On Saturday, the 76ers started the postseason by drubbing past the Toronto Raptors with a bumpy 131-111. The 2022 playoffs are a major melting pot for Philadelphia. The legacy of the trial is at stake. Should HBO ever decide to expand its foray into NBA biopics beyond the Showtime Lakers winning timea contemporary black comedy Sixers would do.
Their entire “Trust The Process” doctrine is symbolic of the battle between old-school professional basketball machines and egghead Ivy League players who embrace the analytical approach. The ’76ers stumbled in, out, and back into the title fight while calling themselves visionaries. The process It didn’t succeed in spawning a dynasty, but it did give the Sixers a large margin of error to play around with.
Contrasted with Magic’s linear path to becoming the team of the ’80s, the Process Sixers are the Kareem-Magic Lakers if they were drafted Sydney Moncrief first in 1979, or if Jerry West had signed Klay Thompson’s trade for Kevin Love through Golden State in the summer of 2014.
Also the epilogue too The process started a cursed trade in which former Sixers GM Tony DiLeo traded the world darling Advanced Analytics Community, Andre Iguodala and Nikola Vucevic for a limping Andrew Bynum who had fallen off his pole as a future from center position. As part of this deal, the Lakers acquired Dwight Howard.
The following year, Hinkie fired the opening salvo of The process era by trading Jrue Holiday for Nerlens Noel during the draft to the Pelicans, the first of four rookies to miss his rookie season. Eight picks later, Milwaukee settled on an obscure point guard from Greece, Giannis Antetokounmpo. Last summer, Holiday knocked Milwaukee over the hump in his first season with the Bucks.
Philadelphia’s barren roster set the table for a 19-63 record and third pick in the 2014 draft. Hinkie is still revered for drafting a young big player for Kansas named Joel Embiid, who missed the NCAA tournament and his first two seasons while rehabilitating foot, back and knee injuries. The glee of this draft is that the two teams before them, Milwaukee and Cleveland, have won championships since 2014.
Hinkie envisioned an information-based approach to revitalize a franchise stuck on the treadmill of mediocrity. Hinkie emphasized a basketball operations office that consistently made quality decisions. The 76ers went from nowhere on the treadmill of mediocrity to slipping on the same layer of black ice for much longer than they should have.
What followed was a Jerry Colangelo scandal, the inexplicable draft of Jahlil Okafor, a worst season ever, 10-72, Philadelphia trading Markelle Fultz for Jayson Tatum, and then Fultz kinda forgot how to shoot a basketball.
The Sixers are Don’t look up on hardwood. Instead of a botched attempt to destroy a planet-destroying meteor, we forgot how botched The process has been. During the 2019 season, general manager Elton Brand made the best individual tactical decision of the past decade, trading two promising Process-era forwards, Robert Covington and Dario Saric, for Jimmy Butler. Before the trade deadline, he cobbled together a trade for Tobias Harris.
Unfortunately, in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals, Kawhi Leonard’s frenzied buzzer-beater brought the 76ers’ best iteration we’ve seen to an abrupt end. Meanwhile, the Raptors would march past the Bucks and Warriors to the 2019 NBA title. Of all the trades Philadelphia made during The process Years they haven’t made haunt them. The Sixers could have traded the erratic Simmons for the aloof Leonard in an alternate universe. They still had the players shipped to Minnesota for Jimmy Butler. An Embiid, Leonard and Butler core would likely have brought Philadelphia a championship parade down Broad Street.
After an unfortunate relegation as an Eastern Conference finalist, most franchises would move heaven and earth to keep their key components together. Instead, Philadelphia hit CTRL-ALT-DEL in their lineup and let JJ Redick run for a big payday and Butler struck a sign-and-trade deal with the Heat. Ultimately, the front office chose Simmons over Butler, which resonated with Embiid’s playstyle and personality. Since 2019, Butler has guided Miami to an NBA Finals and has placed the Heat atop the Eastern Conference for now.
The Sixers hadn’t wiped the egg from their faces when Simmons betrayed their loyalty by completing his heel-turn from phenomenon to persona non grata. In the end, Simmons became a channel for current president of basketball operations Daryl Morey to reunite with James Harden at the added cost of one of the league’s top shooters, a top-notch backup center, and a bushel of those first-round picks he’s used to coveting .
The Sixers are out of bullets in their chamber. Noel, Okafor, Fultz, Saric, Covington and Simmons were discarded for this team to become a reality. Embiid and Harden have been spectacular on occasion, but they’re still looking for that eureka! Moment during a high-stakes showdown where everything cracks-Time against a quality opponent.
It’s not so much Embiid that the Sixers should be worried about. However, since Harden’s lousy performance in the 2012 NBA Finals, he’s been found wanting countless times in the postseason. These questions will not be answered in the first round against Toronto. A second-round matchup against Miami (or, heaven forbid, Atlanta) could be the best opportunity for him and the Sixers to establish a new reputation. Without at least one trip to the NBA Finals, the Sixers’ erratic quest for a Larry O’Brien Trophy would have been in vain.
