Note: Names in italics were traded before playing a game. * indicates player still active.

For the most part, that is a fairly solid drafting record. With most players taken becoming serviceable NBA players that played for at least 7 years in the league and/or are still active. They even got some production from their second round picks, which are far more difficult to hit on. Looking at “what they could have won” yields around 8 potential transformative picks over the 16 year sample; McGrady, Billups, Pierce, Nowitzki, Parker, Cousins, George and Rondo. Nowitzki is the big ‘miss’ but no one could have known at the time that he would go on to be a future Hall of Famer. He’s also the only one you could argue would be good enough to win a ring by himself, as clearly the best player. It  would also be near impossible to project the achievements of Parker and George given their relative obscurity and late draft slots. Probably Cousins represents the clear cut whiff, when they took Evan Turner over him in 2010 but even so, the jury is still out on whether Cousins can keep his attitude in check to match his monstrous talent.

Nevertheless, I’d argue a reasonable drafting track record but not good enough to challenge for a Championship. Even with a few All-Star selections (Jrue and Iggy), the team had no hope of ever really getting out of the 1st round. The problem is that there’s little chance of hitting on those HOFers or superstars so late in the draft. We made a run at acquiring a potential superstar in the Bynum trade and it was an unmitigated disaster. Any other potential trades are out of the question, as the Sixers surrendered an all-star in Iguodala, emerging star Vucevic, Mo Harkless and a future 1st rounder. In total, what they gave up was 4 1st round picks. There’s no coming back from that.

Again, I don’t fault the logic behind the Bynum trade. However, I do take issue with the rest of the Doug Collins era in Philadelphia. Some truly horrendous decisions include signing Kwame Brown to a 2-year deal, bringing in Nick Young, drafting Evan Turner and trading a 1st rounder (now 2 2nd round picks) to get Arnett Moultrie. The on-the-court product wasn’t much better, a slew of mid-range jump shots, Jodie Meeks at SG and stunting any possible development of Turner by keeping him on the bench and barely playing him in his first few seasons. Why even take him if he wasn’t going to make a difference? Before the arrival of GM Sam Hinkie, the situation was pretty dire, and tanking for draft picks was a logical conclusion.

It became pretty clear that was the direction of the franchise when Hinkie traded Jrue for Nerlens Noel and another 1st rounder. The basketball world knew the Sixers were tanking and compounded it further by trading off nearly everything that wasn’t bolted down at the deadline for 2nd rounders. They finished with the second worst record in front of the Milwaukee Bucks, however, it was the Sixers who drew the ire of the NBA and the other franchises.  Largely, this was due to the 26 game losing streak that tied the 2010-2011 Cleveland Cavaliers for the worst of all time. This season, they have started out 0-11, closing in on the worst ever start to a season, 0-18 by the 2009-10 New Jersey Nets. Everyone knows the management is tanking, that much is obvious. The players know it too, and that’s more distressing.

I’ve approved of all the moves they’ve made so far, even managing to get back the pick they traded to Orlando for Bynum through selecting Elfrid Payton, then trading Payton for Dario Saric and the 1st round pick. Noel and Embiid were the consensus #1 picks from the experts coming into the draft and they fell because of injury. Great! Take them. Trading players like Turner, Spencer Hawes and Thad Young and getting picks in return even though they would leave for nothing at the end of the year was also smart. MCW seems like a good draft choice. I’ve even been on board with the endless cycle of D-League players to try to find that hidden gem. The coaching choice of Brett Brown also seems to be a solid one – his background is in player development from the best-run franchise of the past 20 years (the San Antonio Spurs). If anyone can help these youngsters grow into the league, you’d hope it would be Brown.

However, there’s a few things I’m concerned about:

2012 Charlotte Bobcats 7-59 (10.6% winning percentage)

1973 Philadelphia 76ers 9-73 (11.0% winning percentage)

These two teams represent the most futile in the history of the NBA. As much as I want the Sixers to tank, I don’t want them to break either of those two records for fewer winners and a lower winning percentage. As much as they are a ‘disgrace’ to the game and ‘shaming’ the whole league, records last forever, and I don’t want the team that I support to be on that list twice. If the team doesn’t get their first win soon, it could be hard-pressed to meet that threshold.

I disagree with the ‘talking head’ folks who talk of creating a ‘culture of losing’ and that somehow the team will never learn ‘how to win’. Those concepts are meaningless and superfluous. The Seattle Sonics/OKC Thunder didn’t create a culture of losing around Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook during their formative years. However, I think there’s something to be said for not signing players that can actually help the team now. I understand the player development angle and taking minutes away from a younger guy who could contribute down the line but these players need some experience in the locker room and on the court to play better down the line. Hinkie has sought a strategy that seemingly focuses on finding the most athletic guys, who are long and can defend but can’t shoot. But I don’t see any upside to surrounding your PG (MCW) with a bunch of guys who can’t shoot. The burden falls on him to create offense as he knows that he can’t pass to half of his teammates and expect them to hit shots. Passing the ball around, trying to find an open man tends not to happen and the offense frequently breaks down with a lack of ideas and imagination. The close fought game agains the Rockets was the perfect example. MCW, fresh back from a long injury layoff, turns the ball over on the second to last possession as there is a lack of spacing on the floor. Then, to win the game, Brown calls an isolation play for MCW to hit a mid-range jumpshot that he is not great at taking anyway.  If your teammates aren’t at a decent level, that creates a temptation to try to do everything yourself.

Similarly, on defense, the team has very little concept of rotations and how to properly close down open shooters. Given that the team is a “moneyball” team that believes in the value of 3 pointers, layups and taking fewer mid-range shots, their defence at stopping 3point shots is horrendous. I’m not quite well-versed in basketball-reference.com to pluck a stat from its databases to prove the point but watching them play, they give up a litany of open 3s, especially from the corner. With no veteran presence or experienced NBA player on the team who knows where to rotate to, the defence is a mess and again, they won’t learn these things by just playing 82 games over and over. Younger players need guidance to know who to close out and take their cues from an experienced player who can tell them where to go.

My final point of contention with the strategy is that it will ultimately drive players away and limit the chances that Free Agents will want to play in Philadelphia. Much of this will be mitigated by getting a star player in the Kevin Durant, Lebron James echelon who will attract players to the franchise just by playing for them. In the short-term, there is a risk that once the Front Office does try to sign lucrative Free Agents, they will come up short due to the way they’ve treated their players over the past few years. On draft night when they picked Elfrid Payton, it was clear that MCW was visibly distressed and thought he was going to be traded. Even now, I believe its highly likely the Front Office would trade him in a second if it got a reasonable offer. The fact that he wrote a submission to Derek Jeter’s new website asking that people “Don’t talk to me about tanking” shows he’s clearly unhappy in the organisation and would probably bolt the first chance he gets. Collecting all these young ‘assets’ is great but treating them as such doesn’t build any sense of attachment to the team. Just look at what happened with Chandler Parsons and the Rockets, the franchise where Hinkie learned his trade from ultimate numbers guy Daryl Morey. KJ McDaniels has also taken something of a stand by betting on himself and becoming a restricted free agent as soon as the end of this season. All this creates a bad feeling about the Sixers, potentially scaring off future contributors and leading to a revolving door of players that don’t want to stay long-term. You think Kawhi Leonard would follow the same path he is now with the Spurs, trusting that they’ll take care of him, if he was with the current Sixers team instead? Absolutely not.

The team is rebuilding and I’m patient, happy to ride it out. No one knows when this team will be close to being competitive and that doesn’t matter either. What will matter is if in 5 years time there is still no cohesion between the players because the FO didn’t do the best job they could do at trying to develop the talent they had. I just hope I’ll have a third distinct memory to add to my list before then.