Gane 39: Sixers @ Pistons 3 pm ET Game Thread (Embiidless Part 3)

[Eyeamok]

Nerlens Noel sux.

I’d rather have Jrue. This is even if you dont know how Noel will turn out to be. Look at how the game is played. You dont pick a lob and block big (i.e Claxton or Jarett Allen) for a star caliber two way combo guard.

The trend of how basketball is being played favored Jrue over Nerlens.

After we traded Jrue, we spent the next 7 years looking for another star caliber combo guard to compliment biid. While once Jrue paired with Giannis, Bucks won the championship.

9 years down the road. Nerlens is barely getting playing time while our second rounder was outplaying him.

Jrue and Nerlens is was not the issue. The 76ers have had multiple chances to build a winning team, a team that could compete for a championship for several seasons and it has not happened. Why because of bad asset management, getting rid of the wrong players and bad draft picks. If there is a possibility of picking the wrong player or making the wrong deal the 76rrs are right there at the forefront.

The Netflix movie Hustle may have been fictional but it got the bumbling 76ers management 100% correct.

Jrue/Nerlens is not the “issue” but is one of the major issues why our program underperformed.

The biggest “issue” was drafting Ben Simmons, which was not only a wrong move in a nutshell but compounds our wrong move by choosing him over Kawhi or Jimmy or even Fultz.

We didnt have really many assets. Most of them are junks or nowhere near as high as how we think they should be. Picks and the guys we drafted were not THAT good to expect a lot in return.

The biggest blunder was done by Colangelo, it was with drafting Ben Simmons but he gave us JJ who we wont be a playoff team without him.

The biggest blunder was Elton Brand opting Ben Simmons over Kawhi or Jimmy but he got us two lopsided trades.

The third biggest blunder was draft night 2013 and most of the roster building from 2013-2016, but he got us Embiid.

What were we trying to build from 2013-2016? And if the goal was asset acquisition, we failed to end up with promising talents (see how Lakers did compared to us) or valuable picks (see how Kings pick turned out to be).

Its also easy to generate assets when most of it was acquired by tanking. But the hard part is turning picks into talents, which we failed. And trading all the assets for talent, which we failed until EB took over but eventually he flopped with letting Jimmy go over Ben.

All this is because the guys in charge disregarded the trend of the game. While the game trends towards high powered perimeter scoring, we drafted bigs and GUARDS who can’t shoot. So because of that there’s no use getting picks if we can’t effectively translate them into talent.

And sure we lucked ourselves into drafting Embiid (we were trying to trade for Wiggins than year), but man.. to win the championship is just harder compared to a lot of the top players out there.

Regarding Netlix’s movie Hustle, its a good movie. I also like Avatar 2 and recommend watching it on 3D.

It was not that long ago when you were beating the Bryan Colangelo is such a wonderful GM and good choice for this franchise. I only bring that up because it seems you have pivoted away from this point and even if Hinkie was still the GM I believe he would have drafted Simmons too. But because Hinkie was not married to any one player (well besides Joel), I believe he would have seen the writing on the wall a lot sooner than most and traded Simmons. Like Morey did as soon as he could.

Ben Simmons- If you don't draft Simmons who do you draft? Ingram? Ingram with the blood clots, Ingram who could not put on any weight? But if Hinkie was here the chances of trading Simmons for Kawhi go up substantially.

When Colangelo took over the organization has assets. That has been documented. We did a pick swap in 2017 got to the #3 pick and then decided to give away 2 additional #1 picks to move up to the first spot for a guy that had a bad workout. And who the Celtics had a glaring need for. That was a crazy move. Lucky for the 76ers they landed Maxey but they gave up assets for that to happen.

I can't place all the blame on EB. He was handed a plum assignment with no experience. You blame ownership for that, extremely bad move. And as was noted it was management by committee. EB was just one of many voices making the Jimmy Butler decision.

As Hinkie said luck was part of the process, so actually drafting Embiid was by design. You knew eventually if you followed this process path you would get lucky and Embiid was the proof.

The Lakers and the Kings? The Lakers got Lebron the best player on the planet, at that time, he just walked in and said where do I sign. Then they traded the house for AD so they could win a title and it worked. No great asset accumulation and management because AD was leaving one way or another, he had made that clear. The 76ers made overtures for Lebron but he was not coming here. The Kings what have they actually done well?

Yes you are right winning a championship is hard extremely hard. But it is made harder by shooting yourself in the foot with bad decisions. Which this franchise has been very adapt at doing.

[Mik317]

lot of revisitionist history and hindsight is 20/20 going on

Noel was considered the top prospect; only fell because he wasn't going to play. He didn't develop...**** happens. Did the same for Embiid...and it worked out quite well.

Ben also was the consensus pick with Ingram a close second...Ingram was buns his first few years and pretty sure we'd run him out of town too lol. Yeah its easy to say trade him for Kawhii now...but remember Kawhii hadn't played in almost 2 years and was going to walk to LA no matter what...and he did so after winning a goddam championship (and did so with a franchise with a much better medical staff lolololol). I don't like to judge people based off of moves they didn't make...thats a part of the game IMO.

That leaves Jah. Trading up for Fultz. Zhaire Smith Trade. Going all in for Tobias. And then not running it back as the actual infraction points IMO.

[Jay555]

Not sure about the history. But knew once upon a time, 76ers had a ton of assets unlike now.

Things that stand out to me are

1. Why did Jimmy Butler leave? This dude is a baller and has the mental toughness to be that man.
2. Ben can’t shoot
3. Embiid frequently injured
4. Harris’ contract. This might be the biggest roadblock imho. Harris is ok if he’s worth 20 - 25 mil. The same amount of money can net two quality 3+ D players or one 3 + D and one quality C which might be what this team ultimately needs. But there is no if. It’s what it is.

To win a chip, teams need to be lucked out. There are many teams which have been tanking for years without success. Multiple stars also don’t guarantee a chip as injuries, chemistry, bench depth etc would affect the outcome.

76ers can do it. Just need to get lucky. We will see.

[Embiid P]

Not sure about the history. But knew once upon a time, 76ers had a ton of assets unlike now.

Things that stand out to me are

1. Why did Jimmy Butler leave? This dude is a baller and has the mental toughness to be that man.
2. Ben can’t shoot
3. Embiid frequently injured
4. Harris’ contract. This might be the biggest roadblock imho. Harris is ok if he’s worth 20 - 25 mil. The same amount of money can net two quality 3+ D players or one 3 + D and one quality C which might be what this team ultimately needs. But there is no if. It’s what it is.

To win a chip, teams need to be lucked out. There are many teams which have been tanking for years without success. Multiple stars also don’t guarantee a chip as injuries, chemistry, bench depth etc would affect the outcome.

76ers can do it. Just need to get lucky. We will see.

1. B/c the Sixers front office ultimately chose Ben Simmons and Brett Brown over Jimmy Butler. There was also supposedly friction b/t Butler and Brown during practices which caused Butler to want to leave in the offseason.

2. Ben's biggest problem isn't that he CAN'T shoot. It's that he WON'T shoot outside of 5 feet from the rim. Even historically poor outside shooting PGs like Magic, Kidd, Westbrook, etc. at least occasionally took outside shots to keep the defense honest. Ben doesn't even do that much which is why opposing teams know that his defender can sag off him on the perimeter and crowd the paint which in turn made life harder for Embiid.

3. This is likely due to a number of factors, including Embiid's genetics, reckless style of play at times, and high usage rate for a center. This could probably be alleviated a bit by having Harden, Maxey and company take the scoring load off Embiid or at least have him be more of a roller in pick-and-roll situations. Of course Embiid also has to be willing to share the load on offense as well as Rivers not running isos for him in crunch time.

4. This is the biggest outstanding issue and was Brand's biggest blunder as GM along with signing Horford, since he felt the need to overpay Harris after trading a number of assets to get him along with losing Butler. I can't see us winning a title with Harris's contract on the books. I understand the logic in waiting until the offseason to move him when his value will be at its highest but at the same time, waiting that long means that they are likely willing to punt a legit shot at a title this season thus risking Harden walking and Embiid demanding a trade in the offseason.

[mjkvol]

That leaves Jah. Trading up for Fultz. Zhaire Smith Trade. Going all in for Tobias. And then not running it back as the actual infraction points IMO.

Exactly. I would only add 'Ben over Jimmy' before 'going all in for Tobias' and the story is complete.

Jah was a disastrous pick from the get-go, but that draft was garbage unless you had a crystal ball and picked Booker. Hinkie's only other possible choice was Porzingas, which probably should have been the pick.

Trading up for Fultz was stupid, but typical Sixers bad luck didn't help there. Really, Jimmy out and Ben and Tobias in made the bed we're in right now, Harden being the most logical 'win now' option that Morey had.

The whole mess is really a remarkable story that you couldn't make up, and that will be perfect for one of those ESPN 30-30's when it's all said and done.

[HardenToSixers]

If there's one thing Hinkie did well, it's knowing when to sell high like he did with MCW (which the ridiculous ownership group of course took offense to).

Noel was a valuable young prospect who fetched a big deal in RFA, we just had no trade leverage at the time and waited too long to trade.

There are reports Okafor had a trade market and Hinkie wasn't allowed to sell him.

The Lakers pick package was quite valuable at the time of trading, and for like 3 years in a row had a ~40% chance at conveying in the top 5, even though that pick specifically didn't end up resulting in a good player.

Simmons was one of the most valuable assets in the league until we held him for too long.

The list goes on.

It's unrealistic to assume that we would've capitalized on all that value at the optimal time, but we certainly wouldn't have sat on it like we did with the goon squad of a front office that was put in charge. Almost everything diminishes to 0 if you hold onto it for enough time. That doesn't mean that you should write every asset we owned to nothing in hindsight because some joke of a GM decided to let everything depreciate to 0 and light the whole roster on fire.

[Negrodamus]

Paul Reed has a few moves in his wheelhouse that really makes me think he can be more than a role player PF. The problem is he sometimes gets to chaotic in those moves and turns the ball over.

[SixthStreet]

Reed will be better once he's on a team that's not trying to win games. He needs to be able to play "losing" basketball to learn what he can and can't do on this level.

Some guys can learn to play a sheltered winning role by practicing and offseason work. I don't think Bball Paul is one of those guys.

[76ciology]

Why do we have to face this team again? No decent team until the 26th against the Nets?