Philadelphia 76ers season preview
The NBA season will be here before you know it and FanSided is here to get you ready. In the lead up to Opening Night, we’ll be previewing two teams each day, reviewing roster changes, discussing important players and challenges, and hearing the perspective of our FanSided site experts. Let’s get ready for basketball!
Roster changes
Inputs: Ben Simmons (PF, NBA Draft pick No. 1); Timothe Luwawu (SG, NBA Draft pick No. 24); James Webb III (PF, signed for two years, partially guaranteed); Gerald Henderson (SG, signed for two years, $18 million); Jerryd Bayless (SG, signed for three years, $21 million); Dario Saric (PF, signed for two years, $4 million); Sergio Rodriguez (PG, signed for one year, $7 million); Brandon Paul (SG, signed for one year, partially guaranteed)
Outputs: Ish Smith (PG, signed with the Detroit Pistons); Isaiah Canaan (PG, signed with the Chicago Bulls); Christian Wood (PF, signed with the Charlotte Hornets)
Retained: Elton Brand (PF, re-signed for one year, veteran’s minimum)
Biggest rivalry
The 76ers’ division rivals are either focused on winning the Atlantic (Boston, Toronto), reaching the postseason (New York) or not getting fleeced in a trade/hoping their sixth coach in five years is the charm (Brooklyn). Philadelphia occupies an altogether different reality, and that’s the team’s biggest rival this year — reality. Whether you found their “process” of losing game after game year after year to stockpile high-end talent cynical or hopeful, the 76ers finally seem poised for improvement. In many ways, though, they’re still experimenting with unknowns.
Accumulating high draft picks is good; you’re more likely to hit a home run the more swings you take. But a majority of high draft picks fail to become All-Stars, much less transcendent talents. Joel Embiid, Nerlens Noel, Dario Saric, Jahlil Okafor and Ben Simmons are the 76ers’ highest-upside players. The majority of that group has yet to play an NBA game, and Simmons likely won’t be able to make his debut for at least three months after breaking a bone in his foot.
It’s easy to claim you’re improving when the bottom line is “asset acquisition.” Now it’s winning time, and all these young unknowns are being asked to turn around an organization whose culture of choosing to lose was in place for over a thousand days. On top of that uncertainty, Philadelphia’s key players are all bigs. Building a winner with complementary talent is tricky; trying to do so with roster redundancy is like trying the trick blindfolded. The reality is head coach Brett Brown is 47-199. Does anyone know if he knows how to win? Does he have what he needs to?
Related Story: The wait for Joel Embiid is over. Finally.
Least important player
Simmons will miss at least the first three months with a Jones fracture in his foot and could miss his entire rookie year. The Sixers can’t win with players who are out, so Simmons is at least temporarily irrelevant to their success. But there are a lot of moving parts involved as Philadelphia plots its future course. In some ways, Simmons being out could offer some benefits.
Injuries have kept Embiid out of action for two years, but of all the glitterati in the Sixer universe his potential shines brightest. In the second quarter of his preseason debut, the Celtics double-teamed him. In the second quarter! Of a preseason game! Embiid is a potential apex-level big man, able to score in the post or from downtown while protecting the rim on defense. An effervescent social media personality, he could be the team’s biggest star since Allen Iverson. With Simmons out, the Sixers’ most promising player should get more of a chance to show off.
Simmons’ absence could mean Saric gets more time as the playmaking 4. If he succeeds, Philadelphia improves their depth and has a young, cheap, attractive asset to showcase. They desperately need better guards, but how to find them? Lose too much and free agents may not trust the team’s direction; win 25 games and they risk drafting too low to land a stud guard. A trade may be their best option. With Simmons out, Saric could see more playing time, therefore producing more, therefore upping his trade value. Simmons is massively important to the 76ers going forward, but over the next few months his absence could prove even more meaningful.
Next: New York Knicks Season Preview
What does success look like?
— Bret Stuter, @SixerSense, The Sixer Sense
Success to the Philadelphia 76ers team this year can come in many shapes and forms. Having finished 10-72 the previous year, an improvement in wins will certainly be one area. But how many is enough?
The goal of this team is to build towards a championship, and this is year four in the seven-year plan. So the team needs to show marked improvement in the wins column. I believe 25-30 wins this season would be labeled a success.
But the team needs more than just wins. With Ben Simmons, Joel Embiid, and Dario Saric’s debut, success must also translate into forging the trio into a complimentary set of NBA talents which will carry the team well into the foreseeable future.
Somewhere in the course of this season, the team must reconcile three starting caliber centers vying for one starting role. Ideally, one of the three will be dealt, hopefully for a minimum of an NBA lottery pick or an above average starter, or a package of the two combined.
Statistically, the team needs to place in the top half of the league in defensive efficiency. In theory, that should be doable with this roster. While Embiid has already begun to shown signs of stellar defense, the team has a number of players whose strengths rest in defending: including Gerald Henderson, Richaun Holmes, Jerami Grant, Nerlens Noel, and Robert Covington.
Ultimately, the team needs to remain healthy, develop young talented players, pare the roster to a meaningful core and improve across the range of NBA statistics.