Do you agree with hinkie's rebuild plan for the sixers?

[FutureKnicksGM]

Yes.

When the cap hits 100 mill (2 off seasons from now), there probably going to have:

Noel
Okafor
Embiid (hopefully)
Saric
Covington
Stauskas
2016 PHI first (early lotto)
2016 LAL first (early-mid lotto)
2016 MIA first (mid first),
2016 OKC first (late first)
2017 PHI first (early-mid lotto)

And around 50 mill in cap room to play with.

If he can draft well in the next draft, Philly will be looking good.

[jbk1234]

I'll be okay with it if it stops after this year's draft. You can come out of a tank too early and stay in it too long. Hinkie's got to hit on his 1st round picks next draft and use some of his cap space next summer. If they don't look like they're trying to win at least 30 games next season, then I think the relationship between the F.O. and fans is going to be a problem, and more importantly, the rules committee might have a problem with the Sixers.

But what do you do if the players just aren't good? Say Okafor either flops or isn't close to ready, Embiid's done, and next year's pick doesn't amount to much. The Sixers already play really hard and win more games than they should, and 3rd year Noel and rookie Saric aint winning you much more. I guess you could throw a max at some middling prospect or decent vet but that's only getting you into that 35-game area.

Also, the 'fans' really really don't care. I go to 20+ 76ers games per year, and the games are arguably more fun than they were in the Iggy days. The team hasn't been exciting for a long time, at least now the team is unique and interesting and there's a lot of things to speculate on. The whole reason this happened was because no one cared about the treadmill team so there wan't much risk in stripping it down and selling the spare parts.

I wouldn't confuse hard-core fans who post on Realgm with "fans" overall. Philly is a big market so it's got a wider margin for error than mid-markets. But even big markets bump up against the reality of fewer eyeballs to sell to advertisers if they suck for long enough. Philly's market size is also a double-edged sword as it might lead the league to step in if the team is viewed as deliberately sucking for too long. The truth of the matter is that the data is decidedly mixed when it comes to tanking hard. For every OKC, there's two teams who weren't as lucky in draft. There's also two recent examples of teams who were bad and young but managed to add 10 or so wins a year until they became contenders (Pacers/GS).

[HartfordWhalers]

I'll be okay with it if it stops after this year's draft. You can come out of a tank too early and stay in it too long. Hinkie's got to hit on his 1st round picks next draft and use some of his cap space next summer. If they don't look like they're trying to win at least 30 games next season, then I think the relationship between the F.O. and fans is going to be a problem, and more importantly, the rules committee might have a problem with the Sixers.

But what do you do if the players just aren't good? Say Okafor either flops or isn't close to ready, Embiid's done, and next year's pick doesn't amount to much. The Sixers already play really hard and win more games than they should, and 3rd year Noel and rookie Saric aint winning you much more. I guess you could throw a max at some middling prospect or decent vet but that's only getting you into that 35-game area.

Also, the 'fans' really really don't care. I go to 20+ 76ers games per year, and the games are arguably more fun than they were in the Iggy days. The team hasn't been exciting for a long time, at least now the team is unique and interesting and there's a lot of things to speculate on. The whole reason this happened was because no one cared about the treadmill team so there wan't much risk in stripping it down and selling the spare parts.

I wouldn't confuse hard-core fans who post on Realgm with "fans" overall. Philly is a big market so it's got a wider margin for error than mid-markets. But even big markets bump up against the reality of fewer eyeballs to sell to advertisers if they suck for long enough. Philly's market size is also a double-edged sword as it might lead the league to step in if the team is viewed as deliberately sucking for too long. The truth of the matter is that the data is decidedly mixed when it comes to tanking hard. For every OKC, there's two teams who weren't as lucky in draft. There's also two recent examples of teams who were bad and young but managed to add 10 or so wins a year until they became contenders (Pacers/GS).

The data is not decidedly mixed when you look in depth at it.

[HotelVitale]

I wouldn't confuse hard-core fans who post on Realgm with "fans" overall.

I wasn't. If I meant 'me and some people I go to games with,' I would've said so. (FWIW, I'm not a hardcore Sixers fan, haven't lived here long and I've lived in enough places and countries in my life that I don't really go homerish for teams). The team was not popular in the Iggy years, and there's no sense among the general fanbase that the team needs to do something now. Maybe if this were the Eagles, but it aint and no one feels the lack of an 8th seed team now. The owners also seem willing to stick with it, given the option between a mediocre team now or a good one in a few years. I don't know the exact finances of now vs the Iggy years, but none of that matters so long as the owners are fine with things.

The truth of the matter is that the data is decidedly mixed when it comes to tanking hard. For every OKC, there's two teams who weren't as lucky in draft. There's also two recent examples of teams who were bad and young but managed to add 10 or so wins a year until they became contenders (Pacers/GS).

This isn't relevant to our immediate discussion. BTW, your Cavs would be in the midst of a 5- or 6-year rebuild now if they didn't stumble into Lebron, and it would not be pretty.

[jbk1234]

I wouldn't confuse hard-core fans who post on Realgm with "fans" overall.

I wasn't. If I meant 'me and some people I go to games with,' I would've said so. (FWIW, I'm not a hardcore Sixers fan, haven't lived here long and I've lived in enough places and countries in my life that I don't really go homerish for teams). The team was not popular in the Iggy years, and there's no sense among the general fanbase that the team needs to do something now. Maybe if this were the Eagles, but it aint and no one feels the lack of an 8th seed team now. The owners also seem willing to stick with it, given the option between a mediocre team now or a good one in a few years. I don't know the exact finances of now vs the Iggy years, but none of that matters so long as the owners are fine with things.

The truth of the matter is that the data is decidedly mixed when it comes to tanking hard. For every OKC, there's two teams who weren't as lucky in draft. There's also two recent examples of teams who were bad and young but managed to add 10 or so wins a year until they became contenders (Pacers/GS).

This isn't relevant to our immediate discussion. BTW, your Cavs would be in the midst of a 5- or 6-year rebuild now if they didn't stumble into Lebron, and it would not be pretty.

The Cavs would have had Kyrie, Wiggins and tons of cap space. They won 33 games the season before drafting Wiggins, using all their cap space on LBJ/Love, and trading away four first round picks and Tyler Zeller. It's not clear to me that they would still be rebuilding.

[Texas Chuck]

The truth of the matter is that the data is decidedly mixed when it comes to tanking hard. For every OKC, there's two teams who weren't as lucky in draft. There's also two recent examples of teams who were bad and young but managed to add 10 or so wins a year until they became contenders (Pacers/GS).

This isn't relevant to our immediate discussion. BTW, your Cavs would be in the midst of a 5- or 6-year rebuild now if they didn't stumble into Lebron, and it would not be pretty.

Of course its relevant. A huge part of Hinkie's plan is to build through the draft. So you absolutely have to take a look at teams who have had high picks over a 5+ year window to see how effective a strategy that has been historically. And jbk is correct--most teams who continually pick at the top of the draft struggle to get out of that cycle. The Wolves have been picking at the top of the draft forever and have no success to show for it. The Cavs had a ton of draft picks and while Kyrie worked out, Waiters and Bennett were busts, Thompson has been OK, and jury is out on Wiggins. That team without Lebron isn't very good. Clippers drafted high forever and needed Chris Paul to pull them out of it. My Mavs picked high throughout the 90's and got nowhere until they finally hit on Dirk, etc.

If you have the number 1 pick when Shaq, Duncan, Lebron, Davis come out you are set. Otherwise its hardly the sure thing people treat draft picks as. OKC is an extreme outlier.

[HartfordWhalers]

most teams who continually pick at the top of the draft struggle to get out of that cycle.

most teams who continually are at the top of the league got to that cycle with a very high draft pick leading them.

Both true. It has a high fail rate. It also is the best way to achieve what the Sixers term success.

[basketbob]

The data is decidedly mixed with any given strategy

[BullyKing]

I wouldn't confuse hard-core fans who post on Realgm with "fans" overall.

I wasn't. If I meant 'me and some people I go to games with,' I would've said so. (FWIW, I'm not a hardcore Sixers fan, haven't lived here long and I've lived in enough places and countries in my life that I don't really go homerish for teams). The team was not popular in the Iggy years, and there's no sense among the general fanbase that the team needs to do something now. Maybe if this were the Eagles, but it aint and no one feels the lack of an 8th seed team now. The owners also seem willing to stick with it, given the option between a mediocre team now or a good one in a few years. I don't know the exact finances of now vs the Iggy years, but none of that matters so long as the owners are fine with things.

The truth of the matter is that the data is decidedly mixed when it comes to tanking hard. For every OKC, there's two teams who weren't as lucky in draft. There's also two recent examples of teams who were bad and young but managed to add 10 or so wins a year until they became contenders (Pacers/GS).

This isn't relevant to our immediate discussion. BTW, your Cavs would be in the midst of a 5- or 6-year rebuild now if they didn't stumble into Lebron, and it would not be pretty.

The Cavs would have had Kyrie, Wiggins and tons of cap space. They won 33 games the season before drafting Wiggins, using all their cap space on LBJ/Love, and trading away four first round picks and Tyler Zeller. It's not clear to me that they would still be rebuilding.

The only reason the Cavs wouldn't be rebuilding though is because of an unprecedented string of luck. If you listen to Hinkie, the reason took tanking to such an extreme is to minimize dependency on luck as much as possible. You can look at data for prior tanking efforts but IMHO it's somewhat irrelevant here because no team has to taken it to Hinkie's extremes both in depth and time.

[youOK]

I mean does anyone think a Turner/Young/Holiday core was leading them anywhere? The two big trades they have made (Holiday/MCW) are probably both trades that end up favoring them in the long run.

The only thing they have done that is massively different then anyone else is not sign any free agents. With the rising salary cap it seems like the incumbent team has been willing to match pretty much every deal so I don't really see any young free agent talent that they could have gotten.

Maybe in years past they would have been able to overpay a Bledsoe/Hayward/Butler/Leonard type but those players were never leaving their incumbent teams. The only even remotely top tier younger player to switch teams before their 2nd contract would be Monroe and I don't think he's someone you have to break the bank for.

[Curmudgeon]

You don't build a winner by losing, not in the NBA or in any other form of human endeavor of which I am aware.

And how do you judge the "success" of Hinkie's rebuilding plan? Given the protracted pain he has put Philly fans through with a deep tank that is going into its third year (with no end in sight, really), his plan had better produce at least one championship, and preferably multiple championships. To emerge from the tank with a nice 45 win team (like the current Celtics, for example) would be infuriating to me if I were a Sixers fan. The team Hinkie broke up wasn't much worse than that, and it was a relatively young team.

[basketbob]

I would have enjoyed being a philly fan more than being a nuggets fan last year (i was and am one), and I'd be willing to bet that most young aspiring stars would rather have been playing in Philly. Lucky for me, Connelly appears to be very good at drafting and Shaw/Lawson made it awfully difficult to keep calling the glass half full. My point is that we don't learn about a team's culture or how much the owners "want to win" by judging the win-now-ness of their moves. Trading Fournier plus for Afflalo and keeping Brian 'smell my rings' Shaw around didn't signal that the Nuggets 'wanted to win' more than, say, Orlando or Philly. It signalled that ownership was out of touch with the reality of the tire fire burning all around them.
I've heard and seen nothing out of Philly that suggests a losing culture. It looks from here like Hinkie is playing hard to leap over the treadmill and into position to contend for years (hence my dynasty comment -- i think he's succeeding - see FutureKnicksGM's post above). It seems to me like he understands better than most gms the value of cap space, roster spots, 2nd rd picks, drafting BPA -- and mostly, patience -- and yes, draft position and the reward built (by the league) into 'aiming' for 15 wins instead of the team's immediate 'ceiling' of say, 35 (a reward which only adds to the preferability of a patient approach, but which needn't be viewed as its raison d'etre). My take on Hinkie is that he's coldly realistic and possibly working for the best owner in pro sports.
As to the casual fan's interest, i think it can be held by one of two things: Championship contention or the early promise thereof. Everything else is pretty uninteresting, unless you're one of us geeks.

[meekrab]

I'm fine with "the plan," but repeatedly picking injured bigs who have to sit out for a long time probably alienated a lot of fans. It's fine to be rebuilding and have a young team that loses a lot but generates highlights, say the Cavs with Kyrie and Waiters, for example. It's not fine to be rebuilding and have a completely unwatchable team outside of MCW's near quad-double.

[BullyKing]

I'm fine with "the plan," but repeatedly picking injured bigs who have to sit out for a long time probably alienated a lot of fans. It's fine to be rebuilding and have a young team that loses a lot but generates highlights, say the Cavs with Kyrie and Waiters, for example. It's not fine to be rebuilding and have a completely unwatchable team outside of MCW's near quad-double.

It might be unwatchable to you and that's fine but for some of us, watching this young Sixers team grow (for better and for worse) is infinitely more entertaining than watching Evan Turner and Spencer Hawes and the like.

[HartfordWhalers]

You don't build a winner by losing, not in the NBA or in any other form of human endeavor of which I am aware.

I mean, I generally take your posts and assume you mean the opposite because it makes no sense to assume anything else, but this one is a whooper.

Do you know how Boston won their last championships? By losing a ton.

[Curmudgeon]

You don't build a winner by losing, not in the NBA or in any other form of human endeavor of which I am aware.

I mean, I generally take your posts and assume you mean the opposite because it makes no sense to assume anything else, but this one is a whooper.

Do you know how Boston won their last championships? By losing a ton.

No, they won because (1) Presti was blowing up the Sonics and was willing to take Jeff Green (the #5 pick) and Delonte West (a 27th pick) for Shuttlesworth, and (2) McHale fell in love with Al Jefferson, who was a 15th pick. In short, Ainge drafted reasonably well.

The Celtics tanked for one year, 24 wins in 2006-07. In every other previous year their lowest win total was 33 and before the 33 win year they had been to the playoffs for four straight years.

And the only two recent years in which the Celtics tanked, the strategy failed. They failed to get Duncan in '96 and failed to get Durant or Oden in 2007. In fact, the Celtics have not had a top 4 pick since 1997, when they took Billups and then traded him away. Len Bias was a #2 pick. He died. The only top pick that ever panned out for them was McHale, taken with #3 in 1980. And that was 25 years ago.

[DocRI]

But what do you do if the players just aren't good? Say Okafor either flops or isn't close to ready, Embiid's done, and next year's pick doesn't amount to much.

^ Then he gets fired. Plain and simple, just like any other GM. You can dress everything else up however you want and set forth whatever type of timeframe you want, but as Jimmy Johnson once said about this Cowboys dynasty, building a successful team ultimately comes down to talent evaluation. If Hinkie — or any GM of any team in any sport — blows that part and picks bad players, there is zero defense for him keeping his job. Zero.

You don't build a winner by losing, not in the NBA or in any other form of human endeavor of which I am aware.

I mean, I generally take your posts and assume you mean the opposite because it makes no sense to assume anything else, but this one is a whooper.

Do you know how Boston won their last championships? By losing a ton.

No, they won because (1) Presti was blowing up the Sonics and was willing to take Jeff Green (the #5 pick) and Delonte West (a 27th pick) for Shuttlesworth, and (2) McHale fell in love with Al Jefferson, who was a 15th pick. In short, Ainge drafted reasonably well.

The Celtics tanked for one year, 24 wins in 2006-07. In every other previous year their lowest win total was 33 and before the 33 win year they had been to the playoffs for four straight years.

And the only two recent years in which the Celtics tanked, the strategy failed. They failed to get Duncan in '96 and failed to get Durant or Oden in 2007. In fact, the Celtics have not had a top 4 pick since 1997, when they took Billups and then traded him away. Len Bias was a #2 pick. He died. The only top pick that ever panned out for them was McHale, taken with #3 in 1980. And that was 25 years ago.

^ There's another piece to the above debate I'd like to chime in upon — Ainge had the guts to pull a 180 when the lotto balls didn't fall his way in 2007. He was entirely hoarding young assets around Pierce and hoped to add either Oden or Durant, but then when he landed fifth he completely changed his strategy and cashed in almost all of those assets for KG and Allen (and please note I said "almost," as the two young players he kept, Rondo and Perkins, blossomed with the vets and the rest is history). I don't think there's much debate that, had he just stayed at fifth in 2007 and taken BPA (like Green, or even Yi Jianlian at that point), the Celts never would've won a title and Ainge wouldn't still have his job (and, not coincidentally, a chance to do the exact same thing all over again!). So, the question becomes — Draft Night 2007 was the "fulcrum point" when everything changed for the Celtics and Ainge had both the brains and the balls to realize his "Plan A" wasn't going to work and it was time for "Plan B." I'm not saying the Sixers have reached their "fulcrum point" yet, but IF they do, WILL Hinkie be able to successfully adapt the way Ainge did? Because if not — if he is unable or unwilling to adapt if it becomes clear his plan isn't working — he's toast, just like Ainge would've been.

[Curmudgeon]

It will be impossible for the Sixers to replicate what Ainge did in 2007. First, Ainge already had one veteran star (Pierce). The Sixers do not. Second, Ainge found a GM who was blowing up a small market team about to move to an even smaller market, who was peddling two valuable young veteran stars (Allen and Rashared Lewis) as part of his own tank (which eventually netted Durant and then Harden). Third, after Hinkie gets two veteran studs, who is going to be the third? That requires a guy who is disgruntled with his current situation and enough remaining trade assets (plus cap space and expirings) to get another GM to part with his franchise player. The odds of this kind of "perfect storm" are slim to none. Fourth, Ainge built a credible bench. He still had Tony Allen, drafted Leon Powe in the second round and signed James Posey and Eddie House as free agents. Where is Hinckie going to find a player as good as Posey for the MLE?

The most likely outcome of all this tanking is that the Sixers become the Sacramento Kings East, winning in the high 20s low 30's year after year with young players who haven't learned how to win.

[mksp]

It will be impossible for the Sixers to replicate what Ainge did in 2007. First, Ainge already had one veteran star (Pierce). The Sixers do not. Second, Ainge found a GM who was blowing up a small market team about to move to an even smaller market, who was peddling two valuable young veteran stars (Allen and Rashared Lewis) as part of his own tank (which eventually netted Durant and then Harden). Third, after Hinkie gets two veteran studs, who is going to be the third? That requires a guy who is disgruntled with his current situation and enough remaining trade assets (plus cap space and expirings) to get another GM to part with his franchise player. The odds of this kind of "perfect storm" are slim to none. Fourth, Ainge built a credible bench. He still had Tony Allen, drafted Leon Powe in the second round and signed James Posey and Eddie House as free agents. Where is Hinckie going to find a player as good as Posey for the MLE?

The most likely outcome of all this tanking is that the Sixers become the Sacramento Kings East, winning in the high 20s low 30's year after year with young players who haven't learned how to win.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/c/covinro01.html

[Curmudgeon]

Oh Please. Posey was an established veteran with 8 years of experience which included a ring with Miami in 2006, where he was a key rotation player. Covington was in the D league a year ago.

And I forgot to mention PJ Brown.