Incompetence Personified: It Starts At The Top

Nothing’s going to get better until we start at the top.

[Photo: Mitchell Leff / Getty Images]

Adam Aaronson, whose legal name is Sixers Adam (@SixersAdam on Twitter), covers the Sixers for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez. He has been legally banned from covering the team in person, but that ban will be lifted in March of 2020. He is brought to you by the Official Realtor of The Process, Adam Ksebe.

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I’m going to write a series of thoughts about the Sixers and the various sources of frustration that exist with this team. Bear with me, as the organization of this column may be odd, but I’ll find my way through it. 

Where it all starts and ends

The issues begin at the top. All of this starts with the owners and the front office, who have displayed over and over for four years now that they are in every single way incompetent; completely incapable of performing their jobs at a satisfactory level. It’s genuinely cringeworthy to browse the Basketball Reference executive pages of Bryan Colangelo and Elton Brand. Colangelo has been gone for almost two years now, and the Sixers are every bit as poorly-run now as they were when he packed his bags. No sort of addition by subtraction took place when he left and Brand took over. That’s because as brutal as the Colangelo tenure was, it was never about just him. This entire front office is wholly inadequate. 

When the group came into power, the Sixers were a terrible team, but the promise was there. Fittingly, Jerry Colangelo’s son inherited a massive fortune -- this was a team as rich in assets as one could be, whether it be with young players, draft capital or financial flexibility. 

It’s now 2020. We are not supposed to even be in the primes of Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons yet. And the Sixers are about to run out of assets, with the window getting tighter and tighter.

Think about what they had in February of 2016 -- sure, a historically poor win-loss record, but also Embiid. And the pick that would become Simmons. A quality NBA starter, Robert Covington, on a Hinkie Special (and another NBA player, TJ McConnell, on one as well). Jerami Grant. Nerlens Noel, when he still had value. Jahlil Okafor, when he still had value. The draft rights to Dario Saric. The Lakers pick. The Kings pick. The Sacramento swap rights. A remarkable amount of valuable second-round picks. The financial flexibility to do anything they wanted. But now, things are barren.

The byproducts of incompetence

Embiid and Simmons are still here, obviously. Hopefully, they’re here for the long haul. What the hell else is left? Matisse Thybulle is their most valuable asset, and as much as I think we all love him, he’s a rookie who turns 23 years old next week and has limited potential for offensive utility. Josh Richardson, though quietly a disaster since returning from injury, is a good player. The problem is that even if he figures out how to fit well on this team, he’s going to command a payday after next season, and we shouldn’t expect to see ownership to stomach a potentially Warriors-esque luxury tax situation for a team that isn’t obviously championship caliber. 

I know everyone is angry, but you have to admit it’s hilarious that after years of hoarding cap space in hopes of cashing in at the right time, the Sixers have almost $300 million future dollars committed to Tobias Harris and Al Horford. 

The Horford situation is for the most part cut and dry, right? He’s a 33 year-old who is both aging poorly and a proving to be a flat-out terrible fit next to the team’s two centerpieces. He can still be of some use to the Sixers (or more elsewhere), but trading him is going to be a difficult venture for the Sixers. For now, he’s a $28 million cap hit and an unmitigated disaster on the court. And it’s only going to get worse from here.

Harris is where it’s a bit more tricky. We all talk on a regular basis about how bad the Horford contract is, but I don’t think anyone (other than AU) is spending enough time thinking about what this team paid to acquire and retain Tobias Harris. As if Landry Shamet and draft picks weren’t enough, the Sixers then handed Harris a five year contract worth $180 million, firmly cementing him among the league’s highest-paid players when he is… not one of the league’s best players. In fairness to Tobias, he is a good player who has had a fine season. And because I’m cursed with bad timing, Tobias has 14 points in the first quarter of the Knicks game as I write this (he ended with 34 - ed). But for someone who fetched superstar assets in a trade, and got a superstar contract, I’m not sure there’s a case that he’s more than just a quality starter. Quite honestly, I don’t think we’re far away from considering Harris to be immovable altogether. He’s a nice player, but man, $180 million dollars is a lot of dollars for a player who is just fine.

Note: For more on the disappointment of Horford and Harris, I would strongly recommend reading AU’s column from this week.

Let’s talk about how Simmons, thought of as an iron man, spent most of the season playing an absurd amount of minutes, culminating in a back injury that the Sixers attempted to shrug off, and in turn led him to a severe reaggravation that has his season in jeopardy. Let’s talk about how they led Embiid to the same fate with his gruesome hand injury -- Embiid hurt his finger, went to the locker room, came back in, and then GOT HURT AGAIN and CAME BACK INTO THE GAME AGAIN. Of course, this is not to forget all of the nefariousness that took place with Embiid’s knee in his rookie season. 

And then there’s Brett Brown. I have long been a supporter of his, and I maintain that what we are watching is the product of awful roster construction and organizational dysfunction more than bad coaching. Brett has only been given the right key pieces once, and even then, he only had two viable reserves on the entire roster. We all know he’s a lame duck coach at this point -- and I’ll surely revisit his tenure once the inevitable occurs -- but for now, I would say this: I don’t think this is his fault, I don’t think they will find a replacement better than him, but I do think it could be healthy to get a new voice in the room. That’s probably not the strong take you were waiting for, but it’s where I’m at right now. In truth, they have so many more important things to be focused on. The identity of the coach doesn’t matter if the team is operated like a trainwreck. 

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Looking toward the future

So, where does this team go from here? I think most would agree that the right move is to clean house in the front office. Whatever reason the ownership group felt so strongly about keeping them around can’t possibly be enough to seriously outweigh what is now a four-year sample size of outright disastrous management. 

Nobody should expect a Sixers championship until this leadership group is gone. They simply haven’t demonstrated any understanding of how to properly build a roster. Until the people in charge change, the disappointment won’t.

It’s sad to even type out these words, but are we sure the damage hasn’t already been done? Even if the Sixers do clean house and bring in better decision-makers, they may very well be locked into the Horford and Harris albatrosses, which would make it nearly impossible to upgrade this roster in a meaningful way. How could this group possibly achieve anything without noteworthy reinforcements?

I know this is a lot, and probably seems too harsh and like an overreaction. But the upsetting events of the last few weeks, and of the entire season, have not been the first signs of trouble, rather the direct results of issues that have long existed within this organization. 

The Sixers are completely incompetent. They are failing Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons. The road back to championship contention will be a long one. Or maybe the damage is already done.