CBS basketball insider Ken Berger, writing about the human element in tanking:

“I’m not even sure if it’s tanking,” said one agent who vows to keep his clients away from the Sixers at all costs. “You have to think they believe it would’ve turned a little by now.”

Yet, with a roster featuring only one player with more than two years of NBA experience — Carl Landry, who is expected to be sidelined until January following wrist surgery — the Sixers have what is demonstrably their worst team of the Hinkie era. One rival executive surmised that at least five players on the roster don’t belong in the NBA.

“There’s nobody there, and nobody will go there,” the agent said. “Nobody. Cap space won’t matter. You know who’ll go there? Guys that are trying to steal money.”

…

“Their inability to establish a rapport with agents and probably with other teams is definitely going to lead to their demise,” an agent said of the Sixers’ regime.

“The culture you’re building, it’s all negative,” a league source said. “… This is a five- or six-year plan with no end in sight.”

Nailed it. Believe it or not, I’m still on-board with the plan. Next year, the Sixers could have as many as four first round draft picks (Ben Simmons anyone?), Dario Saric (widely believed to be the best player in Europe), Nerlens Noel, and Jahlil Okafor if he isn’t dead. [Joel Embiid would just be a bonus.] In theory, they can be extremely good in three years. But there are a lot of ifs, and one of them is: if the whole thing doesn’t catch fire first. We’ve heard from anonymous agents and execs, we’ve seen players families freak out, we’ve heard about rookies that didn’t want to be drafted by the Sixers, and now we’re seeing the toll a team devoid of veterans can take on its youngest star. This has been my criticism of advanced analytics all along– you can’t forget the human element. Not scouting or the eye test, but the fact that humans are flawed and don’t always fit into equations.

Way back in 2010, when I was a lot harder on and overly stubborn about analytics – Sabermetrics, specifically – I remarked that Jayson Werth appeared to be squeezing the bat a bit hard with runners on-base, perhaps because he was playing for a massive contract (which he eventually got from the Nationals). Someone on Twitter told me that there was no such thing as being clutch, RBIs were a useless stat, and that I was an idiot for opining that Werth would be thinking about future earnings while at the plate. Maybe he wasn’t, but the pressure of future earnings was certainly there, and it’s the sort of thing that can’t be quantified. That’s my go-to example for arguing against analytics, against playing the game on paper. Right now, the Sixers are playing the game on paper. They are inventing a process. It can work, but if there’s a rock bottom to the whole thing, this is it– setting the record for longest losing streaking in professional sports, having your star player be the target of numerous reports about off-the-court events, and agents thinking you’re a joke. The human element doesn’t compute.

…

And this is why I’m surprised that so many people on Twitter are defending the Sixers for raising ticket prices at the last minute for the Lakers game tonight:


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Supply and demand— got it. But it takes an unprecedented amount of gall for the Sixers, given the slop they put out on the floor each game and the recent news cycle, to hike prices at the last minute on sure-fire sales because people want to see something the other team has to offer. No one is going to see Moses Malone– that’s poppycock. It’s all about Kobe tonight. I’m all for dynamic or tiered pricing – pricing based on the opponent and other factors – and actually think it’s a great idea. I’m typically on the side of teams and businesses in these instances. Even for the Sixers– they should charge more for Lakers, Cavs and Warriors games. But this is bullshit. 0-18, 28 straight losses, and your star player is on the front page of TMZ for four straight days, and you raise ticket prices last-minute in a short-term cash grab just because you can? I’m literally not sure this has ever been done before in sports. Maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t recall an instance where a team suddenly realized it had a hot one on its hands and quickly raised prices and crossed fingers that no one would notice. It most certainly never happened with a team that lost 28 straight. The Sixers are asking so much of their fans right now, and this is how they repay them, with a bullshit moneygrab? That takes next-level balls. If you’re the Warriors, or have a respectable on-court product, then fine. It’s slimy – because sports franchises have never subscribed to regular business conventions – but you can at least excuse it if the product is good. The Sixers have no excuse. This is lame, and yet another chink in the goodwill armor, which is quickly wearing down to a thin fleece, at best.