Another rebuild needed, without insulting fans
PHILADELPHIA » The seventh game of an NBA Eastern Conference semifinal series is over, and for the Sixers, enough is enough.
The roster is full of talented players, but they do not fit together well enough to win a championship. The league is set up to catch unaware franchises in a trap of being just good enough to win playoff games yet not bad enough to win premium draft choices.
It’s been too long since the last championship, which happened way back in 1983.
To the fans, the ride has been enjoyable, but ultimately unfulfilling.
Something must be done. And it shall be done. Break it up. Start it over. Be bold.
Enough.
The year is 2012.
• • •
It’s been a minute or two since that loss in Boston to end a season and effectively key the end of all organizational patience. A few things have changed since then. Coaches. General managers. The practice site. Social media burner-account policies.
But a couple of players on that Sixers team are still active this week as the NBA has reached its Final Four.
Wednesday night in Milwaukee, Jrue Holiday will start for the Bucks, while Lou Williams will be adding offense from the bench for Atlanta. One will wind up playing for a world championship.
After a decade of league-wide personnel upheaval, that’s not particularly stunning. Guys bounce from here to there and back, and somewhere down the avenue will bump into each other. Good for Jrue Holiday. Good for Lou Williams. At that time, the Sixers were flattening. They tried it again in 2013, a lot of it anyway, and lost 20 more games than they won. Then it started, something called The Process. The Sixers would trust a knownothing, Sam Hinkie, to make basketball decisions, and he would trust a warped idea over his own eyes. The Sixers would lose games, win cap room and win draft-lottery scratchoffs. They would lose games and honor.
Then came 2020-21, a wide-open postseason tournament bracket, relatively good health and more of what caused the upheaval in the first place.
Seven games. Eastern Conference semis. Promising players, but not a championship fit. Diminishing draft status without the on-court accomplishments to make that tolerable. That 1983 championship still haunting.
Something must be done.
This time, it will be Daryl Morey in charge of a different process. He has a sturdy reputation in his industry, but has won one fewer Larry O’Brien Trophy than Harold Katz, who used to try out draft picks in his driveway. Morey is capable of doing it right, and he deserves a chance. He’s not the one who dumped entire seasons to somehow be in the position to draft Jahlil Okafor and Markelle Fultz and Ben Simmons. He didn’t authorize a $180,000,000 contract for Tobias Harris, his postseason vanishing act old. He had a little something to do with the Sixers having the third-highest payroll in the NBA, but Elton Brand had given him a running head start.
Morey must decide whether to give a supermax contract of $191 million for another four years to a brittle center who has regular-season MVP talent but who tires at the end of playoff games. If his answer is no, he will be wise to test the market for Joel Embiid. And, yes, that is possible. Isn’t that why BetOnLine.ag is posting odds on Embiid’s next team?
Professionally, Morey is in a bad place. He knows he cannot bring Simmons back, not after the unpopular veteran refused to take a shot in four consecutive playoff-game fourth quarters and was humiliated nightly with Hacka-Ben plots. Doc Rivers vowed Monday to work with Simmons to improve. Good luck with that. The only reason the fans didn’t boo Simmons more Sunday was because the Sixers had a good chance to win late in the game, and if they did, would need whatever on-court charms he does provide in the next round or two. But if he is with the Sixers next season, he will be heckled after every clanked free throw, passedup shot and loss.
Can’t work that way. So that is Morey’s first order: Find a couple of trading partners, one willing to absorb Simmons’ contract and potential, another willing to shed an accomplished scorer. With some salary flexibility, Morey could be active in the free agent market. The specifics don’t matter much in June. Morey will have options with Simmons,
and if he is the executive that he is advertised, he will find Embiid a complementary backcourt star next season.
But changes, once again, are mandatory. The Sixers, who were the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs on merit, can solve this puzzle. They
have the pieces to remain competitive. This time, though, they should know better than to shame a franchise, a city, a fan base, a coach and the players in the process.