PC Board OT thread

[dontcalltimeout]

Random, but i started watching The Wire recently and the first time i saw Lester i thought it was a young Bill Russell

cannot unsee.

[sp6r=underrated]

Which of the following is a worse consequence of the NBA draft:

- That a sure firer HOFer was sent to a franchise that appears truly clueless. In fact they may be awarded another blue chipper for somehow managing to build a 25 win team around Davis.
- That smart men like Hinkie and Brent Brown, this is said without any sarcasm, have decided the best way to build a title is to waste three years while trying to grab lottery picks. If there was no draft both of these smart men would devote their mental power to winning instead of losing.

Both alone show that the draft is a mistake but which is worse?

[spearsy23]

Which of the following is a worse consequence of the NBA draft:

- That a sure firer HOFer was sent to a franchise that appears truly clueless. In fact they may be awarded another blue chipper for somehow managing to build a 25 win team around Davis.
- That smart men like Hinkie and Brent Brown, this is said without any sarcasm, have decided the best way to build a title is to waste three years while trying to grab lottery picks. If there was no draft both of these smart men would devote their mental power to winning instead of losing.

Both alone show that the draft is a mistake but which is worse?

Neither show that the draft is a mistake

[Doctor MJ]

Which of the following is a worse consequence of the NBA draft:

- That a sure firer HOFer was sent to a franchise that appears truly clueless. In fact they may be awarded another blue chipper for somehow managing to build a 25 win team around Davis.
- That smart men like Hinkie and Brent Brown, this is said without any sarcasm, have decided the best way to build a title is to waste three years while trying to grab lottery picks. If there was no draft both of these smart men would devote their mental power to winning instead of losing.

Both alone show that the draft is a mistake but which is worse?

Oh the former by far.

Look, what has happened in Philly is something that made sense at each step along the way. The Holiday-Noel trade was brilliant, and got the franchise far more than they could otherwise be expected to get from their draft pick.

The Embiid pick also made sense. This was a guy some said had all-time great talent in a way that none of the other guys on the board were remotely close to.

The Okafor pick made sense because he was without question the consensus top choice among those left on the board.

I'm not saying that Hinkie deserves great praise for all this stuff. Things haven't gone well, and there are all sorts of little issues with how he's gone about this, but the intent wasn't to lose as much as possible for X number of years. This is another way of saying that "the process" that the 76ers describe isn't so much a manifesto for a big vision as it is a slogan to justify how things have ended up going.

In the end, to the extent the 76ers fail, it will probably because their top draft picks end up disappointing, and that's the same situation most are in.

By contrast in NO, you've got a situation where there is a truly epic talent to build around, and the front office has just failed again and again for whatever reason. I am inclined to blame the front office heavily for this, but the "tragedy" is simply that unlike with anyone on the 76ers, we know for a fact that years of a great player's career are being wasted in NO.

[Doctor MJ]

JVG is right for killing the NBA with the hack a shaq situation. It isn't fun to watch.

For me the answer is let the refs call a delay of game tech. Because that's exactly what it's doing.

I always go back to the simplest solution: Make your damn free throws.

Also, I enjoy watching it.

Well if you enjoy watching it, that changes everything.

I think most don't like it though, and to me that's all that matters. I do understand the frustration that the flow of the game can be disrupted by incompetence at the free throw line...and it utterly infuriates me that none of these guys have the ball to shoot underhanded, but short of a rule change, nothing's going to change, and that means the NBA's fans suffer. That should change. Simple as that.

Now traditionally my answer is always this: At a certain point in the fouling process, one of 2 things happens:
1) The fouled team gets the ball back after the free throws.
2) The fouled team gets to choose who shoots the free throws.

Hardly unprecedented stuff there, and it would clearly cut way down not only Hack defense, but intentional fouls in general.

I honestly suspect though that part of the reason why the NBA is reluctant to make a move here is that free throws at the end of the game mean more opportunities for commercials, so they aren't really sure it's a bad thing.

As I type this though, thinking of what I just wrote, I'd like to advance a modest proposal:

The NBA does research on how good fine-motor-challenged people can be expected to shoot free throws underhand compared to overhand. If they find that people with normal FT% below X shoot better underhand with a bit of practice, then any NBA players who shoot FT% below X will be required to shoot underhand.

We could have all sorts of caveats in place for guys at the start of the season or coming back from an injury. The real benefit wouldn't come from absolutely forcing people to shoot underhand, it would be in players simply knowing that shooting underhand is part of the game and as such even though apparently 7 footers have the insecurity of a 12 year old in the midst of puberty for the rest of their lives, they'd know that there was no escape from reason in this case.

[E-Balla]

Which of the following is a worse consequence of the NBA draft:

- That a sure firer HOFer was sent to a franchise that appears truly clueless. In fact they may be awarded another blue chipper for somehow managing to build a 25 win team around Davis.
- That smart men like Hinkie and Brent Brown, this is said without any sarcasm, have decided the best way to build a title is to waste three years while trying to grab lottery picks. If there was no draft both of these smart men would devote their mental power to winning instead of losing.

Both alone show that the draft is a mistake but which is worse?

Oh the former by far.

Look, what has happened in Philly is something that made sense at each step along the way. The Holiday-Noel trade was brilliant, and got the franchise far more than they could otherwise be expected to get from their draft pick.

The Embiid pick also made sense. This was a guy some said had all-time great talent in a way that none of the other guys on the board were remotely close to.

The Okafor pick made sense because he was without question the consensus top choice among those left on the board.

I'm not saying that Hinkie deserves great praise for all this stuff. Things haven't gone well, and there are all sorts of little issues with how he's gone about this, but the intent wasn't to lose as much as possible for X number of years. This is another way of saying that "the process" that the 76ers describe isn't so much a manifesto for a big vision as it is a slogan to justify how things have ended up going.

In the end, to the extent the 76ers fail, it will probably because their top draft picks end up disappointing, and that's the same situation most are in.

Their top draft picks are disappointing because they ended up with the Sixers. Do you think Jimmy Butler or Klay Thompson or Kawhi Leonard become who they are on.the Sixers? I'd say there isn't a single 19 year old rookie in NBA history (not even Lebron/Kyrie/Melo who are probably the three best ever) that would look like a star on the Sixers. This is a team with 4 players max that could crack the average NBA team's rotation (Noel?, Jahlil, Marshall, Covington) and they dropped players that helped their young guys develop because they helped them win too much (Ish Smith making Nerlens look offensively competent last year won them a few too many for Hinkie's tastes). If the plan doesn't work its because he ruined young players by throwing them to the wolves backed up by a D-League roster and other super young players without ant thoughts on how they fit. Look at a guy like KAT's defensive discipline and its hard to just think that naturally developed without KG's help.

By contrast in NO, you've got a situation where there is a truly epic talent to build around, and the front office has just failed again and again for whatever reason. I am inclined to blame the front office heavily for this, but the "tragedy" is simply that unlike with anyone on the 76ers, we know for a fact that years of a great player's career are being wasted in NO.

If they had Davis he'd be a completely different player in the worst way. In NO you have a front office so incompetent they waste talent but in Philly you have a front office so incompetent its impossible to find talent and even if it was found its impossible to develop it.

And the draft is a necessity. Pro leagues should be ran like businesses not individual teams. No one wants to watch a sport where 3 teams have all the players.

[bondom34]

Which of the following is a worse consequence of the NBA draft:

- That a sure firer HOFer was sent to a franchise that appears truly clueless. In fact they may be awarded another blue chipper for somehow managing to build a 25 win team around Davis.
- That smart men like Hinkie and Brent Brown, this is said without any sarcasm, have decided the best way to build a title is to waste three years while trying to grab lottery picks. If there was no draft both of these smart men would devote their mental power to winning instead of losing.

Both alone show that the draft is a mistake but which is worse?

Oh the former by far.

Look, what has happened in Philly is something that made sense at each step along the way. The Holiday-Noel trade was brilliant, and got the franchise far more than they could otherwise be expected to get from their draft pick.

The Embiid pick also made sense. This was a guy some said had all-time great talent in a way that none of the other guys on the board were remotely close to.

The Okafor pick made sense because he was without question the consensus top choice among those left on the board.

I'm not saying that Hinkie deserves great praise for all this stuff. Things haven't gone well, and there are all sorts of little issues with how he's gone about this, but the intent wasn't to lose as much as possible for X number of years. This is another way of saying that "the process" that the 76ers describe isn't so much a manifesto for a big vision as it is a slogan to justify how things have ended up going.

In the end, to the extent the 76ers fail, it will probably because their top draft picks end up disappointing, and that's the same situation most are in.

Their top draft picks are disappointing because they ended up with the Sixers. Do you think Jimmy Butler or Klay Thompson or Kawhi Leonard become who they are on.the Sixers? I'd say there isn't a single 19 year old rookie in NBA history (not even Lebron/Kyrie/Melo who are probably the three best ever) that would look like a star on the Sixers. This is a team with 4 players max that could crack the average NBA team's rotation (Noel?, Jahlil, Marshall, Covington) and they dropped players that helped their young guys develop because they helped them win too much (Ish Smith making Nerlens look offensively competent last year won them a few too many for Hinkie's tastes). If the plan doesn't work its because he ruined young players by throwing them to the wolves backed up by a D-League roster and other super young players without ant thoughts on how they fit. Look at a guy like KAT's defensive discipline and its hard to just think that naturally developed without KG's help.

By contrast in NO, you've got a situation where there is a truly epic talent to build around, and the front office has just failed again and again for whatever reason. I am inclined to blame the front office heavily for this, but the "tragedy" is simply that unlike with anyone on the 76ers, we know for a fact that years of a great player's career are being wasted in NO.

If they had Davis he'd be a completely different player in the worst way. In NO you have a front office so incompetent they waste talent but in Philly you have a front office so incompetent its impossible to find talent and even if it was found its impossible to develop it.

And the draft is a necessity. Pro leagues should be ran like businesses not individual teams. No one wants to watch a sport where 3 teams have all the players.

I've disagreed on the Philly thing for the longest time, but this season has changed my mind. They just look defeated and unable to play at all. I think had they done this and brought in some semblance of guard play this year it would have been fine, but currently its a wreck.

[Doctor MJ]

Their top draft picks are disappointing because they ended up with the Sixers. Do you think Jimmy Butler or Klay Thompson or Kawhi Leonard become who they are on.the Sixers? I'd say there isn't a single 19 year old rookie in NBA history (not even Lebron/Kyrie/Melo who are probably the three best ever) that would look like a star on the Sixers. This is a team with 4 players max that could crack the average NBA team's rotation (Noel?, Jahlil, Marshall, Covington) and they dropped players that helped their young guys develop because they helped them win too much (Ish Smith making Nerlens look offensively competent last year won them a few too many for Hinkie's tastes). If the plan doesn't work its because he ruined young players by throwing them to the wolves backed up by a D-League roster and other super young players without ant thoughts on how they fit. Look at a guy like KAT's defensive discipline and its hard to just think that naturally developed without KG's help.

Really?

Noel was injured then looked great as a rookie. He looks terrible this year because the team completely changed their strategy around Okafor.

Embiid has been injured the whole time.

Okafor is a guy who has only been in the league for a brief amount of time and is doing basically what you'd expect him to do in any situation, no? I mean he's scoring inefficiently like basically all rookie volume scorers, and he sucks on defense because he sucks on defense.

I'm not saying that there's no possible way that things could have been better, but I really don't understand what you think the Spurs would have done to make all these guys look great at this point. (The one caveat for me being I was always quite wary of Okafor, and I'd have been reluctant to change up what worked for Noel to let Okafor do his 1960s impression, but even then I'm not going to say it's a total mistake what they've done with Okafor. If you liked Okafor as a prospect, they are basically doing what you do with him, and maybe that really works out.)

I get that you're saying the rest of the team is crap and I don't disagree, but seriously, how much different to you expect Noel/Embiid/Okafor to look if they are supposed to be the nucleus a franchise is building around?

By contrast in NO, you've got a situation where there is a truly epic talent to build around, and the front office has just failed again and again for whatever reason. I am inclined to blame the front office heavily for this, but the "tragedy" is simply that unlike with anyone on the 76ers, we know for a fact that years of a great player's career are being wasted in NO.

If they had Davis he'd be a completely different player in the worst way. In NO you have a front office so incompetent they waste talent but in Philly you have a front office so incompetent its impossible to find talent and even if it was found its impossible to develop it.

And the draft is a necessity. Pro leagues should be ran like businesses not individual teams. No one wants to watch a sport where 3 teams have all the players.

I didn't really take the question to be a strict comparison of who was more incompetent. What I know is that Davis is mega-talent being wasted because of clear cut bad decisions. By contrast in Philly, it might just be that Embiid's hurt and that there's no real way to make Okafor-Noel work, or maybe that there's no way to make Okafor work at all.

[E-Balla]

Oh the former by far.

Look, what has happened in Philly is something that made sense at each step along the way. The Holiday-Noel trade was brilliant, and got the franchise far more than they could otherwise be expected to get from their draft pick.

The Embiid pick also made sense. This was a guy some said had all-time great talent in a way that none of the other guys on the board were remotely close to.

The Okafor pick made sense because he was without question the consensus top choice among those left on the board.

I'm not saying that Hinkie deserves great praise for all this stuff. Things haven't gone well, and there are all sorts of little issues with how he's gone about this, but the intent wasn't to lose as much as possible for X number of years. This is another way of saying that "the process" that the 76ers describe isn't so much a manifesto for a big vision as it is a slogan to justify how things have ended up going.

In the end, to the extent the 76ers fail, it will probably because their top draft picks end up disappointing, and that's the same situation most are in.

Their top draft picks are disappointing because they ended up with the Sixers. Do you think Jimmy Butler or Klay Thompson or Kawhi Leonard become who they are on.the Sixers? I'd say there isn't a single 19 year old rookie in NBA history (not even Lebron/Kyrie/Melo who are probably the three best ever) that would look like a star on the Sixers. This is a team with 4 players max that could crack the average NBA team's rotation (Noel?, Jahlil, Marshall, Covington) and they dropped players that helped their young guys develop because they helped them win too much (Ish Smith making Nerlens look offensively competent last year won them a few too many for Hinkie's tastes). If the plan doesn't work its because he ruined young players by throwing them to the wolves backed up by a D-League roster and other super young players without ant thoughts on how they fit. Look at a guy like KAT's defensive discipline and its hard to just think that naturally developed without KG's help.

By contrast in NO, you've got a situation where there is a truly epic talent to build around, and the front office has just failed again and again for whatever reason. I am inclined to blame the front office heavily for this, but the "tragedy" is simply that unlike with anyone on the 76ers, we know for a fact that years of a great player's career are being wasted in NO.

If they had Davis he'd be a completely different player in the worst way. In NO you have a front office so incompetent they waste talent but in Philly you have a front office so incompetent its impossible to find talent and even if it was found its impossible to develop it.

And the draft is a necessity. Pro leagues should be ran like businesses not individual teams. No one wants to watch a sport where 3 teams have all the players.

I've disagreed on the Philly thing for the longest time, but this season has changed my mind. They just look defeated and unable to play at all. I think had they done this and brought in some semblance of guard play this year it would have been fine, but currently its a wreck.

Not just guard play but also shooters. Nerlens, Grant, or Okafor sharing the floor in any combination of 2 has been horrific. I don't get it. How is a primary post player supposed to look good in packed paints with bad entry passers that'll rather not even give you the ball in deep position (because they'll most likely throw a pass that'll get picked off)? How is a primary finishing C supposed to look good taking jumpers and being asked to dribble drive?

I'll post this again because it kills me whenever I watch a Sixers game and notice it:

Jahlil with Noel per 36: 17.9/6.6/1.6, 48.5 TS
Jahlil without Noel: 20.9/10.3/1.2, 50.8 TS

Noel with Okafor per 36: 9.5/8.9/1.2, 44.9 TS, 22 TOV%
Noel without Okafor: 14.7/10.3/2.0, 49.8 TS, 15.7 TOV%

[Doctor MJ]

I've disagreed on the Philly thing for the longest time, but this season has changed my mind. They just look defeated and unable to play at all. I think had they done this and brought in some semblance of guard play this year it would have been fine, but currently its a wreck.

Well I think this year is the year where Philly had to acknowledge that things were simply not developing like they needed to, and so changes need to be made, so we're all on board that mistakes have been made. It's just a question of what precisely those questions are.

To my mind the big question mark, and perhaps the big mistake, was that as bad as Philly was last year, they still did some things okay, and their strength (defense) corresponded to their brightest prospects strength. You had a potential DPOY who seemed like he was on track for great defensive things.

On paper of course adding a possible offensive star in Okafor to the mix balances that out, but even if ends up being that Okafor is an offensive star, it's a serious issue when a team utterly changes it's style of play. Oftentimes when that happens, it's a rough start. And when you have rough stars even with veterans, a lot of times the locker room becomes toxic and the coach gets fired. Doing this with young guys is arguably even worse because these guys don't understand what they are doing nor how to fix it, and so you might not simply get bad attitudes, but bad habits going forward.

I just think it can't be hammered in enough how astonishing it is that the offense is worse this year than last. It shouldn't be any kind of a shock that the defense took a step back and that Noel is struggling to figure out how to play with Okafor, but as bad as the 76er offense was last year, I think most of us thought it was a given that Okafor could improve that EVEN if Okafor ended up not really succeeding at the NBA level. That the offense has gotten worse has to leave Philly asking seriously: What reasons do we have to think things will get better? I say that not knowing they won't get better, but the concerns about basing your whole offense around a very, very slow big man in this day and age are clear, and Philly needs to have thoughts on how they are going to combat these things.

Put another way: Philly basically can't stay in the "we're going to let the young guys play and then form a plan" mode any more. They have two guys they see as their cornerstones who have diametrically opposed ways to be built around. If no one has a serious plan for how to make them work together, they can't simply hold on to them both because trading one looks bad.

Of course as I say this, gah, Embiid. Philly I think expected they may end up trading 1 of their 3 putative franchise players, but they wanted to do it based on whichever one didn't work as well with the guy who emerged as the alpha. It's understandable if they don't want to make any trades until Embiid is back out there. Heck, premature optimization is EXACTLY what got NO into the mess they're in.

And this then gets to the part that's just so rough about their situation: If Embiid weren't out both his 1st and 2nd seasons, the 76ers would just plain know a lot more than they know now. Obviously bad luck in health is something the 76ers knew was a distinct possibility here when they made the move they did, but still, there's a ton of bad luck here and we need to remember that.

[Doctor MJ]

Something maybe interesting. Just for perspective here. Here is the raw +/- projection of Okafor, next to Noel last year, and the worse performer since '01 on this front:

Okafor -938
Rookie Durant -653
Noel -432

The good news? Hey, Durant turned out all right.
The bad news:

1) Okafor's on pace for a far worse +/- year than we've ever seen before.
2) As bad as the team looked with Noel last year, Okafor's on pace for negative numbers that more than double what Noel had last year.

The degree to which Okafor is NOT working right now is hard to overstate.

[E-Balla]

Their top draft picks are disappointing because they ended up with the Sixers. Do you think Jimmy Butler or Klay Thompson or Kawhi Leonard become who they are on.the Sixers? I'd say there isn't a single 19 year old rookie in NBA history (not even Lebron/Kyrie/Melo who are probably the three best ever) that would look like a star on the Sixers. This is a team with 4 players max that could crack the average NBA team's rotation (Noel?, Jahlil, Marshall, Covington) and they dropped players that helped their young guys develop because they helped them win too much (Ish Smith making Nerlens look offensively competent last year won them a few too many for Hinkie's tastes). If the plan doesn't work its because he ruined young players by throwing them to the wolves backed up by a D-League roster and other super young players without ant thoughts on how they fit. Look at a guy like KAT's defensive discipline and its hard to just think that naturally developed without KG's help.

Really?

Noel was injured then looked great as a rookie. He looks terrible this year because the team completely changed their strategy around Okafor.

You must've forgot but the reason he looked good last year was that they traded for Ish Smith and he started making Nerlens look good. Without Wish Smith on the floor last year he was basically a 11-12 pp 36 player on 44 TS (which is what he is right now ironically). With Ish he was a 16-17 pp 36 (I don't remember the exact numbers) guy on 56 TS. Okafor of course makes a difference but not as much of a difference as the lack of talent surrounding him.

Embiid has been injured the whole time.

Okafor is a guy who has only been in the league for a brief amount of time and is doing basically what you'd expect him to do in any situation, no? I mean he's scoring inefficiently like basically all rookie volume scorers, and he sucks on defense because he sucks on defense.

I'm not saying that there's no possible way that things could have been better, but I really don't understand what you think the Spurs would have done to make all these guys look great at this point. (The one caveat for me being I was always quite wary of Okafor, and I'd have been reluctant to change up what worked for Noel to let Okafor do his 1960s impression, but even then I'm not going to say it's a total mistake what they've done with Okafor. If you liked Okafor as a prospect, they are basically doing what you do with him, and maybe that really works out.)

Okafor is doing what I'd expect but not as well as you'd expect him to do it. He's been creating his own shot more than any big aside from rookie DeMarcus Cousins (who was drafted onto a team of ball hogs) and he's been very average at it (around the 45th percentile in iso last I checked and around the 50th percentile from the post but trending upwards). When you watch the Sixers you notice about 2-3 times a game he gets deep position and the ball doesn't come, or he runs the floor and they don't give him the ball, or (and these are the worst) he dives off the PNR and instead of giving him the easy dish they get pick pocketed or shoot a terrible jumper.

You say you don't know what the Spurs (who we'll use to represent competence here) would do but look at Minny's treatment of Towns. He's getting a few post ups a game with amazing position when he gets the ball most of the time and he's running a lot of PNRs. Jahlil was the best PNR and no dribble finisher in the NCAA last year and the best of the one and done era easily but those two parts of his game are barely used. Now I'm not saying you can use him just like KAT but he shouldn't be playing like Shaq. I always think its easier to teach players the little things so they can ease into a larger role than it is to throw them to the wolves and hope they don't develop bad habits.

Maybe its because of your low opinion on Okafor that you think about him like you do but go rewatch some of those Duke games last year and see how good he is outside of posting up. His jumper might have a long way to go but outside of that he has the complete package (even a dribble drive game).

I get that you're saying the rest of the team is crap and I don't disagree, but seriously, how much different to you expect Noel/Embiid/Okafor to look if they are supposed to be the nucleus a franchise is building around?

Well honestly we could get into the terrible decision of drafting Okafor anyway with Porzingis really trending and Mudiay (who in hindsight isn't as good as previously thought but he was the #1 highschool player over Jahlil for many and he lead China in assist percentage) here. Okafor hasn't even gotten a full season yet so I won't speak on him yet (I do have a lot to say about how he should look though but I'll hold my tongue because he's trending towards my expectations recently), and Embiid is hurt but Nerlens should at least look as good as he did playing next to Ish last year.

By contrast in NO, you've got a situation where there is a truly epic talent to build around, and the front office has just failed again and again for whatever reason. I am inclined to blame the front office heavily for this, but the "tragedy" is simply that unlike with anyone on the 76ers, we know for a fact that years of a great player's career are being wasted in NO.

If they had Davis he'd be a completely different player in the worst way. In NO you have a front office so incompetent they waste talent but in Philly you have a front office so incompetent its impossible to find talent and even if it was found its impossible to develop it.

And the draft is a necessity. Pro leagues should be ran like businesses not individual teams. No one wants to watch a sport where 3 teams have all the players.

I didn't really take the question to be a strict comparison of who was more incompetent. What I know is that Davis is mega-talent being wasted because of clear cut bad decisions. By contrast in Philly, it might just be that Embiid's hurt and that there's no real way to make Okafor-Noel work, or maybe that there's no way to make Okafor work at all.

There's ways to make it work but Hinkie isn't the guy. If they had a very good point and they ran them 8 minutes together, 20-24 minutes apart from each other they'd look way better.

[Dr Positivity]

Which of the following is a worse consequence of the NBA draft:

- That a sure firer HOFer was sent to a franchise that appears truly clueless. In fact they may be awarded another blue chipper for somehow managing to build a 25 win team around Davis.
- That smart men like Hinkie and Brent Brown, this is said without any sarcasm, have decided the best way to build a title is to waste three years while trying to grab lottery picks. If there was no draft both of these smart men would devote their mental power to winning instead of losing.

Both alone show that the draft is a mistake but which is worse?

How long Davis is signed in New Orleans is a tragedy, part of it is his doing but I really wish he was out of there a year and a half from now, not 5 years

[E-Balla]

Something maybe interesting. Just for perspective here. Here is the raw +/- projection of Okafor, next to Noel last year, and the worse performer since '01 on this front:

Okafor -938
Rookie Durant -653
Noel -432

The good news? Hey, Durant turned out all right.
The bad news:

1) Okafor's on pace for a far worse +/- year than we've ever seen before.
2) As bad as the team looked with Noel last year, Okafor's on pace for negative numbers that more than double what Noel had last year.

The degree to which Okafor is NOT working right now is hard to overstate.

Noel's on court rating this year is a -18.4 and Jahlil's is a -19.2. Nik Stauskas' is a -18.8. Jah's on/off has actually been positive since the first San Antonio game (19 game sample size).

Its not Okafor that's not working right now its the 76ers and they aren't built to work even reasonably well. Jahlil can't help the offense while sharing the floor with no shooters, no good entry passers, no real PGs, and another C. They've also gotten pretty unlucky and had an uber hard schedule so far (2nd in SOS and Jahlil has a 46 TS in their 14 games vs top 10 teams and a 61 in the 4 vs bottom 10 teams).

Also preseason I was comparing his career path to Durant's if he ended up taking that next step. As a rookie he'll be a bad scorer, learn to develop that scoring, and then he'll have to learn how to translate his scoring ability into wins.

[Dr Positivity]

I guess this point could made about the Sixers. Over a 30 G start to the season some teams are going to have unexpected poor starts. The Pelicans are currently on pace for 24 Ws, the Bucks 31 Ws, the Clippers 45 Ws, the Rockets 42 Ws. So looking at the Sixers the reason they're on pace for 3 wins instead of 18 could just be the same reasons as those teams. With better health, better point differential luck (they are 4-26 PW) or better schedule they could be on pace for their usual 18 W season right now without a lot changing. The problem for Sam Hinkie from a job security perspective is he put himself the closest to the fire (pun intended) of any team by having the worst one on paper, teams like the Bucks and Pelicans may under perform but since they're starting as such a higher expected win total, being 15 Ws+ off the mark to start the season doesn't put them in the proximity of the utter shame range that is the Sixers right now. The Hinkie Sixers were always 10 wins away from the worst team of all time, and being 10 Ws worse than expected happens all the time for NBA teams. By doing it 3 seasons in a row he also increased the chance that this would happen to start a season. Fittingly, Sam Hinkie may lose his job because of the math of not being able to survive the marginal error

[Quotatious]

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, to all of you!

[bondom34]

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, to all of you!

Same Quo, have a fantastic Christmas and New Years!

[sp6r=underrated]

Which of the following is a worse consequence of the NBA draft:

- That a sure firer HOFer was sent to a franchise that appears truly clueless. In fact they may be awarded another blue chipper for somehow managing to build a 25 win team around Davis.
- That smart men like Hinkie and Brent Brown, this is said without any sarcasm, have decided the best way to build a title is to waste three years while trying to grab lottery picks. If there was no draft both of these smart men would devote their mental power to winning instead of losing.

Both alone show that the draft is a mistake but which is worse?

Oh the former by far.

Look, what has happened in Philly is something that made sense at each step along the way. The Holiday-Noel trade was brilliant, and got the franchise far more than they could otherwise be expected to get from their draft pick.

The Embiid pick also made sense. This was a guy some said had all-time great talent in a way that none of the other guys on the board were remotely close to.

The Okafor pick made sense because he was without question the consensus top choice among those left on the board.

I'm not saying that Hinkie deserves great praise for all this stuff. Things haven't gone well, and there are all sorts of little issues with how he's gone about this, but the intent wasn't to lose as much as possible for X number of years. This is another way of saying that "the process" that the 76ers describe isn't so much a manifesto for a big vision as it is a slogan to justify how things have ended up going.

In the end, to the extent the 76ers fail, it will probably because their top draft picks end up disappointing, and that's the same situation most are in.

By contrast in NO, you've got a situation where there is a truly epic talent to build around, and the front office has just failed again and again for whatever reason. I am inclined to blame the front office heavily for this, but the "tragedy" is simply that unlike with anyone on the 76ers, we know for a fact that years of a great player's career are being wasted in NO.

I think you may be misunderstanding me. My problem with the Sixers strategy isn't that they gutted their team for a season to land a superstar and due to the issues you outlined above are historically bad. The gutting didn't just involve the moves you outlined above but include a total refusal to participate in the free agent market. They didn't pursue any of the second tier free agents and are well below the salary floor again. Their stinginess likely pushed some talented players out of America because they could get a better deal there.

If the Sixers landed a superstar who led them to long-term contention it would say to a franchise like Atlanta or Memphis that you are a damn fool for trying to improve on 45 win clubs that lack superstars. In our league what you should try to do is be really bad.

One of my reasons for hating the draft so much is that it makes such a strategy rational in the first place. The draft isn't the only reason the strategy is rational.The Sixer have a basketball monopoly in one of the largest tv markets due to the franchise territorial rights which prevent teams from moving to Philadelphia.

The Sixers are worse because they engaged in flagrant norm violation that undermine the economic system of the NBA.

[Texas Chuck]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/SBNation/status/679900993203523584[/tweet]

Watching this live with my Mavs bias on I thought Jack was being a punk mocking Wes like this, but seeing this montage I'm pretty amused.

[GSP]

https://twitter.com/fullcourtprez/status/679871613089742849

The Wcf, finals and Warriors/Spurs regular season matchups cant get here soon enough. Hard to take anyone else seriously right now unless Cleveland starts clicking