The delusions of tanking teams, and the virtue of effort
Philadelphia 76ers Head Coach Brett Brown has faced this media scrum in March many times in his years coaching this team. The situation has rarely been different.
Famous for “The Process” — years of open tanking and a perceived refusal to bring in veterans or even care about winning in the pursuit of that one superstar player — the 76ers are back in that situation again. Ben Simmons has missed the entire season with a broken foot. Joel Embiid, a Rookie of the Year favorite, is out for the season again after knee surgery. Jahlil Okafor, the No. 3 pick in the 2015 NBA Draft, is experiencing some knee soreness and has been pushed out of the lineup once again.
Hope gets quickly drained. And now, as March quickly comes to a close, Brown is trying to have his team fight for something.
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Philadelphia played Monday’s game against the Magic with just nine active players. The 76ers took a 17-point lead and lost it, falling in overtime. It was every Philadelphia March for the last three seasons. The 76ers are at the bottom of the standings, playing for ping pong balls (possibly not even their own with their interest in the Lakers’ pick).
Do not tell Brown any of this. He is still fighting. His team is still fighting. Even if it is futile.
“I think they play hard for each other,” Brown said before Monday’s game in Orlando. “I think there is an accountability and a responsibility they feel for each other. I think the game plan and what we believe in is something that is very vanilla and simple and we have locked something down throughout the course of the season. We hold those guys to a high level of accountability. The mistakes are felt immediately by the team. I think that is the holy grail when someone can look at somebody else on the court and just know they didn’t get the job done. I think the defensive wholeness and accountability that they feel amongst each other is a powerful sort of motivating point that has allowed us to be quite special over the past month or so defensively.”
The 76ers have indeed improved defensively. They are 13th in the league in March according to NBA.com, giving up 105.8 points per 100 possessions. It is not quite the defensive juggernaut the team appeared to be in January with Embiid, however.
In any case, this is not a team that sounds like it is counting its lottery chances, even if in actuality that is all that is left to play for. The 76ers are 4-6 in their last 10 games and are slotted for the seventh best odds in the NBA Draft Lottery (that would activate a pick swap with the Kings). They are in a mishmash of four teams with 27 wins entering Saturday’s games.
That group includes the Magic, another team with seemingly little to play for except ping pong balls. Yet they too are openly saying they want to win. They are not giving into the temptation of defeat either. They want to keep rolling the ball up the hill even if it is futile to reach the top in the final 10 games.
“You have to go through these times if you want to be great,” Magic forward Aaron Gordon said. “These are the times that you lock in and be present and let the chips fall where they may. As long as you give your best effort, at the end of the season you can be proud of yourself.”
Magic coach Frank Vogel said his concern is only with helping the team build a winning culture and win games. And who could blame him? Who could blame the Sixers or any of the players on any team? They are not likely concerned with anything beyond this season. These are competitors after all and they do not care about the luck of ping pong balls when they have their own careers and seasons to worry about.
The Magic, like the Sixers, have won four of their last 10 games and have picked up some steam to return to the middle of the lottery pack. All this seemingly to the detriment of their long-term future.
These fan bases are possibly annoyed with this. The 2017 NBA Draft class has received a ton of hype (like every draft class seems to receive) and the motivations are to get a higher pick. The current situation for the star-starved Magic especially is causing some undue stress. There are few incentives to win for these teams, at least logically considering the prize that comes with the draft.
But both these franchise have spent nearly half a decade playing the lottery and not getting anywhere. Their coaches realize at some point they have to start playing for something and learning how to win games. Collecting young players will have little effect if they do not turn produce on the court at some point. Culture — that lovely nebulous term — does have meaning. Or so coaches want everyone to believe.
These final 10 games for both the Magic and the 76ers will have meaning — as it will for the Knicks, Kings and Timberwolves. The fates may have already determined which unknown slot will get that meal ticket and win the lottery in May. The teams do not know and have every motivation to play the odds.
The reality is that these teams are probably not good enough to finish the season as strong as they would like. They can talk about building a winning culture and building momentum to end the season, but they are here because they are not good enough. They are what their record says they are.
But coaches and players do not think big picture or about ping pong balls. They may not have the overall talent to win consistently, but they know each game gives them an opportunity to show what they can do. And these guys are not about to pack it in when there is still a game to play. That is not in many of their DNAs. And so the Magic may climb the standings. The 76ers may climb the standings.
Next: The tank race for the middle of the 2017 Lottery
All of it is in vain and relatively meaningless in the bigger scheme of the playoffs. And it may serve more to annoy fans focused on receiving the best odds at a high draft pick — a hollow guarantee that means nothing. Just ask the Magic, who have had a top-5 pick in three of the last four years. They will keep giving it the old college try even if it is fruitless and delusional to its actual ends.