The benefits of a good coach and young players

[DCasey91]

Culture is everything especially in sports. You’d be surprised how much politics/nepotism and cynical nature runs through each organisation.

Pat Riley and Spo are ATG’s in their own right they don’t f around and run the tightest of ships. We are basically the opposite of the Heat from top to bottom lol

It will never happen and it’s purely a fantasy thing but if the Sixers where run by the majority of fans ala Bayern Munich we’ve already had a championship by now. No seriously some of the posters here have crazy takes myself included... still better than what this FO has come up for over half a decade. And over half a decade in sports is literally an eternity in the scheme of things.

There was more or less just one full calendar year of catastrophic moves the FO made, BC and B-B share the blame. Fultz trade, Butler trade then walking, Tobias trade then max, Horford signing, Zhaire Smith trade. Blew pretty much all of our considerable assets and left us capped out without a second star, and ready to be f’d when Simmons fell apart. We walked out of that series of moves minus 5 1st rd picks (and a cheap Covington who was worth at least one more) and with Tobias on a giant contract. And Seth curry and Danny Green for a minute too I guess (yay!).

I’m not a huge Morey guy but I think he’s competent and that he and most GMs probably wouldn’t have done any of those moves, let alone all of them. So I don’t think it makes sense to sideswipe the ‘FO’ as a whole. Process was well set up, Morey’s made the roster make more sense. But that year was just a brutal stretch and we’re walking through the wreckage now. Gotta be both lucky and good to field a champ team and we were both pretty unlucky and pretty crap after the Process set the table.

100% agree well said. The only caveat I’d add is we ourselves made the luck as worse as possible. The biggest head scratcher to me wasn’t the Fultz/Simmons debacle it was the Bridges scenario. We needed a wing and a PG and it was the worst possible time to double down on a project. The timeline made no sense then as it does now. Yeah Ben made Shai look redundant in the sense that the FO was sticking to the wrong gun which was proven to be wrong but that’s happened before but Bridges? Didn’t understand it then still don’t now. Ready made and ready to go with a pro game, homegrown the whole works.

Tin foil but whatever I seriously think there’s some sour things going on away from the public eye. There’s still sour grapes in the org imho.

At the very least we’d be 2/5 on the starting positions long term instead of 1/5.

[rocketsfan100]

Only good young player the Sixers have is Maxey

[76ciology]

Culture is everything especially in sports. You’d be surprised how much politics/nepotism and cynical nature runs through each organisation.

Pat Riley and Spo are ATG’s in their own right they don’t f around and run the tightest of ships. We are basically the opposite of the Heat from top to bottom lol

It will never happen and it’s purely a fantasy thing but if the Sixers where run by the majority of fans ala Bayern Munich we’ve already had a championship by now. No seriously some of the posters here have crazy takes myself included... still better than what this FO has come up for over half a decade. And over half a decade in sports is literally an eternity in the scheme of things.

There was more or less just one full calendar year of catastrophic moves the FO made, BC and B-B share the blame. Fultz trade, Butler trade then walking, Tobias trade then max, Horford signing, Zhaire Smith trade. Blew pretty much all of our considerable assets and left us capped out without a second star, and ready to be f’d when Simmons fell apart. We walked out of that series of moves minus 5 1st rd picks (and a cheap Covington who was worth at least one more) and with Tobias on a giant contract. And Seth curry and Danny Green for a minute too I guess (yay!).

I’m not a huge Morey guy but I think he’s competent and that he and most GMs probably wouldn’t have done any of those moves, let alone all of them. So I don’t think it makes sense to sideswipe the ‘FO’ as a whole. Process was well set up, Morey’s made the roster make more sense. But that year was just a brutal stretch and we’re walking through the wreckage now. Gotta be both lucky and good to field a champ team and we were both pretty unlucky and pretty crap after the Process set the table.

100% agree well said. The only caveat I’d add is we ourselves made the luck as worse as possible. The biggest head scratcher to me wasn’t the Fultz/Simmons debacle it was the Bridges scenario. We needed a wing and a PG and it was the worst possible time to double down on a project. The timeline made no sense then as it does now. Yeah Ben made Shai look redundant in the sense that the FO was sticking to the wrong gun which was proven to be wrong but that’s happened before but Bridges? Didn’t understand it then still don’t now. Ready made and ready to go with a pro game, homegrown the whole works.

Tin foil but whatever I seriously think there’s some sour things going on away from the public eye. There’s still sour grapes in the org imho.

At the very least we’d be 2/5 on the starting positions long term instead of 1/5.

When we tried to build this team from scratch, what is the top most priority which has a big gap over other aspects do we look for a player? Talent. .

We didnt consider things like how driven a player is. Or is this talent that valuable in today’s game? A PG with elite length and athleticism but with poor shooting? “But he’s special”

We just evaluated guys just almost purely talent. No context about this talent. And our belief is everything will fall into place after that. “Violence at the rim”

So this lead to bad evaluation of players from guards who can’t shoot, one dimensional bigs, franchise player with questionable durability, top prospects who are too fond of themselves and etc.

Think about it.. we “star hunting” for zhaire smith.

How can a guard who does not have guard ability and can’t shoot have a potential to be a star? Just because of numbers and elite athleticism?

When did we start running PnR? On year 6, second round?

For an organization like the Heat, they value how driven a player is..

Jimmy butler and Bam adebayo has to win for them to be respected. Without winning, Jimmy is a top 20 player only and Bam is a fringe allstar. Those role players they have has to win for them not to be playing overseas.

They’re not without any mistakes. Remember how youtube is filled with “what happened to duncan robinson” videos at some point?

While on our team..

Embiid feels satisfied after winning the MVP.
Harden feels satisfied after he received good offer from
rox.
Tucker feels satisfied after he received $10M per year until he’s 40.
Tobias feels satisfied with his overpaid contract.

This team is not driven. I thought they were.

I bought the “its a we season, not a me season” mantra. I thought harden sacrificed real money for winning, but I guess he had received offer from Rox and it lead him to just load management till G7. Embiid seems determined to win the MVP, at any means necessary. Jokic? He even said some good words that helped campaign for Embiid. Maxey was asked to play off the bench, to solve our bench scoring issue, but he couldn’t do it more than a month.

You need to be more than committed. You need to play like your career is on the line.

Or when the going gets tough, its easy to just give up. Why? When you are paid 40-50M per year, is that championship that valuable? Look at Bradley Beal smiling on every lose balls not having any drive to win any game.

And when everything fails, let’s find a goat to sacrifice to clean our sin.

[76ciology]

Watch on YouTube

[mjkvol]

Culture is everything especially in sports. You’d be surprised how much politics/nepotism and cynical nature runs through each organisation.

Pat Riley and Spo are ATG’s in their own right they don’t f around and run the tightest of ships. We are basically the opposite of the Heat from top to bottom lol

It will never happen and it’s purely a fantasy thing but if the Sixers where run by the majority of fans ala Bayern Munich we’ve already had a championship by now. No seriously some of the posters here have crazy takes myself included... still better than what this FO has come up for over half a decade. And over half a decade in sports is literally an eternity in the scheme of things.

There was more or less just one full calendar year of catastrophic moves the FO made, BC and B-B share the blame. Fultz trade, Butler trade then walking, Tobias trade then max, Horford signing, Zhaire Smith trade. Blew pretty much all of our considerable assets and left us capped out without a second star, and ready to be f’d when Simmons fell apart. We walked out of that series of moves minus 5 1st rd picks (and a cheap Covington who was worth at least one more) and with Tobias on a giant contract. And Seth curry and Danny Green for a minute too I guess (yay!).

I’m not a huge Morey guy but I think he’s competent and that he and most GMs probably wouldn’t have done any of those moves, let alone all of them. So I don’t think it makes sense to sideswipe the ‘FO’ as a whole. Process was well set up, Morey’s made the roster make more sense. But that year was just a brutal stretch and we’re walking through the wreckage now. Gotta be both lucky and good to field a champ team and we were both pretty unlucky and pretty crap after the Process set the table.

100% agree well said. The only caveat I’d add is we ourselves made the luck as worse as possible. The biggest head scratcher to me wasn’t the Fultz/Simmons debacle it was the Bridges scenario. We needed a wing and a PG and it was the worst possible time to double down on a project. The timeline made no sense then as it does now. Yeah Ben made Shai look redundant in the sense that the FO was sticking to the wrong gun which was proven to be wrong but that’s happened before but Bridges? Didn’t understand it then still don’t now. Ready made and ready to go with a pro game, homegrown the whole works.

Tin foil but whatever I seriously think there’s some sour things going on away from the public eye. There’s still sour grapes in the org imho.

At the very least we’d be 2/5 on the starting positions long term instead of 1/5.

Yep, Bridges is the one completely inexplicable of all the dreadful post-Process moves. There were more impactful mistakes, but you can rationalize virtually every other move and signing made, as brutal as most of them were. Even Butler - it was clearly not going to work with Simmons here, and the organization wasn't giving up on their golden boy. The Harris signing was a desperation move to get something out of all that treasure given up.

But for a win-now team with a gaping hole at SF and a desperate need for a solid 3&D type player to draft an NBA ready, plug-and-play, home-grown one and move him for a project and a pick that might, just might, be more valuable if a rule changed? As you said, Shai wasn't an option with Simmons here as the "PG". I couldn't believe it then, and it has become even more ridiculous over the years as our endless and fruitless search for that exact kind of player has continued.

[Ferry Avenue]

The root of the issue is losing on purpose and then overvaluing the players intended to "rescue" the franchise.

If you don't lose on purpose, you're far less likely to overvalue any player. Losing on purpose creates a tremendous need to satisfy the fanbase with the players obtained in that process. Those players simply MUST pan out, and the franchise simply MUST play well with them. The fanbase is essentially experiencing a situation that could be stated "you sold us on losing on purpose [i.e., "trust the process"] -- now where are the results?" Under no other circumstances is there that kind of tremendous pressure to succeed with players obtained.

The lesson here is not to engage in a prolonged period of tanking, because there is no guarantee the players obtained will rectify the situation, and there's a better than usual chance you'll overvalue those players and send your franchise the direction this one's gone.

[Jailblazers7]

I really disagree with any assessment that blame the early losing for our current issues. The truth is that the time between Hinkie getting fired & Morey getting hired was the most dysfunctional sh*tshow in NBA history. We squandered asset after asset, had zero organizational leadership, and failed to develop every young, talented player on the roster. The story will always be that the NBA stuck us with a group of clown as punishment & we’ve never recovered.

[Ferry Avenue]

I really disagree with any assessment that blame the early losing for our current issues. The truth is that the time between Hinkie getting fired & Morey getting hired was the most dysfunctional sh*tshow in NBA history. We squandered asset after asset, had zero organizational leadership, and failed to develop every young, talented player on the roster. The story will always be that the NBA stuck us with a group of clown as punishment & we’ve never recovered.

The problem is that when there is that degree of pressure to make good on player selections -- again to atone for losing on purpose -- it sets the personnel people up to do their jobs more poorly than they otherwise would.

Think for a moment about how it would be to work in personnel selection and management for an organization that owes such a tremendous debt to its fanbase. We just took you through several years of losing on purpose, in the name of having that pay off in having the pendulum swing entirely the other direction and winning a championship. That is certainly an extremely high-pressure situation in which to work. That lends itself to poorer than usual decision-making.

Again, losing on purpose may set a team up for success from a purely logistical perspective -- i.e., obtaining high draft picks and clearing high salaries -- but from the perspective of human dynamics and how people function as a product of the situation at hand it sets the organization up for failure. Players are overvalued, players are coddled, players are entitled, coaches and personnel men are under even more pressure than usual.

The dynamic surrounding atoning for losing on purpose to satisfy the fanbase is not a good one. Notice that when this team is talked about by the media "the process" is mentioned quite a bit. The organization continues to function within the specter of having lost on purpose years ago, and until the team wins a championship with some subgroup of the players obtained during that process -- or it starts over and wipes the slate clean -- the debt it owes to the fanbase will remain and continue to create tremendous pressure.

[Jailblazers7]

But that ignores the history that the NBA literally forced us to fire our GM & hire their hand-picked successor who turned out the be a toxic & unethical leader. That NBA selected GM made terrible trades, created a toxic organizational workplace, and resigned two weeks before the draft leaving a confederacy of dunces to make decisions for the team.

The Process constantly gets brought up in the media because the NBA wants to make sure everyone associates our organizational chaos with it. That’s all in service of hiding the fact that the league office has a direct hand in our failures & should be criticized for it.

To be clear, I get what you’re saying & I’m sure it’s right to some degree. But the story of how we got here is much more than “The Process put a lot of pressure on people which cause them to fail.”

[Ferry Avenue]

Watch on YouTube

That video hits it right on the head, and it illustrates how Embiid's inability to elevate his game at key times in the playoffs underlies this team's inability to perform at those times. You could generate a completely contrasting video regarding for example Jimmy Butler's ability to elevate his game in the playoffs, and then you'd see exactly where the difference between the teams lies.

[Mik317]

the hell does that have to do with the topic at hand tho lol.

"Maybe Doc should have trusted his younger players more"

"EMBIID IS A FRAUD".

lol

[Negrodamus]

Watch on YouTube

That video hits it right on the head, and it illustrates how Embiid's inability to elevate his game at key times in the playoffs underlies this team's inability to perform at those times. You could generate a completely contrasting video regarding for example Jimmy Butler's ability to elevate his game in the playoffs, and then you'd see exactly where the difference between the teams lies.

It's actually a bad video. Glosses over the Tobias situation, which is arguably the largest issue we deal with each season and punctuated it with "he's done his job", an obviously insane suggestion since he was an abject nightmare in the Celtics series.

Ends with a tired prediction of how next season will end for us: Embiid injured, we choke away the playoffs, etc, etc. Very brave.

[76ciology]

[76ciology]

Watch on YouTube

That video hits it right on the head, and it illustrates how Embiid's inability to elevate his game at key times in the playoffs underlies this team's inability to perform at those times. You could generate a completely contrasting video regarding for example Jimmy Butler's ability to elevate his game in the playoffs, and then you'd see exactly where the difference between the teams lies.

I think it was in Bodner’s podcast when they say Butler and Embiid are the exact opposite. One is a top 20 player in the reg season and a top 5 player in the playoffs the other is a top 5 player in regular season and just a top 20 player in the playoffs.

[Negrodamus]

Watch on YouTube

That video hits it right on the head, and it illustrates how Embiid's inability to elevate his game at key times in the playoffs underlies this team's inability to perform at those times. You could generate a completely contrasting video regarding for example Jimmy Butler's ability to elevate his game in the playoffs, and then you'd see exactly where the difference between the teams lies.

I think it was in Bodner’s podcast when they say Butler and Embiid are the exact opposite. One is a top 20 player in the reg season and a top 5 player in the playoffs the other is a top 5 player in regular season and just a top 20 player in the playoffs.

The good (and bad) news of that is Jimmy Butler had an entire career of Joel Embiid playoff performances prior to going to Miami. Wasn't until he was 30 that he turned it up to the next level; even then, he was a complete dud in 2020-2021 playoffs.

[Mik317]

Love Jimmy but he legit got outscored by Brynn Forbes just a few years ago lol

[Zumramania]

Watch on YouTube

That video hits it right on the head, and it illustrates how Embiid's inability to elevate his game at key times in the playoffs underlies this team's inability to perform at those times. You could generate a completely contrasting video regarding for example Jimmy Butler's ability to elevate his game in the playoffs, and then you'd see exactly where the difference between the teams lies.

It's actually a bad video. Glosses over the Tobias situation, which is arguably the largest issue we deal with each season and punctuated it with "he's done his job", an obviously insane suggestion since he was an abject nightmare in the Celtics series.

Ends with a tired prediction of how next season will end for us: Embiid injured, we choke away the playoffs, etc, etc. Very brave.

Exactly. Put Tobias on the Heat team and give him 40+ minutes per game regardless of his performance and we'll see if they get past the Bucks.

[Ferry Avenue]

The movie "Braveheart" encapsulates that well. When you have a leader who's selfless and giving his all for the group, you'll follow that guy through fire if you have the same goal he does. When on the other hand you have a leader who's selfish and doesn't appear to be giving his all, it deflates the entire group.

[Ferry Avenue]

The good (and bad) news of that is Jimmy Butler had an entire career of Joel Embiid playoff performances prior to going to Miami. Wasn't until he was 30 that he turned it up to the next level; even then, he was a complete dud in 2020-2021 playoffs.

Love Jimmy but he legit got outscored by Brynn Forbes just a few years ago lol

The above posts make the mistake of thinking that production is what's inspirational.

Effort is what's inspirational, whether it results in production or not.

Embiid and Harden are short on effort all too often when it matters. Butler is never short on effort.

[76ciology]

The movie "Braveheart" encapsulates that well. When you have a leader who's selfless and giving his all for the group, you'll follow that guy through fire if you have the same goal he does. When on the other hand you have a leader who's selfish and doesn't appear to be giving his all, it deflates the entire group.

Harden’s performance, also another mel gibson movie..
The Ransom