Truthfully, it’s time for Sixers to burn all ties to Colangelo
PHILADELPHIA >> To lose games, to lose dignity, to lose as the 76ers lost for so long with deliberate, repugnant intent, there was only one way to survive. Through it all, it was mandatory to be decent about the whole thing.
With that, the Sixers went into a rebuilding process well-armed with the proper promises. They would be transparent, and they would throw that word around as often as their point guards would flip entry passes out of bounds. They would be honest, or so they would claim. They would not pretend to do anything that they weren’t doing. To them, being strong up-front had to mean more than signing power forwards.
If when it was all over, and if the fans and the players and the ownership partners and the press believed that there was nothing sinister about the way the franchise was being operated, then there could at least be some place where they all could meet and judge the project.
They failed to do that. And by this week, they were busted.
Not that Bryan Colangelo, their smug president and general manager and self-assumed inventor of the sport, was there from the beginning of The Process, but that would have been him Tuesday, collapsing under the weight of all that transparency. In a story on the sports and pop culture website “The Ringer,” Colangelo was accused of managing the operation through the use of multiple Twitter “burner” accounts, which he allegedly manipulated to leak medical information and rip some of his more important players. Joel Embiid, who is into the Sixers for $118,000,000 was among those players. And that, then, should be the end of Bryan Colangelo’s reign as the Crown Prince of Camden, or as an executive in a league where pricey, marquee players decide who works, where, when and how.
“An online media outlet filed a story linking multiple social media accounts to 76ers President of Basketball Operations Bryan Colangelo,” the Sixers would say Wednesday. “The allegations are serious and we have commenced an independent investigation into the matter. We will report the results of that investigation as soon as it is concluded.”
The Sixers, of course, said that in a statement, which immediately kept them from being questioned. With the exception of compulsive truthteller Brett Brown, their interpretation of transparency was always a little cloudy. Yet unlike the other communications blunders that have dirtied their image, Colangelo’s activities could mean long-term danger. Criticizing players under a false Twitter handle for the purposes of strengthening a team president’s power is not as innocent as giggling while trying to fool the press with a deliberately vague medical report on the latest of Embiid’s bottomless supply of injuries.
It’s not even mothballing the top overall pick in a draft for 68 games because he can’t play NBA basketball, all while characterizing it as some goofy shoulder malfunction. No, going underground to imply that players failed unreported physical examinations, as Colangelo was alleged to have done in relation to Jahlil Okafor, is the kind of repulsive management that would drive even mediocre pros to want to play elsewhere. And for the Sixers, it comes at a time when, finally, they would seem ready to recruit the best players in a belated effort to turn The Process into The Parade.
That’s why Colangelo must be fired. That the Sixers have commissioned an independent investigator hints at that plan. They’re just setting themselves up to do it at the lowest possible cost. If they find Colangelo to have been so clumsy, they might be able to rid themselves of him without as much as Ben Franklin Bridge fare. If he is not guilty, they will have to buy him out at fair value. Either way, he has to go soon, before, say, LeBron James has something other to think about than how to outscore three superstar Golden State Warriors by himself.
“Like many of my colleagues in sports, I have used social media as a means to keep up with the news,” Colangelo said to The Ringer, after the story broke. “While I have never posted anything whatsoever on social media, I have used the @Phila1234567 Twitter account referenced in this story to monitor our industry and other current events. This storyline is disturbing to me on many levels, as I am not familiar with any of the other accounts that have been brought to my attention, nor do I know who is behind them or what their motives may be in using them.”
The Sixers must make sure Colangelo goes elsewhere to find out what happened. They imported him to take Sam Hinkie’s original process to the next level. He made some nice moves, acquiring JJ Redick, Marco Belinelli and Ersan Ilyasova to put together a 52-win team that lost in the second playoff round. But he also mangled the No. 1 pick in the last draft, selecting G-League talent and eventual Euro League who’s-he Markelle Fultz instead of Jayson Tatum. So Colangelo is nothing so special that he couldn’t be easily replaced. And if the Sixers do it soon enough, they could do that with former Cavs GM David Griffin, a professional favorite of James.
The Sixers need that cleansing. They thought they had it in Colangelo, who came to Philadelphia and promised to be accessible to the fans and the media, then was ever unavailable to address basketball issues. Always seeming to be hiding something, reports are that indeed, he was. The Sixers, their process still far, far from completion, still need to be more decent than that.
Contact Jack McCaffery @jmccaffery@21stcenturymedia.com; follow him on Twitter @JackMcCaffery