With pieces in place, no room for excuses
PHILADELPHIA » The yearslong plan to rebuild is over. The foundation is in place for the 76ers to succeed. The season tickets are sold out. The fans are keeping summer league stats. Joel Embiid is creating a national stir. The expectations are raging.
With that, reality is back.
With that, so is reasonable criticism.
No more will it be OK to turn the ball over 20plus times … then shrug that it’s just what happens when the process necessitates the use of a dozenplus point guards.
No longer will it be acceptable to flub a last-minute inbound play, what with the players being so young. It won’t be enough to win in January, but lose in February. Improving over last year’s record won’t be sufficient return for those years of failure. Bragging about transparency is no longer polite conversation. Even Josh Harris, who once claimed a losing season was a “huge success” has announced that he is no longer amused by spending lottery night in Manhattan. Hallelujah. Does that mean the Sixers must contend for a championship? No. Not yet. But it does mean this: Losses, losing streaks, unthinking plays, questionable timeout use, clanked foul shots and lazy passes will be met on a daily basis with the Philadelphia sports standard. They’ll be met with a frenzied search for someone to blame.
With that, here it is: The list of 76ers figures — some in uniforms, some in jackets and ties — most likely to be called out in the papers, on the talk shows and on unsocial media for anything less than responsible, winning, playoff-contending basketball on a nightly basis this winter:
■ Bryan Colangelo: Though widely praised for his offseason aggression — he traded up to acquire Markelle Fultz, and he went $23 million for J.J. Redick for one year — the team president remains something of a newcomer to a process that so many believed flawless.
While so many others will be perceived to have paid professional dues waiting for the development of the project, Colangelo is at risk of appearing like the guy who was too quick to smear it with unnecessary meddling.
■ J.J. Redick: Simply by accepting the Sixers’ generous offer and thus showing that a responsible, accomplished, high-level veteran believes in the franchise goings-on, he became instantly popular. To a point, his blessing of the rebuilding was reminiscent of Jim Thome signing with the Phillies. Thome, though, was a developing first-ballot Hall of Famer. Redick has never played in an All-Star Game. Should he suddenly look 33 and miss too many fourthquarter shots, he could make for a convenient heckle.
■ Ben Simmons: Anybody who’d bought into The Process will wait a long time before questioning a player worthy of having a whole season tanked just for his rights. But Simmons is not a pure shooter and has revealed a distasteful mefirst streak (See: Showtime documentary) that has never before played in Philadelphia.
If the Sixers win, Simmons will be popular even if he makes one threepoint shot a week. But if they lose, and if he doesn’t score, and if he makes faces, then the relationship with the customers could turn rough.
■ Jahlil Okafor: Videos of him declining to defend, even if some were taken a hair out of context, were tough last season for Sixers fans to watch. And if Philadelphia is the basketball city it claims to be, it will not tolerate much more of that, now that winning expected.
Okafor already has fallen deeper in the projected rotation than any player taken as high as No. 3 overall in a draft should in less than three years. If he again proves too immobile at the defensive end to trust in a close game, he could be booed just for kneeling at the scorer’s table.
■ Brett Brown: He has had the longest honeymoon in the modern history of big-time sports management. And why not? Any thinking critic understood that the man had been hurled into an unfair situation. No one could have coached any of the last four Sixers teams into anything but on-court disaster. Indeed, given his rosters, Brown has so overachieved that a Coach of the Year vote or two would not have been an outrageous is idea. But the Sixers should be a pretty good basketball team. And they must be coached like one.
Are others in the line of criticism? Of course. At some level, they all will be at that risk, now that fans want to see games, not lottery prizes, won.
None of that is wrong, or unfair or even premature. Better players and coaches in Philadelphia have been criticized over the years, almost always with cause. That includes Mike Schmidt and Donovan McNabb and at one point Charlie Manuel. It’s the way the business of pro sports is supposed to be conducted.
So congratulations to the 76ers for reaching the point where failure will no longer be mindlessly tolerated. One step at a time, as they say.