Philadelphia early offseason in review (HW/bondom34/dbrandon/BullyKing/jayjaysee)

[NBAMythbuster]

I’d dispute that. I think the Spurs (and to a lesser extent OKC) are two of the (many) examples of teams who have a hit rate well above 60% (using the metric for success I outlined above). In fact it’s genuinely difficult to go through the Spurs draft history and find misses on their picks. .

Its difficult if you don't want to do any work and just type walls of text containing absolute nonsense. Just from the past 5 years:

2010 draft: 1st round pick 20: James Anderson
Available on board: Hassan Whiteside, Trevor Booker

2011 draft: 1st round pick 29: Corey Joseph
Jimmy Butler was picked with the very next pick.
Also available on board: Chandler Parsons, Isiah Thomas

2012 draft: No first round picks

2013 draft: 1st round pick 28: Livio Jean Charles
Available on board: Allen Crabbe

2014 draft: 1st round pick 30: Kyle Anderson
Available on board: Nikola Jokic, Jordan Clarkson

It's amusing that you make a post accusing me of intellectual laziness, while typing a reply that shows you didn't read my posts properly. I said multiple times, my standard for whether a GM has done a good job is whether the guy they drafted was worth the draft slot, eg "if you had the 9th pick, did you get the 9th best player or thereabouts?" (and for heaven's sake, the text you quoted from my post even says "using my criteria"). So to then make a post that says "hey, the Spurs should have drafted Allen Crabbe over Livio" completely misses the point (not to mention Livio hasn't actually played yet). I was quite explicit in this, repeatedly noting that I did not judge Hinkie for missing on Gobert or G-Bo or the like. You could save us both time if you just read my post properly next time instead of picking out a sentence out of context. You'll also note I said the Spurs rarely missed, not that they never did, and I noted in another thread you were participating in that James Anderson was a "rare miss". There's very few of them though, since looking at the reaches you've made above it's pretty clear Kyle and CoJo were at least the 29th and 30th best players in their drafts, and with Livio we just don't know yet (I also don't think it's at all clearJokic or Clarkson will have better careers than Kyle btw, not that it's relevant to the point I was making).

[Slava]

I’d dispute that. I think the Spurs (and to a lesser extent OKC) are two of the (many) examples of teams who have a hit rate well above 60% (using the metric for success I outlined above). In fact it’s genuinely difficult to go through the Spurs draft history and find misses on their picks. .

Its difficult if you don't want to do any work and just type walls of text containing absolute nonsense. Just from the past 5 years:

2010 draft: 1st round pick 20: James Anderson
Available on board: Hassan Whiteside, Trevor Booker

2011 draft: 1st round pick 29: Corey Joseph
Jimmy Butler was picked with the very next pick.
Also available on board: Chandler Parsons, Isiah Thomas

2012 draft: No first round picks

2013 draft: 1st round pick 28: Livio Jean Charles
Available on board: Allen Crabbe

2014 draft: 1st round pick 30: Kyle Anderson
Available on board: Nikola Jokic, Jordan Clarkson

It's amusing that you make a post accusing me of intellectual laziness, while typing a reply that shows you didn't read my posts properly. I said multiple times, my standard for whether a GM has done a good job is whether the guy they drafted was worth the draft slot, eg "if you had the 9th pick, did you get the 9th best player or thereabouts?" (and for heaven's sake, the text you quoted from my post even says "using my criteria"). So to then make a post that says "hey, the Spurs should have drafted Allen Crabbe over Livio" completely misses the point (not to mention Livio hasn't actually played yet). I was quite explicit in this, repeatedly noting that I did not judge Hinkie for missing on Gobert or G-Bo or the like. You could save us both time if you just read my post properly next time instead of picking out a sentence out of context. You'll also note I said the Spurs rarely missed, not that they never did, and I noted in another thread you were participating in that James Anderson was a "rare miss". There's very few of them though, since looking at the reaches you've made above it's pretty clear Kyle and CoJo were at least the 29th and 30th best players in their drafts, and with Livio we just don't know yet (I also don't think it's at all clearJokic or Clarkson will have better careers than Kyle btw, not that it's relevant to the point I was making).

If someone wants to blame me for this, please raise your hand.

[MoneyTalks41890]

I think they are getting back on track. They should trade Noel for Bradley/Rozier and draft one of the PGs this year and they will be pretty set.

[NBAMythbuster]

If someone wants to blame me for this, please raise your hand.

Or you know, you could write a proper reply to my post that either:
a) covers why you disagree with my comments above, or
b) retracting your earlier criticism of my comments as having been based on a failure to read my post properly.
That's how we do things in my neck of the woods.

[HartfordWhalers]

There definitely aren't 11 people from the 2013 draft I would take over the Lakers top 3 protected 2017 1st, (unprotected 2018). To the extent that MCW was the means to that pick, and that you couldn't just get that pick with someone who was just an 11th best rookie and wasn't given such a high usage (rookie of the year!) role I think it is fair to say that pick outperformed slot, and easily.
6th seems a perfectly appropriate ranking for Noel.

Embiid and Saric people will stick with their preconceived notions on as we have no other evidence to go on. And along that line, I will do the same and say that I would have Saric above 12th at this point. But you cannot gloss over Philly getting a 1st rounder and a high 2nd out of faking interest in Payton at 10 to the point of taking him.
I would say that McDanels and Grant outperformed slot.

Other than the big Okafor debate that has been covered, if the argument is: "so long as the guy you got at #15 was worth the #15 pick" then the past drafts have met that or have the verdict still out on guys that haven't played yet. But go ahead and conclude that test is failed with a block of ranting text.

[NBAMythbuster]

Well now you're shifting the topic to whether Hinkie was a good trader (he was), versus whether he could draft (his record is pretty meh). The question is whether MCW was a top 11 player in that draft, not if he was able to later swindle the Bucks/Lakers in a trade for MCW. Bad trades happen all the time, Hinkie was definitely good in grabbing such opportunities, but he'd undoubtedly have been able to get even more back in trades if the initial asset he was trying to move was a more valuable player (like G-Bo, Gobert, Adams, etc), so that doesn't fly. Philly also did not get a 1st rounder in the Saric trade, they got back their own first which had highly contingent protections that might have seen it unable to convey to the Magic anytime soon (and by the time it conveyed it might not be as good). At any rate, the trade for Saric is not an assessment of Saric as a draft pick.

[BullyKing]

Well now you're shifting the topic to whether Hinkie was a good trader (he was), versus whether he could draft (his record is pretty meh). The question is whether MCW was a top 11 player in that draft, not if he was able to later swindle the Bucks/Lakers in a trade for MCW. Bad trades happen all the time, Hinkie was definitely good in grabbing such opportunities, but he'd undoubtedly have been able to get even more back in trades if the initial asset he was trying to move was a more valuable player (like G-Bo, Gobert, Adams, etc), so that doesn't fly. Philly also did not get a 1st rounder in the Saric trade, they got back their own first which had highly contingent protections that might have seen it unable to convey to the Magic anytime soon (and by the time it conveyed it might not be as good). At any rate, the trade for Saric is not an assessment of Saric as a draft pick.

It's impossible to take you seriously with arguments like this.

[HartfordWhalers]

Well now you're shifting the topic to whether Hinkie was a good trader (he was), versus whether he could draft (his record is pretty meh). The question is whether MCW was a top 11 player in that draft, not if he was able to later swindle the Bucks/Lakers in a trade for MCW. Bad trades happen all the time, Hinkie was definitely good in grabbing such opportunities, but he'd undoubtedly have been able to get even more back in trades if the initial asset he was trying to move was a more valuable player (like G-Bo, Gobert, Adams, etc), so that doesn't fly. Philly also did not get a 1st rounder in the Saric trade, they got back their own first which had highly contingent protections that might have seen it unable to convey to the Magic anytime soon (and by the time it conveyed it might not be as good). At any rate, the trade for Saric is not an assessment of Saric as a draft pick.

So, lets summarize this:

MCW: Drafted 11th
Performance before trade: All rookie team, ROTY, (Seems better than 11th)
Traded for Lakers pick (Seems better than 11th)
Performance after the trade (No longer seems the 11th best in his draft class)

NBAMythbuster Conclusion: Was a bad pick.

That conclusion relies on discounting MCW's performance while with Philly, and his return he got for Philly, all in favor of his performance on another team after Philly cashed out. That is not just attempting to use perfect hindsight to judge things, it is also applying the hindsight to literally the one category of production that won't ever effect Philly.

As the for the pick Philly got back in the Saric trade, the protections on it dropped to just top 8. If we want to wait a couple of years so we can use perfect hindsight on the value of the pick and pretend it doesn't have value now, I can wait.

[NBAMythbuster]

Saying a guy was all-rookie team is not the way to assess how good he was. You're creating a false point in time comparison to try and obscure the fact that MCW is just not a very good player, and he was not taken to be traded for the Lakers pick he was taken because Hinkie genuinely thought he was the best guy available... and Hinkie was just wrong.

The protections on the Saric pick they got back are problematic because you know Philly has incentives to screw around with the protection if they think they're in danger of losing the pick (e.g. by tanking/not-tanking as much that year).

[jayjaysee]

So we all agree it's about time for Okafor for CJ threads again?

[jayjaysee]

Saying a guy was all-rookie team is not the way to assess how good he was. You're creating a false point in time comparison to try and obscure the fact that MCW is just not a very good player, and he was not taken to be traded for the Lakers pick he was taken because Hinkie genuinely thought he was the best guy available... and Hinkie was just wrong.

The protections on the Saric pick they got back are problematic because you know Philly has incentives to screw around with the protection if they think they're in danger of losing the pick (e.g. by tanking/not-tanking as much that year).

So your first paragraph shows you don't accept Hinkie's plan of tanking while flipping assets. The LAL pick is worth more than the 11th best player in the 2013 NBA draft. Using your drafting logic we'd be choosing from the 2nd WORST player in this group (Zeller/Olyny/Len/MCW/Dieng/Bazz/Crabbe) because the top 9 all seem better than them, **with Dennis Schroder getting put in the top 9 because the Hawks believe in him enough to move on from Teague and they know more about basketball than I do, though I would put him at the bottom***. I'd rather have the LAL pick than any of them today. Honestly, would you?

Using your draft logic you can't say "No I'd rather have Gobert/Giannis" because hindsight would be league wide. Or at least league-wide enough that they both would be gone by 11.

The second you want to show you would keep tanking for two more seasons (today) to keep the pick. That would support a what 7 year rebuild. Which would be really difficult to accomplish with your hindsight of drafting actual bpa.

So... Hinkie is horrible no matter what in your actual opinion.

But if you look at what Hinkie's actual plan was and how it was executed... He did exactly what he planned and the only issue they have is 3 centers. Which, if you can refute reports and hindsight draft and ignore the actual goals he had... Then I will use the way he executed his plan as decent evidence that one of the two (Jah/Noel) would have been traded before January last year if Jerry wasn't shadowing him.

[HotelVitale]

This is an utterly bizarre analogy. Teams like the Spurs and OKC aren’t consistently outdrafting other teams because of “luck”, there’s a reason some teams scout and develop well, and others scout and develop poorly. It doesn’t mean those smart teams are only using their intuition, to the contrary we have alot of evidence they’re using alot more than that (the Spurs were leader in analytics, OKC has PI’s doing background checks on prospects, etc).

Not trying to sound like a wise old head, but I'm not taking a weird counter-intuitive stance cuz I want to seem original or make your day harder. The conclusion comes from 20 years of following the draft and 10 years of discussing/researching on these boards. The evidence just fairly clearly says: give a GM enough picks, and they're going to come back somewhere within the average/mean. And give a draft analyst (amateur on these boards or pro) enough times to tell you which sleeper they love and which stud they think is overrated, and they're probably not going to bat better than .500 for long. Not to say that all FOs are equal (some are clearly worse), but I'll just say this--if a team had a computer scan various mock drafts on the internet and chose whoever was highest ranked on them with their pick, they would be doing as well or better than the average team.

To use your own thing (mythbusting) on you for a sec, if you think that OKC running background checks makes a big difference, then you'd have to figure out why they chose Mitch McGary, Archie Goodwin, and Perry Jones with four 1st rounders in the past five years. All of those guys have some mental red flags that people knew about and that have hindered their development. My guess is that OKC took them because they had some real upside and were worth gambling on despite them not quite seeming all there at times. That's just what drafting is--balancing potential vs everything that might help/hinder development. Putting too much stock in mental issues is what lets Andre Drummond slip past Terrence Ross, plus Cousins past Wes Johnson, etc. Sometimes it matters, sometimes it doesn't--there's no magic that lets you know how an 18 year-old athletic specimen will have his body, mind, motor skills, nervous system, etc react when placed in a very specific environment and asked to do certain things. (Also, another piece of my stance is that picks that seem like awesome steals generally come exactly where everyone thinks they will--nearly everyone had Giannis going in the teens and Batum in the 20s, while nearly everyone had huge-upside busts like Sene or Robert Swift also going where they were chosen.)

[HotelVitale]

Orlando was widely and credibly reported to be dying to draft Zinger at #5 (in advance of him blowing up). Teams don’t all view prospects the same way. Some are good at drafting and some are not, and the results they produce are the major way we can determine this.

EVERY team with a top-5 pick considered Porzingis last year--he was a consensus top 10 guy for every single minute of the year last year and very very widely considered top-5 for the last two months before the draft. (A little like Frank Ntilikina this year, not in the top 3 but anywhere from 4-10 after that). But most of those teams would still have taken Okafor or Russell over him, and the teams that wouldn't have still would've killed themselves over the choice and wouldn't be geniuses or anything--they just would've favored one little bit of intel or one gut feeling a little more than the others. All of these teams are well-informed and have million dollar scouting units, in the end there's still way way more you don't and can't know about these young young players.

For the record, I don't think Hinkie's draft strategy has worked well overall, and I don't mean this stance as a way of propping up the cult of Sam. (Though I didn't dislike any of his picks at the time of the draft, and he was obviously obscenely well informed about them before making them.) It's a general approach that I think most long-time draft followers have; you obviously have to be more subtle looking at individual picks than just 'all GMs are wildly guessing, hence are equal' but it's better place to start than 'GMs who take guys who end up good are geniuses, those who take busts are clowns.'

[bondom34]

And Philly was linked to KP as well. I don't know what the point is there.

[NBAMythbuster]

So your first paragraph shows you don't accept Hinkie's plan of tanking while flipping assets. The LAL pick is worth more than the 11th best player in the 2013 NBA draft. Using your drafting logic we'd be choosing from the 2nd WORST player in this group (Zeller/Olyny/Len/MCW/Dieng/Bazz/Crabbe) because the top 9 all seem better than them, **with Dennis Schroder getting put in the top 9 because the Hawks believe in him enough to move on from Teague and they know more about basketball than I do, though I would put him at the bottom***. I'd rather have the LAL pick than any of them today. Honestly, would you?

Here is the argument you are basically making; "I fell off the balcony and broke my hip... but it was a good move, because I met my future wife in hospital". That is not a good argument. It relies on a false causation, and also bestows upon Hinkie a low level of prescience, in that he could apparently see into the future and know that this was the right guy to draft because he would be able to move him for the Lakers pick. That is not an intelligent or logical way to assess draft picks. Instead you should assess the draft pick for who was drafted. A different move down the road is assessed by itself, and speaks to Hinkie's skill as a trader. It says nothing about his skill in drafting. MCW was not drafted because Hinkie knew he'd trade him for the Lakers pick down the road, he was drafted because Hinkie genuinely thought he was the best guy available. He was not the best guy available, and more importantly he wasn't the 11th best player in the draft. He just isn't very good at all. He was therefore a bad pick, Hinkie fate magic notwithstanding.

Using your draft logic you can't say "No I'd rather have Gobert/Giannis" because hindsight would be league wide. Or at least league-wide enough that they both would be gone by 11.

Are you reading my posts? Seriously, I covered this at least 3 times already. Please, go back and read my earlier posts. To summarize:
- Hinkie isn't being judged for missing on G-Bo, he's being judged if the guy he takes isn't the 11th/whatever best pick in the draft.
- "league wide" opinions are not known to us. The media is often guessing and wrong. For all we know a lot of these teams had Giannis/Whoever ranked incredibly high. Saying "this is what everyone thought at the time" is not a sensible assumption to make, because you don't know teams were all thinking that (and teams are investing tens of millions into scouting guys, while draft websites are not, so that is no help either).

Just on Giannis for a minute. There were heavy rumours leading into the draft, which I fully believe, that the Hawks had a promise with Giannis to take him at the very next pick with Shroeder. Both guys had shut it down, and the Hawks had his medical report which they refused to share. Some people even speculated that the Bucks took him because they knew the Hawks would, and there was nobody else they really liked. That's just a passing comment though.

Hinkie did not succeed exactly as he planned. A lot of the picks he made haven't shown anything yet, and some of them seem clearly to have been worse than the talent that they should have represented (e.g. did the 3rd pick get you the 3rd best player in the draft, etc).

Not trying to sound like a wise old head, but I'm not taking a weird counter-intuitive stance cuz I want to seem original or make your day harder. The conclusion comes from 20 years of following the draft and 10 years of discussing/researching on these boards. The evidence just fairly clearly says: give a GM enough picks, and they're going to come back somewhere within the average/mean.

Don't worry, you don't sound like that at all. There's just no evidence for this proposition. Some GM's have fantastic draft records (Buford, Presti, etc), others have terrible draft records and seem almost functionally unable to make good picks (e.g. The current Kings front office, former Cleveland GM Chris Grant, former Cleveland GM Jim Paxson, etc). The idea this is chance doesn't hold up at all. A broken clock can be right twice a day, but that doesn't mean it's not broken. You're confusing the fact that sometimes a good/bad GM will get it wrong/right with the idea that there is no such thing as a good/bad GM. There is such a thing as a functional watch, just as there is such a thing as a broken one.

[HartfordWhalers]

So, Philly's list of big deals they didn't get done:
Trading Noel, Covington, and 2 late 1sts for a pg that is old for a prospect, has an injury history and cannot shoot so far.
Massive money to Jamal Crawford
Massive money to Manu Ginobli
Massive money to JR Smith

I'm a skeptic, so that JR had a big offer from Philly feels wrong. Creating leverage out of a fake offer isn't new. But either everyone had a big offer from Philly or no one did, because this string of aging sg's being offered big money is up to a full pattern and at this point I think the whole pattern is fake or real.

All of which suggests that Philly might not be endearing themselves to other teams' which was supposed to be what Colangelo fixed. And yet he hasn't gotten the trades he needs to done.

Meanwhile, Philly's big cap space has gotten them a pg that is injured before he ever played from a pre-existing injury in Bayless that will keep him out for a top secret undisclosed amount of time; and a pg that cannot defend for his life in Sergio. So, we are looking at a chance that the opening day lineup of the new win now-er Sixers includes McConnell after all the talk about how bad Hinkie was for no pg.

It is knee jerk, and I will admit it as such, but I'm leaning towards that full downgrade to a D+ at this point.

[NBAMythbuster]

Given how bad the 76ers have looked in preseason I'm looking pretty good so far in my skepticism that they could get anywhere near that vegas line of 27-28 wins, which always looked crazy.

[HartfordWhalers]

Quarter pole update!

Record: 4W 16L

Roster moves since thread:
Training camp cuts: Cat Barber, Brandon Paul, James Webb, Shawn Long and Elton Brand (with 1m for showing up to camp)
Trade: Jerami Grant for Ersan Ilyasova and a one time top 20 protected OKC 1st

Trends and developments since the offseason:
-- Stauskas had his team option picked up for next year, and has had a mini resurgence since then after a brutal camp. 55% on 2's, 41.5% on 3's, and an absolutely unsustainable 61.8% TS%. But he has also looked like an NBA athlete capable of driving and dishing (NBA.com has him with 88 drives -- for the most on the Sixers -- with a good scoring percentage on them).
-- Covington's defense has been even better than last year, but his shot wasn't falling for the first 15 games or so.
-- Injuries have meant that Embiid and Okafor have barely shared the court (just under 2 minutes before last night), and Noel hasn't played with them at all.
-- Ersan Ilyasova has stolen a starting pf spot as a court spacer. And a guy who draws a lot of charges.
-- Ben Simmons might guard pg's when he is back. But he might not.
-- Okafor's offense is still very good, but his rebounding isn't where it should be. Defense is better than it gets credit for.
-- Embiid is everything. Everything is Embiid.
-- Lakers have been better than expected, but have done so off what looks like unsustainable Lou Will and Nick Young. Something like 538 has them the 6th worst team in teh league still, but also finishing tied 10th+ worst record after a hot start. So Philly looks much more likely to get the pick (great), but a potentially much worse pick (not great)

With a touch of hindsight modification to assessment:

Key Losses:
Sam Hinkie (GM -- in April so maybe before this window should start but Philly is in the offseason then)

Really no change in assessment here.

Still feels important and sadly gone. But not forgotten.

Losses:
Kendall Marshall
Christian Wood
Ish Smith
Elton Brand.

Really no change in assessment here.

I still miss Wood with no evidence for why. The heart wants what the heart wants. Ish with a 47.3% TS% is better than his 46% with Philly last year, and also why he is gone. That or defense.

Draft:
#1 Ben Simmons
#24 Timothé Luwawu-Cabarrot
#26 Furkan Korkmaz (stashed)

Really no change in assessment here.

Simmons -- Nothing new as he has been injured. But was throwing entry passes from a chair into EMbiid and Noel going 1 on 1 versus each other. This feels good.

Timothé Luwawu-Cabarrot --

I'm not sure here. There were people that liked him top 10-14 in the draft as a toolsy 3&D prospect, and there is the fact that he is already 21 and only has 1 season of good long range shooting and a very weak statistical profile. Dejounte Murray is the obvious alternative pick, and he was 1.5 years younger, but I get the TLC pick even if I am nervous that it will be a bust of a pick.

It is still just really early, but he has shown some nice game feel. And not much else, in limited time. So, all of above feels about right. Oh, and add pining unsustainably for Pat McCaw to the list of potential Sixers fans' fetishes. I'm not adding Malcolm Brogdon to that list, he may be shooting close to 40% from 3 but also is a lot older still.

Furkan Korkmaz -- Still young. Still raw. Still a shooter (~50% from 3 this year in limited minutes). Still stashed. Still seems perfect.

Trades:
Kendall Marshall to Utah Jazz for Tibor Pleiss, two 2017 second-rounders and cash (TBD).
Rights to Chukwudiebere Maduabum for Sasha Kaun and cash (TBD)
New: Jerami Grant for Ersan Ilyasova and OKC '20 top 20 protected 1st*
*2 2nds if not 21-30 the first year it can be conveyed, 2 years after the OKC obligation to Utah)

Also lots of non-trade rumors primarily including:
Noel, Covington, #24 and #26 for #3 (target Dunn) rejected by Boston
Noel and LAL '17 1st (top 3 protected then unprotected 2018) for #3 rejected by Philly
Noel, Covington, #24 and #26 for #5 (target Dunn) rejected by Minnesota

Mostly no change in assessment here, until the new trade.

The salary dumps for cash/2nds are still great. But I should revisit the non-trades, and the new trade:

In terms of the non-trades before:

I would have gone Murray over Dunn and I love Noel and would be glad to see Philly keep him, but the general gist of Noel + filler for blue chip pg on rookie scale just starting makes a ton of sense. Philly tried to do a consolidation trade. And given what I expect of LAL next year, Philly was right to keep that pick and not bite on overpaying to show something right now.

If LAL hits the top end of their new projection, I might regret that. The LAL pick is going to be interesting as it could fall back towards I wonder if it conveys, or push towards the end of the lotto. However, my preference for Murray with Simmons over Dunn feels the sort of early vindicated that should bring out calls towards MCW and counting chickens too soon.

The Grant trade has been good as Ersan is helpful, and the pick is hopefully a nice payoff much later. Grant is such an intriquing athlete, but Philly cannot play 5 athletes and zero shooters at a time, or 4 non shooters and Embiid.

The offense is a little better with Ersan (+1.7 ORating), but it was much worse with Jerami (-8.9 ORating in small sample but last year was similar if less extreme). And that better with Ersan is probably just more minutes of Embiid. Anyway, as a trade it was good. If it is a sign of rushing to mediocrity and re-signing Ersan it will be bad. I'm hoping the pick was key in the deal, but given the fragile expectations surrounding BC, it is hard to assess this on its own and not worry about it as a first step on a thousand mile march.

Free Agency:
Bryan Colangelo (again in April so maybe not applicable)
Jerryd Bayless 3/$27m declining
Gerald Henderson 2/$18m (2nd year ungtd)
Sergio Rodriguez 1/$8m
Ben Simmons rookie scale
Dario Saric rookie scale
Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot rookie scale
Elton Brand 1/$1.5m (nongtd)
James Webb, Shawn Long, Brandon Paul and Cat Barber all to 2/$1.4m (mostly ungtd)

Mostly no change in assessment here, but Bayless injury doesn't help that signing.

Sergio and Henderson are what I expected. I wish the team would flip one of them this trade deadline but fully expect no such Hinkie move.

As for Bayless, before:

I'm pretty happy with how Philly played the 1 year contract market. On the other hand, Bayless got 3 years. Declining. But 3 years and 9m per. On a good team Bayless makes sense as an 8th man. On a bad team he can be a starter as Milwaukee showed. Now, he shouldn't be a starter, but Philly isn't any better of a team than Milwaukee was last year. And Bayless playing a sometimes pg sometimes off ball shooter to Simmons is a formula that he could fill capably enough based off last year. Still, 3 years is a lot to lock into for a guy that is very so so. I'm not a fan of this signing, even if I understand its reasoning. Would I rather have paid Bayless 2/25 with the 2nd year fully unguaranteed? Yes, but 12.5m guaranteed probably wasn't enough to get him,and the team obviously felt like they needed to make a break from not signing anyone (long term).

Same basically. But now that Bayless has a ruptured tendon in his left wrist that obviously takes away some of his value and ability to contribute in that short term he was mostly brought in for.
It will be interesting to see what he can show going forward, and if he is full strength when Simmons returns.

Current Depth Chart:
PG: Jerry Bayless (if healthy), Sergio Rodriquez, T.J. McConnell, (Ben Simmons injured????)
SG: Gerald Henderson, Nik Stauskas, Hollis Thompson
SF: Robert Covington, Nik Stauskas, Hollis Thompson, Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot,
PF: Ersan Ilyasova, Dario Saric, Jahlil Okafor, (Ben Simmons injured)
C: Joel Embiid, Jahlil Okafor, Richaun Holmes, (Nerlens Noel injured)

Changed a bunch. Still fluid as all heck.

Needs:

A PG and a SG of the future
Some players to be able to flex down a position or three without losing effectiveness -- Okafor to pf, Saric to sf, Simmons to pg, Grant to sf, Covington to sf or even sg.
A (center) trade.

Really no change in assessment here.

Additional Thoughts:

The Lakers pick is once again going to be huge for Philly. After all, they still need a pg and a sg long term starter, so having two picks in the top 7 would be huge.
The Kings swap is another wildcard, and could be huge if you believe the Vegas odds that they are the 5th worst team in the league.
Colangelo and ownership patience. Are they willing to wait how long on a center trade? How long before they have better guards than Bayless and Henderson starting?

Really no change in assessment here.

Projected Win/Loss: 24-58

Really no change in assessment here. The team is on pace for 20.5 wins, and has been missing Noel (or his trade return), Simmons, Embiid has been at 24 minutes (now 28 already), and Okafor was on a minutes restriction until a few games ago. Maybe this goes to 23, but it doesn't fall far off 24 where I will keep it.

Off-Season Grade: C-

I could have gone D. I left off swapping Hinkie for Colangelo or it would have been an F, so keep that in mind if you think I still went to gentle. I think I might have. In terms of the draft, I'm good with it but whether it was a perfectly fine draft doing what you should do, or an amazing use of 2 late 1sts depends upon where Luwawu should have gone. Besides that, at the end of the day Philly got a bunch of stop gaps, Bayless, and 2 2nds for something close to 60m in cap space. And didn't address the center position or get a long term pg or sg. That feels worse than a C. On the other hand, they didn't lose any long term upside locking in overpaid vets in general (with one exception), or trading off 1sts (Lakers, #24, #26). They didn't dump Brett Brown for D'Antoni, or Noel for a 30 year old pg. That was enough to keep it just out of a D range, but not by much.

Really no change in assessment here. This one was boring.