mksp wrote:http://patternofbasketball.blogspot.com/2016/02/76ers.html[tweet]https://twitter.com/ZachLowe_NBA/status/701786120468766720[/tweet]
One thing I like to do with basketball-reference is go to their line-up section and look at the net ratings of their top 2 man combinations in terms of minutes played. When you go to the 76ers page, what jumps out is that pretty much all of their worst 2 man combinations have Jahlil in them. He's in 6 of their bottom 7.
Jahlil + Jerami Grant: -20.4
Jahlil + Nerlens Noel: -19.1
Jahlil + TJ McConnell: -19.0
Jahlil + Nik Stauskas: -18.6
Jahlil + Robert Covington: -14.9
Jahlil + Isaiah Canaan: -13.3
It's not just that the 76ers are terrible because the average net rating of their top 20 most used two-man combinations is -10.6. Jahlil is a weight whose literally dragging the rest of his team down. The closest to a positive with Jahlil is Ish Smith (-9.8). There are four guys - Ish, Grant, McConnell and Covington - who have better net ratings with Nerlens.
The original article is a good read, but I disagree with him all over the place.
I think the results in Houston should be an example of how well the Hinkie/Morey methodology can work, and not an example of its flaws.
Houston damn near had Bosh, Harden and Howard, and it was only a miss with Bosh that sent them reeling. Also Howard is simply not a winning basketball player. It isn't that the method was wrong, they just chose the wrong horse in Howard, and had Buzzard's luck with Bosh.
The method of shooting for the fences got them very good very quickly.
Hinkie and Morey are similar, but also different, in that Hinkie started from farther behind, and went the tanking route that we still haven't seen the fruit of yet. They both are asset acquisition guys though that make smart draft picks and trades.
I also hate the argument of using analytics to show the problem with a 20 year old kid. It has nothing to do with his future. It is all in his present, and he is on a team where it is very hard to have positive impact stats on.
He also wrote this article as if he has only watched the Sixers in the first 30 games or so. The Sixers understand the problems of playing Okafor and Noel together, and they have been experimenting on how to do it.
The most important thing to understand( that this guy doesn't seem to get) is that if Embiid is healthy, then the player better equipped to play the 4 next to him will be who we keep.
It goes without saying that the player that plays next to Embiid will have to be a respectable shooter to excel there.
Whether we keep Okafor or Noel or neither, is not a long term problem, and it certainly doesn't show a weakness in a philosophy. Having the best players possible that you have to move for fit, is much better than having a great fitting roster of guys that don't have great talent.
His argument about the teams developing their talent basically for other organizations is really stupid. You develop talent to make the players better either for your team or as trade bait to another team. If you develop a guy, and trade him to someone else then you got a return on your investment.
He needs to recognize that getting anything out of second round draft picks or waiver wire types is a big win.
He also needs to recognize(and this really shows his ignorance of the Sixers team) that we have not had Noel for 3 years. He was injured for the entire first year, and we are barely half way through the second year. So we have been developing him literally for about half the time that he said.
If he can't play with Okafor or Embiid then we trade him. Period. We will get great value for him at that point.
Most of the naysayers of the Sixers have the same problem. They misunderstand the plan at its core. It is like reviewing a movie that you have only watched the first 2 acts of, and then saying that you didn't like the ending. It is nonsensical.
The Sixers are not building their future off of how well Okafor and Noel play together, or how well their second round picks turn out. They are maximizing their chances of finding a star, while preserving flexibility. They are also drafting the BPA at every stop a long the way. The fact that Grant hasn't turned himself into an NBA starter is not a failure. The fact that he is turning himself into an NBA player at all is a testament to the Sixers, and to him. He was like the 40th player off of the board!
You can't judge the 40th pick in the same way that you judge the 10th.
There has to be some recognition of where we started, and what opportunities we have had.
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