Around the League: 2020 Offseason

[Mik317]

Those teams also never had all the constant turnover and an "identity" in place. Going back to even Hinkie, that has not been the case. Each of the last 3 GMs combined to make sure our core players changed from year to year to year via Hinkies asset lust, Bryan getting caught with his dick out and Brand's rush to get stars no matter what. Boston has built via the draft and the main replacement has been their PG all of which had similar games and weaknesses so they fit it (except Kyrie who is probably crazy lol). Nothing Miami or the Spurs have done is out of the ordinary. Jimmy just have Miami a go to guy and the Spurs fell off a bit because DeMarr aint it. Whereas here, we have had various offensive and defensive schemes due to all of the moving pieces.

Ideally, we could just hold the L and have Horford come off the bench and hope we can find cheap shooters and creators and allow for some consistency for once and see if that helps...but I doubt that is the move either.

[ExplosionsInDaSky]

Those teams also never had all the constant turnover and an "identity" in place. Going back to even Hinkie, that has not been the case. Each of the last 3 GMs combined to make sure our core players changed from year to year to year via Hinkies asset lust, Bryan getting caught with his dick out and Brand's rush to get stars no matter what. Boston has built via the draft and the main replacement has been their PG all of which had similar games and weaknesses so they fit it (except Kyrie who is probably crazy lol). Nothing Miami or the Spurs have done is out of the ordinary. Jimmy just have Miami a go to guy and the Spurs fell off a bit because DeMarr aint it. Whereas here, we have had various offensive and defensive schemes due to all of the moving pieces.

Ideally, we could just hold the L and have Horford come off the bench and hope we can find cheap shooters and creators and allow for some consistency for once and see if that helps...but I doubt that is the move either.

Consistency and cohesiveness should be preached this offseason. Let Ben and Jo figure it out. Even if we stand pat with Harris and Richardson in the mix we should be fine. Horford can come off the bench and play fifteen minutes a night. That's Brands stupid ass fault paying a backup 27 million a year. Dwayne Dedmon or Ed Davis could have given us the same thing. Brand most likely feels like a jackass and deservedly so. Even with all that, I like our team. It's time for Simmons and Biid to be the duo we all know they can be. If it doesn't gel this year, then we can retool.

[Mik317]

yeah If I ran the team (thank god i don't btw...) I'd take a bunch of young athletes that might be able to shoot and or dribble in the draft, run it back and add some remaining depth with whatever money we have (also dribble and shoot men), and hope that the new staff has fresh ideas to unlock peeps and one of the young athletes pop, thus guys can be packaged if needed or we can blow things up in the offseason and not feel like the end of the world.

Because as of right now, giving up future assets to get off of current mistakes is just going to bite us in the ass later.

[76ciology]

Did we play a 100%?

If I can remember correctly, we were the top team in the league around the first month of the season. Then Biid got suspended (after an immature fight with KAT which was dedicated to Jimmy), Josh Rich got injured, Embiid got injured and never really was mentally 100% this season (0 pt game against the Raps) then once we are on full strength, coronavirus happened. The season resumed. We had one of the top offense in the league. Biid and Al on court looked good. Ben got “injured”.

On top of that, there are some locker room issues the entire season.

“ I just think going forward, we’ve just gotta have some more accountability. I don’t think there was much accountability this season and I think that was part of our problem, says Josh Richardson.

The natural follow-up question was to wonder how the Sixers could address that accountability issue. Richardson’s explanation was unvarnished.

"It just has to start,” he said. “There’s always gotta be a Day 1. We’ve just gotta start from scratch. It’s not gonna be easy and we’re not gonna be comfortable, but that’s what championship teams do. (When) guys are not doing their job on or off the court, there’s gotta be some kind of consequence — not consequence, but we’ve gotta be able to talk to each other and listen.

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[76ciology]

Those teams also never had all the constant turnover and an "identity" in place. Going back to even Hinkie, that has not been the case. Each of the last 3 GMs combined to make sure our core players changed from year to year to year via Hinkies asset lust, Bryan getting caught with his dick out and Brand's rush to get stars no matter what. Boston has built via the draft and the main replacement has been their PG all of which had similar games and weaknesses so they fit it (except Kyrie who is probably crazy lol). Nothing Miami or the Spurs have done is out of the ordinary. Jimmy just have Miami a go to guy and the Spurs fell off a bit because DeMarr aint it. Whereas here, we have had various offensive and defensive schemes due to all of the moving pieces.

Ideally, we could just hold the L and have Horford come off the bench and hope we can find cheap shooters and creators and allow for some consistency for once and see if that helps...but I doubt that is the move either.

I think the fans has to accept that Hinkie and Brett were just place holders or fronts to weather the tanking seasons. Harris is familiar with the corporate world, and it’s one of a corporate strategy to have fronts to do the dirty work to give the company an advantage (i.e. bribing), then what you have to do is fire them and tell the rest of the world it’s their fault and they’re not with the company anymore.

This is why you won’t see both of them getting any jobs in the league anytime soon. If Hinkie was really as good as Sixers fans think so, then he’d be the most sought after GM for 3-4 years straight already. Not saying he’s a bad GM. He did well accumulating assets. But I don’t think he would be good in when the team need to turn assets into talents and compete that requires knowledge of the game and real life dealing with GMs and agents via trades and free agency.

I also think its impossible to get continuity when the media and fans have outcome bias. Ironically wanting “the process” but judging not on the process but the outcome.

Now going back to our team. We always want to be the most talented team. So we focus solely on talent. But I think we fail to consider factors equally as important like chemistry, a team that is play-off built and effort.

[Sixerscan]

Those teams also never had all the constant turnover and an "identity" in place. Going back to even Hinkie, that has not been the case. Each of the last 3 GMs combined to make sure our core players changed from year to year to year via Hinkies asset lust, Bryan getting caught with his dick out and Brand's rush to get stars no matter what. Boston has built via the draft and the main replacement has been their PG all of which had similar games and weaknesses so they fit it (except Kyrie who is probably crazy lol). Nothing Miami or the Spurs have done is out of the ordinary. Jimmy just have Miami a go to guy and the Spurs fell off a bit because DeMarr aint it. Whereas here, we have had various offensive and defensive schemes due to all of the moving pieces.

Ideally, we could just hold the L and have Horford come off the bench and hope we can find cheap shooters and creators and allow for some consistency for once and see if that helps...but I doubt that is the move either.

I think the fans has to accept that Hinkie and Brett were just place holders or fronts to weather the tanking seasons. Harris is familiar with the corporate world, and it’s one of a corporate strategy to have fronts to do the dirty work to give the company an advantage (i.e. bribing), then what you have to do is fire them and tell the rest of the world it’s their fault and they’re not with the company anymore.

This is why you won’t see both of them getting any jobs in the league anytime soon. If Hinkie was really as good as Sixers fans think so, then he’d be the most sought after GM for 3-4 years straight already. Not saying he’s a bad GM. He did well accumulating assets. But I don’t think he would be good in when the team need to turn assets into talents and compete that requires knowledge of the game and real life dealing with GMs and agents via trades and free agency.

I also think its impossible to get continuity when the media and fans have outcome bias. Ironically wanting “the process” but judging not on the process but the outcome.

Now going back to our team. We always want to be the most talented team. So we focus solely on talent. But I think we fail to consider factors equally as important like chemistry, a team that is play-off built and effort.

If you think Hinkie was being used as a "front", wouldn't that also suggest that Brand is now being used as a "front"? As in, he's provided to the public as the GM but the owners and other front office people are behind the scenes making decisions. Don't you think that's problematic? Are those other franchises using their GMs in that way?

I feel like you come up with these far out theories that obviously point to one direction and you just take the other road lol.

Anyway as far as Hinkie goes, I haven't ever seen anything indicating that he wants to get back in the league or basketball in general (unlike Colangelo who interviewed for the Bulls job and was part of the group that bought that Australian team), probably because he got blackballed by the league and it would be more trouble that it's worth to get back in.

[76ciology]

Those teams also never had all the constant turnover and an "identity" in place. Going back to even Hinkie, that has not been the case. Each of the last 3 GMs combined to make sure our core players changed from year to year to year via Hinkies asset lust, Bryan getting caught with his dick out and Brand's rush to get stars no matter what. Boston has built via the draft and the main replacement has been their PG all of which had similar games and weaknesses so they fit it (except Kyrie who is probably crazy lol). Nothing Miami or the Spurs have done is out of the ordinary. Jimmy just have Miami a go to guy and the Spurs fell off a bit because DeMarr aint it. Whereas here, we have had various offensive and defensive schemes due to all of the moving pieces.

Ideally, we could just hold the L and have Horford come off the bench and hope we can find cheap shooters and creators and allow for some consistency for once and see if that helps...but I doubt that is the move either.

I think the fans has to accept that Hinkie and Brett were just place holders or fronts to weather the tanking seasons. Harris is familiar with the corporate world, and it’s one of a corporate strategy to have fronts to do the dirty work to give the company an advantage (i.e. bribing), then what you have to do is fire them and tell the rest of the world it’s their fault and they’re not with the company anymore.

This is why you won’t see both of them getting any jobs in the league anytime soon. If Hinkie was really as good as Sixers fans think so, then he’d be the most sought after GM for 3-4 years straight already. Not saying he’s a bad GM. He did well accumulating assets. But I don’t think he would be good in when the team need to turn assets into talents and compete that requires knowledge of the game and real life dealing with GMs and agents via trades and free agency.

I also think its impossible to get continuity when the media and fans have outcome bias. Ironically wanting “the process” but judging not on the process but the outcome.

Now going back to our team. We always want to be the most talented team. So we focus solely on talent. But I think we fail to consider factors equally as important like chemistry, a team that is play-off built and effort.

If you think Hinkie was being used as a "front", wouldn't that also suggest that Brand is now being used as a "front"? As in, he's provided to the public as the GM but the owners and other front office people are behind the scenes making decisions. Don't you think that's problematic? Are those other franchises using their GMs in that way?

I feel like you come up with these far out theories that obviously point to one direction and you just take the other road lol.

Anyway as far as Hinkie goes, I haven't ever seen anything indicating that he wants to get back in the league or basketball in general (unlike Colangelo who interviewed for the Bulls job and was part of the group that bought that Australian team), probably because he got blackballed by the league and it would be more trouble that it's worth to get back in.

I believe everything has to go thru the ownership. So ownership has fingerprint on a move even by Pat Riley or Presti or Buford.

The difference is in Hinkie’s case, Hinkie has to burn bridges of people in the league in order to get Sixers the edge.

To the owners.. “Tanking was Hinkie’s bright idea, sorry we have to come into your arena and let your fans watch a Gleague team against your squad”

To the agents.. “Your client’s career is getting ruined by the losing environment and because of Hinkie. Oh and we have to underpay him because we are saving money”. The Porzingis incident speaks for this.

And we all know agents and owners control the media. Think of how Woj gets his info.

It’s kind of similar in politics. Where a new leader will come and put all the mistakes of the government to the past admin in order to get a clean slate. This is a common practice all over the world in corporate world or the government.

Maybe my term “front” was a mistake.
It’s more of a “fall guy”. Sorry for my bad english.

And until he’s hired or a team following Hinkie’s path in this league, my theory is likely to be right.

Just think about it.. 5 years? Still no job in the league after being “that good”? You have to wonder why..

Guys like Mark Eversley, Ned Cohen or that guy we newly hired from the Pacers were even up on the line ahead of him.

I know everyone hates Colangelo. But I also think the twittergate was wrong and it’s just fair that he should pay for it and I think he’s also embarassed with what he’s done.

I really believe the league won’t allow a “the process” 2.0 anymore. And thanks for Hinkie we were able to do it and his career, atleast for the short term, truly died for it.

In the end everything works out well. It’s the pro-Hinkie against the ownership. Not one entity. One’s sin is not the sin of the other.

[Kobblehead]

@stanford

I was wrong on that one. Congrats to the Lakers. The only thing about them winning that makes sense to me is their tremendous defensive talent and a watered down field of competition they had to go through.

[Sixerscan]

Again, there's no indication that Hinkie made any effort to get back into the league. The guy has an MBA from Stanford, he worked in finance for a few years. There's life beyond basketball.

I don't think the issue is so much that Hinkie is "that good" as much as everything after he left has been super dysfunctional starting with the sham hiring process of Colangelo hiring his son. If they fired Hinkie and went through a more straightforward process that didn't result in the advisor's son being hired I don't think people would still have such an issue with it.

Do you really think when they hired Hinkie they were like "Ok so in a year we'll take that Embiid guy and he'll be hurt for two years and we'll become such a joke the league will make us hire Jerry and he'll hire his kid"? Teams do rebuilds all the time the goal isn't to make your GM a pariah. They probably hoped Hinkie would be like Presti, do a rebuild then enjoy the fruits. Again these are kind of crazy theories and if they were true they'd probably make the owners look even more incompetent than they already look.

[76ciology]

Again, there's no indication that Hinkie made any effort to get back into the league. The guy has an MBA from Stanford, he worked in finance for a few years. There's life beyond basketball.

I don't think the issue is so much that Hinkie is "that good" as much as everything after he left has been super dysfunctional starting with the sham hiring process of Colangelo hiring his son. If they fired Hinkie and went through a more straightforward process that didn't result in the advisor's son being hired I don't think people would still have such an issue with it.

Do you really think when they hired Hinkie they were like "Ok so in a year we'll take that Embiid guy and he'll be hurt for two years and we'll become such a joke the league will make us hire Jerry and he'll hire his kid"? Teams do rebuilds all the time the goal isn't to make your GM a pariah. They probably hoped Hinkie would be like Presti, do a rebuild then enjoy the fruits. Again these are kind of crazy theories and if they were true they'd probably make the owners look even more incompetent than they already look.

I will not respond to any replies regarding this post. For me, this is already a closed book.

Spoiler:

Yeah maybe Hinkie is developing the vaccine for covid 19. Who knows.. there’s definitely life outside basketball. But have you heard about a team including Hinkie as part of the group of candidates they are looking to hire as GM? Even as consideration alone?

Team rebuild all the team. Some even tank.

But the difference between us and teams like the sonics is we went to the extreme. If you look at the talent of their roster and the talent of our roster we had with hinkie, if was truly abysmal. Most of us even dont finish the games because its unwatchable. We had the longest losing streak in league history. Nobody tried to secure the worst record in the league for multiple seasons like us. Everyone, except for Sixers fans, hated us for what we did. And because of that, we need a fall guy.

We wont be able to trade for Jimmy if Wolves owner is mad at us. JJ, Tobi and Al won’t sign with us if their agent wont talk to Hinkie. Twittergate even said Ben may not come if Hinkie was our GM (which could be true or false, we’ll never know). So on and so fort. All is forgiven now because he’s gone.

I dont think Hinkie was hired for the “next phase”, which was turning assets into talent. You can just see his quality of decision in talent evaluation with all the busts like MCW, Noel and Okafor.

Hindsight bias aside, if you can remember, most teams were already trying to stay away from drafting them and the centers. We almost even tried to trade up for Wiggins. Even if you wont look at them as players with feelings but lifeless assets (which is another reason why hinkie was not accepted by agents), you dont put yourself in good position by drafting busts.

You can also see with the succeeding GMs, colangelo and Brand. We hired guys who knows the game and are less analytic nerds like Morey or Hinkie. If we want someone with more of an analytic background, i’m sure there are other candidates we could have hired who might even be better than Hinkie.

But I totally agree with you. And I also didn’t like how the transition (“hiring sham”) from Hinkie to BC went. Twittergate was really stupid.

They want guys who knows basketball. For instance BC brought JJ, Beli and ilya and that worked great in 2018 playoffs. Brand brought Jimmy and Tobi that again worked great in 2019 playoffs. Then in 2020 when we were projected to be the top team in the east but we all know what happened.

In the end, we’re here. One of the top teams in the league with one of the top coaches in the league.

Dark past of losing records are done after Hinkie left the team.

[Kobblehead]

I know Hinkie was despised by the local print media and opposing front offices. How was his relationship internally with our front office and ownership group? From my vantage point, he didn't seem like a guy who understood social politics.

[Sixerscan]

Again, there's no indication that Hinkie made any effort to get back into the league. The guy has an MBA from Stanford, he worked in finance for a few years. There's life beyond basketball.

I don't think the issue is so much that Hinkie is "that good" as much as everything after he left has been super dysfunctional starting with the sham hiring process of Colangelo hiring his son. If they fired Hinkie and went through a more straightforward process that didn't result in the advisor's son being hired I don't think people would still have such an issue with it.

Do you really think when they hired Hinkie they were like "Ok so in a year we'll take that Embiid guy and he'll be hurt for two years and we'll become such a joke the league will make us hire Jerry and he'll hire his kid"? Teams do rebuilds all the time the goal isn't to make your GM a pariah. They probably hoped Hinkie would be like Presti, do a rebuild then enjoy the fruits. Again these are kind of crazy theories and if they were true they'd probably make the owners look even more incompetent than they already look.

I will not respond to any replies regarding this post. For me, this is already a closed book.

Spoiler:

Yeah maybe Hinkie is developing the vaccine for covid 19. Who knows.. there’s definitely life outside basketball. But have you heard about a team including Hinkie as part of the group of candidates they are looking to hire as GM? Even as consideration alone?

Team rebuild all the team. Some even tank.

But the difference between us and teams like the sonics is we went to the extreme. If you look at the talent of their roster and the talent of our roster we had with hinkie, if was truly abysmal. Most of us even dont finish the games because its unwatchable. We had the longest losing streak in league history. Nobody tried to secure the worst record in the league for multiple seasons like us. Everyone, except for Sixers fans, hated us for what we did. And because of that, we need a fall guy.

We wont be able to trade for Jimmy if Wolves owner is mad at us. JJ, Tobi and Al won’t sign with us if their agent wont talk to Hinkie. Twittergate even said Ben may not come if Hinkie was our GM (which could be true or false, we’ll never know). So on and so fort. All is forgiven now because he’s gone.

I dont think Hinkie was hired for the “next phase”, which was turning assets into talent. You can just see his quality of decision in talent evaluation with all the busts like MCW, Noel and Okafor.

Hindsight bias aside, if you can remember, most teams were already trying to stay away from drafting them and the centers. We almost even tried to trade up for Wiggins. Even if you wont look at them as players with feelings but lifeless assets (which is another reason why hinkie was not accepted by agents), you dont put yourself in good position by drafting busts.

You can also see with the succeeding GMs, colangelo and Brand. We hired guys who knows the game and are less analytic nerds like Morey or Hinkie. If we want someone with more of an analytic background, i’m sure there are other candidates we could have hired who might even be better than Hinkie.

But I totally agree with you. And I also didn’t like how the transition (“hiring sham”) from Hinkie to BC went. Twittergate was really stupid.

They want guys who knows basketball. For instance BC brought JJ, Beli and ilya and that worked great in 2018 playoffs. Brand brought Jimmy and Tobi that again worked great in 2019 playoffs. Then in 2020 when we were projected to be the top team in the east but we all know what happened.

In the end, we’re here. One of the top teams in the league with one of the top coaches in the league.

Dark past of losing records are done after Hinkie left the team.

Just seems pretty obvious you're trying to find reasons to hate on the guy and make excuses for who came after. Hinkie was bad because some of his moves didn't work out as well as people projected but Brand is good because some projection model said his team was going to be better than they were. It's Hinkie's fault for not realizing Okafor was going to be bad when everyone had him as a projected top 2 pick all year or not identifying Giannis but you can't blame Bryan for trading up for Fultz or taking TLC/Korkmaz over Siakam.

I'm not blaming Colangelo for either of those things but I'm just pointing out how, while Hinkie doesn't belong in the hall of fame or anything, if you apply your same contrarian standard to Colangelo or Brand you end up having issues with a much higher percentage of issues with their moves.

If Brand "knows the game" better than the analytics people, why did the team he put together underperform the analytics? Shouldn't he be able to overperform the analytics? Or are we saying he put the team together based on analytics? How do we know he knows what he's doing then? Did analytics only play into the BC/Brand moves that didn't work out and the computer was broken during the moves you said you liked?

We're (hopefully) one of the top teams in the league because of two all stars, one of which Hinkie took and the other was an obvious pick born out of a season of Hinkie tanking. And then a bunch of guys everyone agrees Hinkie's successors overpaid for or at the very least acquired in one way or another based on assets Hinkie accumulated. Now that all of Hinkie's assets are more or less spent it will be very interesting to see if Brand can still pull off a big move to improve the team. Like if the Harris or Butler trades were because of Brand's guile and not him cleaning out Hinkie's asset chest he should have no issue making a similar move now that Hinkie's assets are gone.

[76ciology]

Do you guys agree with Pat Riley about the championship being an asterisk?

Sorry, but I totally feel that way. And I wouldnt be surprised if Heat intentionally tanked the finals as Pat’s revenge on Bron.

If I can remember correctly, Bron broke Pat’s heart when Bron left. Bron even asked them to draft Shabazz Napier to replace Chalmers.

[76ciology]

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Peak DMC was really something

[the_process]

Do you guys agree with Pat Riley about the championship being an asterisk?

Sorry, but I totally feel that way. And I wouldnt be surprised if Heat intentionally tanked the finals as Pat’s revenge on Bron.

If I can remember correctly, Bron broke Pat’s heart when Bron left. Bron even asked them to draft Shabazz Napier to replace Chalmers.

The championship is an asterisk because the bubble is not normal circumstances, not because Riley is still salty about LeBron leaving 6 years later. That being said, give credit to the Lakers for finishing.

[Sixerscan]

There’s context to it but the Lakers would have had home court in every round under normal circumstances. Seems tougher to have to win on a neutral court. Would have been more of an asterisk if a team like the Heat (or Sixers for that matter) would have won.

[GoSixersBro]

There’s context to it but the Lakers would have had home court in every round under normal circumstances. Seems tougher to have to win on a neutral court. Would have been more of an asterisk if a team like the Heat (or Sixers for that matter) would have won.

Agree. As much as I despise the Lakers, I wanted badly to think of this 2020 title as a Mickey Mouse Championship. But if anything, I believe this gave the weaker teams just as many if not more benefits/advantages. Not having to go on the road in the favorite's house is a pretty big boost. I also think we saw a ton of high scoring performances from players who might have some intimidation playing in front of the typical 15-20,000 crowd. Some real anomalies that I don't think we will see again if you ask me.

The Heat put up a valiant effort, but they had no business taking on the best of the West, and can we honestly say Toronto, Milwaukee or Boston would have done any better? It's a shame because this opportunity for a correctly assembled Sixers roster after how 2019 ended for us may have been our shot in the Finals.

[Eyeamok]

Do you guys agree with Pat Riley about the championship being an asterisk?

Sorry, but I totally feel that way. And I wouldnt be surprised if Heat intentionally tanked the finals as Pat’s revenge on Bron.

If I can remember correctly, Bron broke Pat’s heart when Bron left. Bron even asked them to draft Shabazz Napier to replace Chalmers.

You have to play the cards you are dealt. What if the NBA never gets back to normal and all playoffs and finals are played in a bubble. Do all the bubble championships get an asterisk going forward then? Sounds like sour gapes on Riley's part.

Next season there are only supposed to be 72 games. Does the winner of the NBA championship get an asterisk because they only played 72 and not 82 games in the regular season?

[Sixerscan]

There’s context to it but the Lakers would have had home court in every round under normal circumstances. Seems tougher to have to win on a neutral court. Would have been more of an asterisk if a team like the Heat (or Sixers for that matter) would have won.

Agree. As much as I despise the Lakers, I wanted badly to think of this 2020 title as a Mickey Mouse Championship. But if anything, I believe this gave the weaker teams just as many if not more benefits/advantages. Not having to go on the road in the favorite's house is a pretty big boost. I also think we saw a ton of high scoring performances from players who might have some intimidation playing in front of the typical 15-20,000 crowd. Some real anomalies that I don't think we will see again if you ask me.

The Heat put up a valiant effort, but they had no business taking on the best of the West, and can we honestly say Toronto, Milwaukee or Boston would have done any better? It's a shame because this opportunity for a correctly assembled Sixers roster after how 2019 ended for us may have been our shot in the Finals.

Yeah and also the Lakers resoundingly kicked the butt of everyone they played. No one in the west took more than one game off of them and then the Heat needed jimmy to go nuts to even squeak out two, meanwhile they weren’t competitive in 3 of the Laker wins. And yeah the heat had some injuries but that happens, ask the Celtics or Bucks (or Sixers). Heck even with the Lakers they didn’t have Bradley and Davis was playing hurt. I don’t like the Lakers either but I don’t see how someone can watch the post season and say they only won because the bubble gave them sort of unknown advantage. They were really good all year.

[Monix]

is asterisk the most overused term in sports?