



.

bob I don't know about that, no IT, Sully was fat, out of shape and injured, Smart was a rookie dealing all year with a bad ankle, we know last year Zeller and KO sure didn't scare anybody in the paint....we might have sucked enough to a record similar to the Knicks and Dirk was just saying to the media how much better Porzingis is at 20 than he was at the same age....oh well, water under the bridge right now.

cowens/oldschool wrote:bob I don't know about that, no IT, Sully was fat, out of shape and injured, Smart was a rookie dealing all year with a bad ankle, we know last year Zeller and KO sure didn't scare anybody in the paint....we might have sucked enough to a record similar to the Knicks and Dirk was just saying to the media how much better Porzingis is at 20 than he was at the same age....oh well, water under the bridge right now.

Well he (Porzingis) sure laid an egg last evening !

Long season we'll see what he looks like come March April, he's still growing in many ways and will be curious how he comes back in his next game after having his worst.

beat