76ers will become dynasty in 10 years

[PSUEagle]

I have no idea if Hinkie's plan leads to a dynasty (simple math alone says it's unlikely) but I just wanted to make a quick point about the Sixers when it comes to the OKC situation with Harden: the 76ers have different ownership.

Josh Harris (Sixers owner) showed a willingness to spend money his first couple years with Doug Collins when the team was actively trying to compete. He signed off on amnestying Brand, was willing to take on Bynum, funded a state of the art practice facility currently in construction, bought a D-League team, etc.

I'm confident that if things go perfectly (fingers crossed) and the team has 3-4 max level guys he'll step up and pay them/go into the luxury tax.

[BullyKing]

Dynasties don't rely on two injury prone big men. Until Noel and Embiid can show they can play 3 durable seasons in a row and can lead Philadelphia to the playoffs, then let these talks about potential dynasty begin. Right now Philadelphia are still a tanking franchise who can't be taken seriously in terms of competition. Drafting injury prone players so they can get another shot at the lottery... Losing culture breathes in deeply into these young players especially Noel and Embiid who never won anything at the collegiate level.

Look, what you say is obviously nonsense but I'm wondering, what makes Noel injury prone in your mind other than ingrained bias? Does someone tearing their ACL once in a freak play make them injury prone?

[Goudelock]

Question for Sixer fans (this may've been answered already earlier in the thread, but I'm not reading 9 pages to check): Do you think that the team will try to get the 7th or 8th seed next year? Assuming that they pick Russell 3rd, then you have a good young nucleus of Noel, Embiid, and Russell (plus decent role players in Grant and Covington) that could probably get you there.

[BullyKing]

Question for Sixer fans (this may've been answered already earlier in the thread, but I'm not reading 9 pages to check): Do you think that the team will try to get the 7th or 8th seed next year? Assuming that they pick Russell 3rd, then you have a good young nucleus of Noel, Embiid, and Russell (plus decent role players in Grant and Covington) that could probably get you there.

I think the plan remains the same as its always been with a focus on the long term development of the core. I guess its easier to say it this way: If the Sixers are in the playoff hunt, they're not going to bench players or anything for the purpose of losing and being in the lottery. But at the same time, they're not going to do something short-sighted like trading Saric for a veteran role player to make it happen either. The same can be said of free agency. If there is a good player out there that they think can grow with the team and be had at a reasonable price, great. If not, they will not sign or give minutes to guys at the expense of the young players for no reason (like Orlando last year, IMO).

[nikster]

It looks like the twolves are farther in the rebuild than the sixers

Wolves had a superstar player to trade for one of the most hyped number one picks in a long time. and they were lucky with injuries this year allowing them to get the 1st overall pick. without those 2 strokes of luck wolves have a pretty ugly future.

Plus the 76ers have been stockpiling assests, they are playing the long game. 76ers potentially have a core of Noel/Embiid/Saric/Russell while still owning 4 potential 1st round picks in 2016 and tons of 2nd rounders they could use to find a steal. I think in 3 years time the 76ers are looking a lot better than the wolves

But that's the point, right? Sometimes strategy and the long play don't mean near as much as luck or whatever else. You're explaining why the Wolves have a better future, not how that makes them worse than the Sizers. How can you know the Sixers are going to be in better shape? The Wolves have 2 1s and didn't embarrass themselves to get them. Wiggins and KAT are worth more than the package of players and picks the sixers have right now, and that's before factoring in the other young players that 'Sota has Shabazz, LaVine and Dieng.

There's strategy and then there's getting 3 number ones in 5 years, and having the best player on the planet be from your state. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

This strategy by philidelphia has been recent. They hired Hinkie at the start of the 2013-14 season. its only been 2 years, and there status went from treadmill team in a weak east with no future to a potential dynasty (an obvious stretch, but its crazy we are having this conversation only 2 years later).
and i think philly has more assests. I give the combo of Saric, Embiid, Noel & Russell (or whoever they draft) the edge over Wiggins, Lavine and KAT. and i take phillys collection of picks over Shabazz, and Dieng. I dont think Shabazz has a high ceiling at all and he hasnt even played 80 games in 2 years. Dieng is a solid starting big but in no means a game changer. He has little to no offensive game and he is already 25 years old.

[winter_mute_13]

I agree that you need more than a decent amount of luck but you also make your own luck.

Luck is players like Bennett going ahead of Noel, trading your only asset to get Noel and another lottery pick is being smart and taking advantage of a situation. If Embiid lives up to his extremely high potential then it was luck that he hurt his foot before the draft and dropped to 3 instead of going 1 to Cleveland but the Sixers got themselves in position to pick 3rd instead of 8th or 9th (whether or not you have a distaste for the idea of tanking, it helped the franchise). Are we even talking a little about the idea of the franchise of having a great future if its core is MCW, KCP and Vonleh along with the 10th pick this year?

You have to be in a position to be lucky, lot easier to get lucky and get Embiid and Russell/Mudiay at 3 than taking your chances on Cameron Payne at 11. Not to say you can't strike gold later in the draft but the odds are just not as good. Increasing those odds for yourself is the part of the process you can control.

I don't disagree with that, but I wonder if the single minded pursuit of the best draft position possible is all that matters.

Time and again, you see guys taken at #10 or even higher turn into stars, while guys taken earlier drop out of the league. Is it just the uncertainty inherent in the draft process? I like to think player development matters too.

Take MCW. I think he's a talented guy who could have turned out differently. Philly tried to turn him into Iverson basically, because he was all the scoring they had, but that's not his game. After getting traded, he's looked a lot better now on a team with more options. Time will tell how good he can be. But it seems telling to me that Philly decided to punt on his development, deciding instead to cash in on a new lottery ticket.

Now I'm really impressed with coach Brett Brown, and I'm sure he tries his best. But there's only so much development you can do on a roster with virtually no veterans, and while not trying to compete for any real goals (yes I know coach Brown gives them made-up goals). At some point I think a team has to decide that they'll roll with what they have and try to compete, but it seems like the Sixers are very far from this point still.

And I also have this sneaking suspicion that Hinkie is conducting a perpetual rebuild in order to prolong his GM life. Tanking = no expectations, no pressure on the GM. How long can he keep this up?

Anyway, as always time will tell. Tanking is only like step 1 out of 100 in the process of building a dynasty. It's what you do after the tanking stops that matters.

[BlackKnight]

Question for Sixer fans (this may've been answered already earlier in the thread, but I'm not reading 9 pages to check): Do you think that the team will try to get the 7th or 8th seed next year? Assuming that they pick Russell 3rd, then you have a good young nucleus of Noel, Embiid, and Russell (plus decent role players in Grant and Covington) that could probably get you there.

I think most Sixers fans are done with tanking mode and would be thrilled with making the playoffs. It's not probable though, we're too young. But who knows, it's the east.

[j_n]

Sixers fans here deserve a lot of respect, every Sixers thread on the GB is basically 5+ pages of posters bashing the Sixers and their rebuilding strategy but they still show up and defend their team in a respectful and realistic fashion, good on you Sixers fans, I hope your team prove the haters wrong.

[lordjeff05]

This strategy by philidelphia has been recent. They hired Hinkie at the start of the 2013-14 season. its only been 2 years, and there status went from treadmill team in a weak east with no future to a potential dynasty (an obvious stretch, but its crazy we are having this conversation only 2 years later).
and i think philly has more assests. I give the combo of Saric, Embiid, Noel & Russell (or whoever they draft) the edge over Wiggins, Lavine and KAT. and i take phillys collection of picks over Shabazz, and Dieng. I dont think Shabazz has a high ceiling at all and he hasnt even played 80 games in 2 years. Dieng is a solid starting big but in no means a game changer. He has little to no offensive game and he is already 25 years old.

You didn't finish the sentence though. They went from treadmill team to...what exactly? Do we even know? Other than currently they are a joke of a product right now on the court. And Minnesota's rebuild is just as current.

Also we are going to have to agree to disagree about the value of the prospects. If offered Saric and Embiid for Wiggins, I would say no quickly. If offered Noel and Russell for KAT I'd say no just as quickly, and that's before factoring in Lavine. Sprinkling in the other 4 potential picks doesn't do much for me either.

So to recap, we have one team that has offered an embarrassing product on purpose on the basketball court, and another team who kind of backed in to a rebuild due to injuries, ineptitude and luck, and they are both at about the same place in terms of rebuilding.

The difference is, one team by design, has had no pride in the product they put out on the basketball court.

[lordjeff05]

Wolves had a superstar player to trade for one of the most hyped number one picks in a long time. and they were lucky with injuries this year allowing them to get the 1st overall pick. without those 2 strokes of luck wolves have a pretty ugly future.

Plus the 76ers have been stockpiling assests, they are playing the long game. 76ers potentially have a core of Noel/Embiid/Saric/Russell while still owning 4 potential 1st round picks in 2016 and tons of 2nd rounders they could use to find a steal. I think in 3 years time the 76ers are looking a lot better than the wolves

But that's the point, right? Sometimes strategy and the long play don't mean near as much as luck or whatever else. You're explaining why the Wolves have a better future, not how that makes them worse than the Sizers. How can you know the Sixers are going to be in better shape? The Wolves have 2 1s and didn't embarrass themselves to get them. Wiggins and KAT are worth more than the package of players and picks the sixers have right now, and that's before factoring in the other young players that 'Sota has Shabazz, LaVine and Dieng.

There's strategy and then there's getting 3 number ones in 5 years, and having the best player on the planet be from your state. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

This is some mindless drivel for early in the morning.

What about it exactly is drivel?

[DickGrayson]

Dynasties don't rely on two injury prone big men. Until Noel and Embiid can show they can play 3 durable seasons in a row and can lead Philadelphia to the playoffs, then let these talks about potential dynasty begin. Right now Philadelphia are still a tanking franchise who can't be taken seriously in terms of competition. Drafting injury prone players so they can get another shot at the lottery... Losing culture breathes in deeply into these young players especially Noel and Embiid who never won anything at the collegiate level.

Look, what you say is obviously nonsense but I'm wondering, what makes Noel injury prone in your mind other than ingrained bias? Does someone tearing their ACL once in a freak play make them injury prone?

This is obvious non-sense.
What makes you think Noel ISN'T injury prone?

Show me your evidence.
Then we can have a serious conversation.

Noel broke the growth plate in his left knee back in high school.
You act like the kid had a freak accident injury with ZERO HISTORY OF GETTING HURT.
That's crazy talk.

- Noel was injured in HS
- Noel was injured in 2013
- Noel got hurt in 2014
- Noel was injured in 2015

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/spor ... 07262.html



Can you please show me a year where Noel wasn't hurt or injured?

If you can't, don't bother with this discussion. Unless your Booster Gold with powers to time travel into the future and show us Noel has an 8-12 NBA durable career where he plays 70+ games a season...just stop, just stop. You can't time travel. You're not Booster Gold. You don't know or can present an argument that Noel is a durable player.

[poeman]

Remember when Andrew Bynum was starting Center for the Sixers?

[wickedwrister]

Dynasties don't rely on two injury prone big men. Until Noel and Embiid can show they can play 3 durable seasons in a row and can lead Philadelphia to the playoffs, then let these talks about potential dynasty begin. Right now Philadelphia are still a tanking franchise who can't be taken seriously in terms of competition. Drafting injury prone players so they can get another shot at the lottery... Losing culture breathes in deeply into these young players especially Noel and Embiid who never won anything at the collegiate level.

Look, what you say is obviously nonsense but I'm wondering, what makes Noel injury prone in your mind other than ingrained bias? Does someone tearing their ACL once in a freak play make them injury prone?

This is obvious non-sense.
What makes you think Noel ISN'T injury prone?

Show me your evidence.
Then we can have a serious conversation.

Noel broke the growth plate in his left knee back in high school.
You act like the kid had a freak accident injury with ZERO HISTORY OF GETTING HURT.
That's crazy talk.

- Noel was injured in HS
- Noel was injured in 2013
- Noel got hurt in 2014
- Noel was injured in 2015

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/spor ... 07262.html



Can you please show me a year where Noel wasn't hurt or injured?

If you can't, don't bother with this discussion. Unless your Booster Gold with powers to time travel into the future and show us Noel has an 8-12 NBA durable career where he plays 70+ games a season...just stop, just stop. You can't time travel. You're not Booster Gold. You don't know or can present an argument that Noel is a durable player.

He played 75 games last year and that includes sitting out a game or two for over caution where he asked to play but they held him out and sitting out the last game of the year that no one played in. Kinda hard to argue against things like "wake me when he's played 3 healthy seasons in a row" that I saw elsewhere in this thread when all he is so far in the NBA is 1/1.

[Mik317]

Noel played like 70+ games this year with his skinny ass frame. The bulk of the games he missed was due to a upper respiratory illness and overcaution (and tanking late in the year lol). A lot of players don't play that many games. I do worry about his frame but he had a good year in terms of injury. The ACL was a pure freak thing, and hopefully if he can work on his frame with our staff, learn how to fall better, and just grow into his body (a lot of bigs get dinged up because of this), I have faith that he can be a lot more durable than expected.

Embiid is the one to worry about being injury prone.

[wickedwrister]

I agree that you need more than a decent amount of luck but you also make your own luck.

Luck is players like Bennett going ahead of Noel, trading your only asset to get Noel and another lottery pick is being smart and taking advantage of a situation. If Embiid lives up to his extremely high potential then it was luck that he hurt his foot before the draft and dropped to 3 instead of going 1 to Cleveland but the Sixers got themselves in position to pick 3rd instead of 8th or 9th (whether or not you have a distaste for the idea of tanking, it helped the franchise). Are we even talking a little about the idea of the franchise of having a great future if its core is MCW, KCP and Vonleh along with the 10th pick this year?

You have to be in a position to be lucky, lot easier to get lucky and get Embiid and Russell/Mudiay at 3 than taking your chances on Cameron Payne at 11. Not to say you can't strike gold later in the draft but the odds are just not as good. Increasing those odds for yourself is the part of the process you can control.

I don't disagree with that, but I wonder if the single minded pursuit of the best draft position possible is all that matters.

Time and again, you see guys taken at #10 or even higher turn into stars, while guys taken earlier drop out of the league. Is it just the uncertainty inherent in the draft process? I like to think player development matters too.

Take MCW. I think he's a talented guy who could have turned out differently. Philly tried to turn him into Iverson basically, because he was all the scoring they had, but that's not his game. After getting traded, he's looked a lot better now on a team with more options. Time will tell how good he can be. But it seems telling to me that Philly decided to punt on his development, deciding instead to cash in on a new lottery ticket.

Now I'm really impressed with coach Brett Brown, and I'm sure he tries his best. But there's only so much development you can do on a roster with virtually no veterans, and while not trying to compete for any real goals (yes I know coach Brown gives them made-up goals). At some point I think a team has to decide that they'll roll with what they have and try to compete, but it seems like the Sixers are very far from this point still.

And I also have this sneaking suspicion that Hinkie is conducting a perpetual rebuild in order to prolong his GM life. Tanking = no expectations, no pressure on the GM. How long can he keep this up?

Anyway, as always time will tell. Tanking is only like step 1 out of 100 in the process of building a dynasty. It's what you do after the tanking stops that matters.

I agree that it isn't all that matters. The organization is doing a lot of different things to help build things up, the positioning for draft is just the most outwardly apparent. The Sixers are focused on literally nothing else but player development. Noel goes in after hours to an empty gym and shoots free throws and the next day Brett Brown walks up to him saying he reviewed the footage of Noel shooting free throws and offered him tips on his form. Thomas Robinson was quoted as saying this is the first place he's played in the NBA where the coaches actually talk to him let alone offer him advice on his game (think about the weirdness of that statement for a minute). The Sixers are building a mega practice/training facility right now as well to further help develop players. The organization bought its own D-league affiliate to even have more control over the process. Its not like Hinkie and Brown are just sitting back collecting checks and not trying to make the guys on their team better. With MCW eventually they made a call that they didn't think he could get where they wanted to get him so he was traded.

The part of your post I really want to address is this Bill Simmons pushed junk about Hinkie doing this just to keep his job for an extra year or two. Think about the idea of it. Hinkie has worked his whole life to climb up the ladder to get this job and instead of trying to do the best job he can to keep it forever or make it so he will get another quickly after leaving this one instead he's going to just screw around to try to hold on to this for one extra year and ruin his reputation in the process? How does that make sense? Why would anyone do that? When Hinkie interviewed with the team in 2012 he felt this was their best course of action and told the owners that. They opted to keep Doug Collins and try the Bynum trade and didn't give Hinkie the job. After that blew up, they re interviewed him in 2013 and he got the job saying this was the plan. Ownership has bought in to the long term building plan, Hinkie wouldn't be allowed to pull this off if they weren't. I just don't get how anyone can think about this situation rationally for even a few minutes and think this is all some scheme for Hinkie to just keep his job.

[madmaxmedia]

I would say that it's actually more likely than not that the Sixers DON'T become some sort of dynasty in the next 10 years. But that doesn't make Heinke's strategy bad- even if it has say a 10% chance of success, that's probably better than many other strategies.

I think it is for sure a high risk/high reward strategy, in that it places a high emphasis on the draft rather than signing free agents that may cost more but have a proven track record in the NBA. But at least he will be picking the star or busts himself and totally responsible for it. Another extreme strategy would be clearing out everyone to clear cap space, but the downside to that is no one might come to your party and you have no control over it.

Unfortunately many threads about the Sixers here devolve into "He's a genius!/ He's a moron!" arguments with no middle ground. I would say that at the very least, he's a smart guy who is willing to take a risk. I have no stake in it, so to me it's a pretty interesting situation from a game theory perspective. If you detach emotionally from it, I think it's pretty cool that some team is actually pursuing a strategy to the extreme.

[iMoreland]

Question for Sixer fans (this may've been answered already earlier in the thread, but I'm not reading 9 pages to check): Do you think that the team will try to get the 7th or 8th seed next year? Assuming that they pick Russell 3rd, then you have a good young nucleus of Noel, Embiid, and Russell (plus decent role players in Grant and Covington) that could probably get you there.

No. I really don't care what our record is next year as long as our players develop right and stay healthy. I'd be happy with getting a pick in the 5-10 range again and drafting a scorer like Brandon Ingram. We'll most likely have 2 picks in the 5-10 range next year as well with the Lakers pick.

[mateo82]

I wonder how long the plan can continue. My guess is that there will be problems if they have another setback. Fans will not endure this level of losing forever and ticket sales do matter. I think they have one more year of tanking in them. If Embiid shows a bit of promise it will be enough to buy them another year. That will get them 4 years of tanking. After that I think it's over. If things don't work out they won't be able to say "whoops, let's just start over from the beginning again".

[winter_mute_13]

The part of your post I really want to address is this Bill Simmons pushed junk about Hinkie doing this just to keep his job for an extra year or two. Think about the idea of it. Hinkie has worked his whole life to climb up the ladder to get this job and instead of trying to do the best job he can to keep it forever or make it so he will get another quickly after leaving this one instead he's going to just screw around to try to hold on to this for one extra year and ruin his reputation in the process? How does that make sense? Why would anyone do that? When Hinkie interviewed with the team in 2012 he felt this was their best course of action and told the owners that. They opted to keep Doug Collins and try the Bynum trade and didn't give Hinkie the job. After that blew up, they re interviewed him in 2013 and he got the job saying this was the plan. Ownership has bought in to the long term building plan, Hinkie wouldn't be allowed to pull this off if they weren't. I just don't get how anyone can think about this situation rationally for even a few minutes and think this is all some scheme for Hinkie to just keep his job.

FWIW, I didn't know Bill Simmons was pushing this view. I've posted similar things almost from the start of Hinkie's tenure, when he first outlined his grand plan.

All of what you say may be true. I'm coming from a different perspective, as a fan of analytics in general. Tanking for a draft superstar is an amazingly low probability event, but that's the cornerstone of Hinkie's strategy. Sure, he's doing all he can to increase the odds of that - but that's like going up from 0.1% to 0.2% (all made up numbers, but I believe it's in this kind of range). For someone as smart as Hinkie (and no report about him suggests otherwise), basing his grand strategy on such an improbable event seems... irresponsible at best.

Dunno, maybe I'm just a cynic. Anyway, there's an easy way for Hinkie to counter this sort of criticism. Start the build up phase, end with the tear down already. YMMV.

[Sixerscan]

Dynasties don't rely on two injury prone big men. Until Noel and Embiid can show they can play 3 durable seasons in a row and can lead Philadelphia to the playoffs, then let these talks about potential dynasty begin. Right now Philadelphia are still a tanking franchise who can't be taken seriously in terms of competition. Drafting injury prone players so they can get another shot at the lottery... Losing culture breathes in deeply into these young players especially Noel and Embiid who never won anything at the collegiate level.

Look, what you say is obviously nonsense but I'm wondering, what makes Noel injury prone in your mind other than ingrained bias? Does someone tearing their ACL once in a freak play make them injury prone?

This is obvious non-sense.
What makes you think Noel ISN'T injury prone?

Show me your evidence.
Then we can have a serious conversation.

Noel broke the growth plate in his left knee back in high school.
You act like the kid had a freak accident injury with ZERO HISTORY OF GETTING HURT.
That's crazy talk.

- Noel was injured in HS
- Noel was injured in 2013
- Noel got hurt in 2014
- Noel was injured in 2015

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/spor ... 07262.html



Can you please show me a year where Noel wasn't hurt or injured?

If you can't, don't bother with this discussion. Unless your Booster Gold with powers to time travel into the future and show us Noel has an 8-12 NBA durable career where he plays 70+ games a season...just stop, just stop. You can't time travel. You're not Booster Gold. You don't know or can present an argument that Noel is a durable player.

Lol that 2015 injury is hilarious.

He played 75 games this year. Could have been 76-78 if we weren't blatantly tanking at the end of the year. Very happy with his durability.