For once, some good points are made when discussing the Sixers. More on that later.
The Daily News asked three of their basketball writers one simple question: When will the Sixers make the playoffs? Bob Cooney, Sam Donnellon, and John Smallwood actually gave rational, thought-out answers. Dick Jerardi did not. Here’s Jerardi’s opening graf, read best while ragtime piano and old black and white Wilt Chamberlain clips play in the background:
Never, if the Sam Hinkie/Ponzi scheme-like/play-it-forward mentality continues indefinitely. The investors (the fans who buy tickets and merchandise) have risked their money and loyalty on a future that may never have a payoff. It is quite possible everybody will look around in a few years, see a team that is no closer to the playoffs than this one and ask: What was that all about and how do I get my money back?
Hey Dick, fans risking “their money and loyalty on a future that may never have a payoff,”? That’s called sports. You work in it.
I don’t hate the theory of being in position to get a great player or two by accumulating draft picks and salary cap space. I do hate that it is only a theory with no guarantees that the team will ever get the right pick in the right year or that Hinkie will know the right player to pick or that a franchise-changing free agent will ever want to come here.
Agents talk. So do players. Right now, none of them is talking well of Hinkie or the Sixers. Hinkie can say he never uses the word “asset” to describe a player, but he is treating players exactly that way, disposable as old basketballs. If Hinkie actually does start to get really good players, how loyal will they be?
Ah, here we are again. Writers using exactly zero information to claim that people are shit-talking Sam Hinkie around the league and there is some kind of secret pact among veterans never to sign here. And let’s dispel the quip that Hinkie treats players like “old basketballs.” When he got here, he cleared house to build the team he wanted to build in the style he wanted to build it. Since then, most of his trades have been to acquire draft picks while giving up little or nothing in return.
I am a fan of analytics, but everything can’t be analyzed. Points per possession mean a lot more than points. Pace determines totals. Some shots are more efficient than others. Some players with big scoring totals may not be all that efficient. All of that should be considered.
I don’t even know what this is. “I’m a fan of analytics. Here are some analytics. All of those things should be considered analytics.”
Basketball, however, is the ultimate team game. It is not fantasy sports where you just try to assemble players that can put up numbers. Playing together and continuity really matter. There is no analysis needed to understand that.
It’s the ultimate team game where you cannot win without at least one superstar, and Brett Brown has already shown his ability to get the most out of players no one expected much from. Add a superstar to the mix with Brown involved, and good things may just happen.
Elsewhere, Bob Cooney says there are still too many “if”s to say when they’ll actually make the playoffs — a fair point. He’s worried about Embiid’s health, Noel and Embiid’s fit, and more. If things go right, he says, the Sixers can make a “serious run for a playoff spot in the 2016-17 season.”
Sam Donnellon compares Sam Hinkie to a full-time gambler in Vegas (which is right in some ways, and wrong in others) and agrees with Kyle that it’s all going to come down to the young Croatian Dario Saric.
And John Smallwood says we’re “realistically looking at the 2017-18 season before another playoff appearance,” based on the fact that no one other than Noel, Embiid, and Jerami Grant are “solid NBA rotation guys.”
Personally, knowing it will only take 35 wins or so to actually make the playoffs in the East, I think the Sixers could challenge for it next year. I don’t think they’ll make it, but they’ll be a lot closer to that dreaded middle-of-the-pack that they hope to not linger in. If Noel remains closer to his current form than his beggining-of-season production, Embiid is healthy, and whomever they draft this year contributes, I would not be shocked to see a 28-30 win season next year. And then, with top-5 draft picks (unless the Lakers fail) out of the question, it will be up to Sam Hinkie to really show what he can do.
8 Responses
I believe Hinkie has a good plan for building. He builds a team just about as good as the sixers were when they labored in the middle for eons. Except this time he’ll have so much more money to buy that superstar or two to pick the team up over the hump due to the team being made of higher end draft picks with low salary commitments. I believe this plan can’t be any worse than the old plan.
Hinkie hasn’t even been here two full seasons yet, what the hell is Gerardi talking about? These old guys act like he’s been GM for a decade.
It’s funny how the Dick Jerardi’s of the world talk about that there is a chance there will not be a payoff to Hinkie’s plan, yet fail to mention that what was the payoff in the past 10 years when we were an 8th seed almost every year? The Dick Jerardi’s seem to be so offended of a team that tanks, yet they aren’t offended at a middle of the road team that continues to be middle of the road year in and year out.
The bottom line is that the Sixers have won 2 Division Titles since 1983. That’s right, I’m not talking about Championships, I am talking about winning 50+ games in a season to win your division, and we have only done that in 1990 and 2001. Hinkie is trying something new, simply because the ways Dick Jerardi seemed to be for in the past 32 years hasn’t worked that well!
I feel like Jim writes this same story every day.
jerardi is good at 1 thing…being a dick….his jay wright blowjob columns after jay choked again could have been written by the little girls that work at the school paper.
If Saric comes and Embiid is healthy, this is a 30 win team next year.
Idiots like Dick rip Hinkie for trading MCW, but then don’t follow up. The 76ers have been on the same winning pace since trading MCW and the Bucks have gone into the toilet.
So we got a 1st round pick and the team is just as efficient without him.
Dick is a dinosaur who jerked off over Doug Mckbuckets and cried when the Sixers didn’t take him. Hey Dick, how’s he doing in Chicago? Oh right, averaging 9 minutes with 3 ppg. Superstar pick right there. #11 overall and doing NOTHING.
Hinkie converted K.J. Mcdaniels into another second round pick when he would have otherwise walked this season. Meanwhile he can’t even get on the floor in Houston. The Sixers are in a great position to have 3 first round picks in the 2015 season. If the season ended today both Miami’s and OKC’s protected trades would convey.
Would Jerardi rather have Billy King back at the helm where the Sixers sniffed the bottom end of the playoffs without any ability to make a real impact in them? Is mediocrity what teams should strive for in this town? Jerardi calls the fans “investors”. Dick, investors take on something called risk. There are zero assurances to “investors” that their stake will improve its position.
Dick Jerardi knows dick about basketball. He recently said that this draft has no future all stars but that MCW would be a 7 time allstar. Him and Ray Didinger both need to get their asses out of 1972.
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