The other night I watched with surprising disappointment as the Philadelphia 76ers put the finishing touches on a loss to the New York Knicks in Madison Square Garden. As recently as last year that would be cause for a “here we go again, these guys are (Charles Barkley voice) turrrrrible” post. No way. Not now. It is only ten games, but your team, your town, your 76ers are 7-3. This despite playing six of those first ten games on the road – five of them to start the campaign. You can say “but they have not played anybody good yet,” and, well, I guess there is not much I can say in response. Four of these first ten wins (@GSW, DET, TOR, SAC) have come against the true dregs of the league. The only real quality wins have come against Indiana at home and Phoenix on the road. Fine. But here’s the thing: past iterations of the 76ers would have limped out of the first ten games of this slate at 3-7 or 4-6. These 76ers are 7-3, and you can only play the games on your schedule.
Litmus test games are coming. They play at Miami on January 21. But due to the blessing of the compacted 66-game schedule, here is the non-murderers’–row they face in the interim, starting tonight: WAS, @WAS, MIL, DEN, ATL. I don’t know how to tell you this, but they should be favored in every one of those games except maybe the Denver game. The Wizards and the Bucks stink. Actually, that’s unfair to the Bucks, who only stink, because the Wizards flat suck. The Hawks are your classic sixth- or seventh-seed playoff team that are really tough at home but nothing to be too concerned about on the road, and they just lost Al Horford for three months. So in the next five games, the Sixers have a very good chance to go 4-1. But let’s say, just for fun, that they *only* go 3-2. That would put them at 10-5(!) going into a matchup at Miami against the world’s first living heart donor, LeBron James, and the Heat in Miami. Are you really telling me you will not be up for that game? What else do you have going on in late January?
After the game against the Heat they get to play the Orlando Magic on January 30 in Philadelphia. Orlando causes the 76ers all kinds of trouble because they (still, after six years) have no one to guard Dwight Howard. I like Spencer Hawes and all (more on him below) but really the 76ers would be better off playing Hack-a-Dwight…I know it does not have the same ring, let’s just move on…and using all of Tony Battie’s six fouls in that one. It almost worked for the Warriors, who put Howard on the line 39 times last night. He only made 21 of them, and while it is 21 points given up for nothing it is a whole lot better than giving Howard 20 dunks or layups. I still say the Sixers should be favored or at worst a pick’em in that one.
For me, though (channeling Gary Matthews there, and badly) the real test of where this team is will come on February 1 when the Chicago Bulls come to Philadelphia. Because to my mind there is only one real difference between the 76ers and the Bulls. Both teams are very deep, and both teams have a lot of youth and love to run. But the Bulls have that one guy that is the difference between winning and losing (Derrick Rose.) Right now, today, no one can reasonably say that the 76ers have that difference-maker. Looking at the roster, though, they may not need to wait too long.
One of my favorite Bill Simmons lines of all time is his reaction to teams that languish in mediocrity (or worse) for extended periods of time. “Don’t these teams have scouts?” he rages. Fair enough. The 76ers are a fine example of this. Forever and a day, the 76ers have had really high-to-pretty high draft picks and, not to put too fine a point on it, sh*t the bed over and over and over again. Shawn Bradley. Sharone Wright. Jerry Stackhouse (that’s right, I’m saying it, he was a total bust) and Larry Hughes. Not to mention all the years the fan base was told things like “Jiri Welsch was a steal at #16 in this draft!” Well, you were half-right…he stole money from you. Each one was supposed to be the difference-maker, but they all ended up playing for bad teams that they did nothing to improve. Really, if not for the Allen Iverson pick in 1996, we could absolutely be talking about a franchise that remained irrelevant for the better part of three decades. And I still love Bubba Chuck, thanks for asking.
So then you take a look at this year’s team and, candidly, it is hard to see why you should buy in. A lot of these guys look awfully familiar. When they gave Elton Brand the five-year, $82M contract, they hoped he might turn into that. We can safely say now, in the fourth year of the deal, that that is never going to happen. He blew his shoulder out in the first year of the deal, and given that he previously had a terrible knee injury it cannot be that great a surprise that he did not bounce back into a 20/10 guy. The past two seasons he was healthy, and all he could manage was 13.1/6.1 and 15.0/8.3. Not terrible, mind you, but definitely not “highest-paid guy on the team” numbers. He has one more year on his deal. Expiring contracts (and those with few years left) have long been a trade chip in the league. Again, though, I think the Sixers are best off holding onto Brand. The money they have committed to him is a shame for a player who now is a starting-but-part-time player at 30 minutes a game. And he is not going to put up even 15/8 again anytime soon. But he is a credible low post player, still, and the Sixers really do not have many of them, especially after trading Marreese Speights for draft picks.
Speaking of long-term, big-cash guys, this is Andre Iguodala’s eighth season here. Eight years! And for each of the last three seasons the talk has been that the Sixers should trade Iguodala to a contender for pieces. The logic behind it was always the same: good player, dependable player, but not a star and not a guy who can win games by himself. All that was (and is) true. His career stats as of this writing: 15.6 PPG, 5.8 RPG, 4.8 APG, 1.8 SPG. So no, he is not a triple-double waiting to happen. But he has been durable and he has been an excellent citizen/teammate through a disastrous period for the franchise. If you want to see him traded now, fine, but I would advise against it. His value on the market is not what it was, and for this team, with this personnel group, he is actually pretty close to invaluable. Because, you see, he is the best player on this team at what this team can do.
Which is, to do a little bit of everything. As noted above, the Sixers do not have a franchise player, a star, a difference-maker. What they have, though, is a rotation that goes eight-deep with quality NBA players. Iguodala and Brand are legitimate. Hawes is often referred to these days as “coming into his own.” Let’s not get carried away: he is a slight jump-shooting center who does not protect the rim all that well. But in ten games this season he is averaging 11 and 9, so he should play. Thaddeus Young (another fifth-year Sixer) has established himself in the league as a player who rises high and finishes, provides energy, grabs a few rebounds and, um, that’s it. Still, he has averaged double-digit points per game for three seasons running, and the market for him was such that the Sixers had to pay him $7.7M this season to keep him here. He is legit.
I will not spend a lot of time debating the credits and debits of Evan Turner, nor will I try to justify his having been selected #2 overall in the draft two seasons ago. No one really thought he was a #2 overall selection from a talent perspective. I will, however, note that the following players were taken immediately after Turner: Derrick Favors (such a head case that he was traded from New Jersey to Utah before his rookie season ended), Wesley Johnson (deep reserve for the not-that-great Timberwolves and buried behind Kevin Love), and DeMarcus Cousins (another head case, recently got Paul Westhead fired by the Kings.) At least the Sixers have the opportunity to develop Turner without fearing that he will obliterate the team from within. At least for now, he’s a keeper.
Your other valuable pieces for the Sixers are Jodie Meeks and Lou Williams. Meeks was a stone-dead gunner at Kentucky, a scorer who did nothing else. He is best remembered for hanging 54 points on Tennessee one fine night. Relevant now is that he shot better than 40% from three-point range in his last year of college ball, and that he has shot 37% for his career in the NBA from even further out. As for Williams, he is another “man, how long has he been here?” guy. This is his seventh season on the team, and he has developed from a limited slasher to a top-of-the-line sixth man, averaging better than 13.7 points per game off the bench for the last 2+ seasons. Bottom line is that the eight-man rotation is very solid. Not one of them is “special.” There is no one you can tap for greatness.
Wait…Iggy, Brand, Hawes, Thad, Evan, Meeks, Lou…I must be forgetting someone.
Ohhhh, that’s right, I am forgetting someone. The crown jewel. The one who may yet really become “The One.” Jrue Holiday. I almost forgot. Just 21 years old but already the undisputed general on the floor. 14+ points per game last season and this. Better than 37% from three-point range. Approximates to five assists, three rebounds and two assists per game. And maybe this is the ultimate cop-out, but Holiday is one of these players for whom the numbers do not seem to tell you how good he is, or may yet be. You sort of have to watch him play to see it.
Therein lies the rub, because of course no one really watches the Sixers play. That is what a decade of borderline-playoff and worse finishes gets you in a town that is Eagles, then Flyers, then Phillies if they are good, then Eagles again, and then finally Sixers just before the Union and the Soul. I will credit new ownership with slashing ticket prices, because it never made any sense to me to make the face value of a ticket in the corner of the lower bowl more than $50 when nobody would buy the seat unless LeBron or Kobe was in town. On Monday I am taking my wife and my son to the Martin Luther King, Jr. game against the Milwaukee Bucks, taking advantage of the $17.76 or less pricing for the entire mezzanine in April. We are center court first row upstairs. I cannot wait.
The main holdback for Sixers fans and Philadelphia sports fans in general seems to be that this team, as constructed, cannot win the conference or a championship. I cannot dispute that. In a playoff series against Miami or Chicago they would be heavy underdogs. Boston’s recent troubles notwithstanding, presently it is tough to see them beating Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce in seven games. So there is definitely a ceiling on how high this Sixers team can go.
I do not care about that, though. This is a good team, and I am going to watch. You do what you want.
