That Tank Stank: The Pathetic Philadelphia 76ers
Basketball’s a tricky game. Sure, most nights you get away with it. You throw up some airballs, you don’t bother rebounding, maybe throw the odd pass into the crowd. But every now and then you have one of those awful nights, when it all goes wrong. Your lazy contested jump shot floats through the net, you try to foul and it ends up as an accidental steal. The ball seems to land in your lap off the rim each time they shoot. It’s like a nightmare.
The Philadelphia 76ers had a night like that last week against the Minnesota Timberwolves, ruining their determined effort never to ever win another basketball game again.
After 17 consecutive losses to start the season, somehow they found themselves with a double-digit lead after the first quarter vs Minnesota – something they haven’t had all season. The Wolves got things going in the second quarter and the back half of the game was a close affair. But a couple of big three-pointers from K.J. McDaniels (who is actually really good), plus a 20pts/9reb/ast night from Michael Carter-Williams (ditto but with flaws) and 17 off the bench from Robert Covington (meh) led the 76ers to their first win of the season and avoided tying the worst start to a season in NBA history (still held by the 2009-10 New Jersey Nets).
Yeah, but it’s not like they played well at all. They shot just 39% from the field, missing 50 shots, with 18 turnovers. It’s just that the poor Timberwolves somehow played even worse than the worst team in the NBA on a bad night. It was such a joke of a game that it had to be restarted after 16 seconds because the teams were playing in the wrong direction.
Here’s Wolves guard Corey Brewer’s take on the game:
"That's what makes it bad. They play that bad and we still lose? We have to look at ourselves, man. It's tough. We can't lose that game, period."
This is an abysmal 76ers team that’ll almost certainly lose at least 70 games this season. Out of 82 in a season that seems almost unimaginable… until you consider that even to get to that mark the 76ers would need to win 12 games. It was hard enough just to win one.
Not that the 76ers care - they’re tanking.
Oh, sure they deny it. Michael Carter-Williams wrote an editorial about how competitive he is and all that. Then you see video of him pointing at the scoreboard when his coach drills him for being lazy on the boards. They’re losing on purpose and it’s a joke to the media, a waste for the players and an insult to their fans. Even the players’ mothers are upset.
The 76ers used to be pretty good, back in the days of Allen Iverson. Now they’ve got a roster made up of injured players and D-League rejects. It’s actually horrific to watch. Against the Dallas Mavericks last month they lost by 53 points. They were down 73-29 at half time – the second largest HT lead in NBA history and just the fourth time ever that a team had scored more points at half time than their opposition would in the entire game. In other words, the Mavs could have missed every shot they took in the second half and still won! The final score was 123-70. This is an actual screenshot from the game.
A game like that is historically bad and should be the type that players wake up in cold sweats remembering. But the 76ers aren’t bothered. Five weeks into the season and they still HADN’T EVEN WON A SINGLE GAME! … because they weren’t trying to.
Why oh why would you deliberately lose though? The answer is this: Draft Picks.
The 76ers suck and they don’t see a way out. So they rip their roster to shreds and decide to suck even more. That way they can imagine this world where they land five top few picks in five years and they end up with a team of youth and prodigy. Is that winning you a title though? No, it’s not. You need experience, culture and a winning attitude. That in itself is a long process to develop (Even the Big Three Era Miami Heat, they already had it. They’d won the title not so long before LeBron arrived).
The problem isn’t the players. The players on the court are trying as hard as they can to impress. They have careers to think of, and competitive spirits to appease. The coach, Brett Brown, is doing all he can as well – he wants to have a future in this league too. The problem is in the front office and in the way that the league’s system compensates losses so quantitatively. The more you lose, the better your draft pick.
There’s also this culture that’s developed around college ball. Those players are more heavily scouted and scrutinised than ever before. There’s mass exposure and enormous hype. It’s all glorifying the youngsters coming through as the quest continues for the Next Big Thing. Which is stupid, because if another LeBron or Jordan comes along, we’re gonna know about it as soon as we see them. It’ll be obvious.
And the way that the league works, you can’t just hang around until that guy comes along. Philly were terrible last season, Milwaukee just as bad. Yet with the lottery, it was Cleveland that got the top pick (the first sign that a whole lot of things were about to go the Cavaliers’ way). Meanwhile the Bucks walked away with Jabari Parker, picked up a new coach and immediately set out to be as good as they could. 22 games into the season they had 11 wins and were sitting in a playoff spot. They had 15 in all of 2013-14.
The Bucks are looking up...
Teams are always trying to build for the future. That’s cool, you’ve gotta be prepared. But the likes of the 76ers are continually living for this presumptive future that simply isn’t a reality. Having an eye on contracts and prospects and all that is important but it’s a team’s responsibility to be competitive in the present. And that’s the best way to build anyway. If you’re good now, free agents wanna play for you. Then other free agents wanna play with those free agents. The ability of the team increases, the play of the guys already there increases.
Teams like the Spurs and Bulls are always competitive. The Lakers aren’t right now coz they’ve bottomed out following some backfiring decisions, but they’ll rebuild with free agents, not draft picks. They always draw good players, who wouldn’t wanna make a living in LA? Not that they really have a choice, since they’ll probably lose this year’s draft pick, but nothing would’ve changed either way.
Maverick’s owner and business aficionado Mark Cuban has a theory: If everyone else in the league is playing by one particular strategy, you should do the opposite. That’s why his team tends to trade away draft picks and make splashes in different ways. Like signing restricted free agent Chandler Parsons or trading for Dallas favourite Tyson Chandler. Now the Mavs look a guaranteed playoff side in the ruthless Western Conference, after barely sneaking in last season.
The problem that the 76ers have right now is that they’ve gone so far down this path that it’s almost too hard to turn back now. General Manager Sam Hinkie (named and shamed) has traded away every viable bargaining chip but for the recent draft picks. They have Carter-Williams and McDaniels. Nerlens Noel is back playing now, while Joel Embiid is probably set for a season on the sidelines. There’s also Croatian prospect Dario Šarić, stashed overseas. Plus you can expect another top 3 pick next season to add to that small core and a few half decent possibilities (like Tony Wroten). The rest of the team is undrafted talent barely fit for your pick-up team at the local gym. But when is enough enough? At what stage do they pack up their chips and cash out?
From every possible point of view this is a waste. Players don’t wanna play this way, other teams don’t wanna play against them playing this way. The fans are fed up and rightfully so – this team is an embarrassment to the league in which they play. Some teams end up above the salary cap and have to pay the luxury tax, this team is SO FAR BELOW that mark, that they’re gonna have to pay back around $20m that far under the minimum team total. It is illegal to have a team this bad! The entire 76ers team salary is less than what Chris Paul and Blake Griffin make between them. But then that’s what happens when your squad is one player short of equalling the record of 10 undrafted players on a single roster. Hinkie’s taken 34 win team, turned them into a 19 win team and now has somehow managed to make them even worse. This is a goddamn farce.
Hinkie’s a clever chap. He knows what he’s doing. But the worst team in the NBA has only four times gotten the top pick since the lottery was introduced in 1985, why do they have to be THIS bad? Why do they have to trade all integrity and dignity for a couple teenage basketballers a year? Since when did draft picks become so important anyway?
You don’t win the NBA title with a rookie as your best player, the only rookie to ever win the Finals MVP was Magic Johnson. The team he helped beat in the finals that season: The Philadelphia 76ers. Even if there’s a player that good in the next draft, there’s only a 25% chance they get the pick to draft him with. Oh, and let’s not forget that Magic’s rookie LA Lakers team also included that season’s MVP Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Draft picks should be supplements to the guys you already have. Look at the career path of Kawhi Leonard – that’s the perfect trajectory that every draftee should be aiming for. A future star, immediately on a competitive team, able to learn and absorb from some of the game’s greats as he slowly assumes the mantle that they established.
But not this. Not like this. Michael Carter-Williams was interviewed at the last draft, coming off of his Rookie of the Year award. He looked like he didn’t even know if was about to be traded or not. He wasn’t, he probably wouldn’t have minded if he was.
Change the lottery system, bring in harsher penalties for being under the salary floor, don’t let teams have more than three lottery picks in a row. Do something. Nobody want to watch this crap.