Futility Watch: 76ers

[celticsclay]

Maybe they introduce a 0.100 win percentage minimum for lottery eligibility?

I like that idea. I'd raise it to minimum 25 wins. Win less than that and you go to end of lottery.

I like this idea, well especially the .10 win percentage. I think any team is capable of doing that while a team could legitimately not have enough talent to win 25 games despite their best intentions. I am pretty disappointed the 76ers won because it takes some of the national attention they were getting for how bad of a team they are. In the NFL there are always 1 or 2 win teams so it is not a big deal when a team only had 1 or 2. However, only 1 team in recent memory went 0-16 (the lions), so teams still get a lot of negative attention when they are 0-12.

I would say we would now need the 76ers to lose another 20 in a row or 19 out of 20 to keep the national conversation on them and a focus on whether they are hurting the integrity of the league.

[Wretch]

Long time lurker first time poster. 

The 76ers ridiculous tanking has annoyed me enough to write my first post.  Obviously the way to stop tanking is to fix the draft lottery.  My idea is rather than have a draft lottery, have a draft tournament, like the NCAA tourney seeded by record with.  It would be a 1 and done style tourney, played on the off days during the playoff.  the winner of the tourney wins the first pick in the draft and the runner up gets the number 2 pick and you could either play a consolation game for picks 3 and 4 and slot teams by their record after pick 4 or just slot teams by record after pick 2.  The worst teams by record could get first round byes to give them an advantage and massage the brackets/rounds.  This would hopefully stop teams from getting intentionally bad as they would never have a shot at winning the tournament.  You would probably see the teams competing for the 8th seed tank to enter the draft tournament, but they would still be better than teams like the 76ers are now.

Thoughts?

[celticsclay]

Long time lurker first time poster. 

The 76ers ridiculous tanking has annoyed me enough to write my first post.  Obviously the way to stop tanking is to fix the draft lottery.  My idea is rather than have a draft lottery, have a draft tournament, like the NCAA tourney seeded by record with.  It would be a 1 and done style tourney, played on the off days during the playoff.  the winner of the tourney wins the first pick in the draft and the runner up gets the number 2 pick and you could either play a consolation game for picks 3 and 4 and slot teams by their record after pick 4 or just slot teams by record after pick 2.  The worst teams by record could get first round byes to give them an advantage and massage the brackets/rounds.  This would hopefully stop teams from getting intentionally bad as they would never have a shot at winning the tournament.  You would probably see the teams competing for the 8th seed tank to enter the draft tournament, but they would still be better than teams like the 76ers are now.

Thoughts?

I think something like this would be so awesome, and a real lot of fun to watch. However, I just can't see the NBA signing off on that kind of thing. I think most people would agree the college OT rules are so much better than the NFL, but because big changes are so hard to make we got the watered down version of can't win on the first FG. One positive about the 76er's is that they have inspired dialogue about how to keep teams competitive and prevent tanking.

[csfansince60s]

I'm despising this team.

http://t.basketball.realgm.com/realgm/#!/entry/nets-trade-andrei-kirilenko-2020-2nd-rounder-to-76ers,5488fdcad669861ce9075350

Seventy Stinkers acquire a second rounder, cash and right to swap another second rounder for the corpse of Kirilenko who likely won't play till much later in the year, if at all.

Maybe they'll get an injured player exemption and sign Jajuan Johnson. Subtraction by addition.

[Quetzalcoatl]

Zach Lowe of Grantland had a great piece today about the sort of myth of "tanking will make your players develop losing habits" - can anybody even define what a "losing habit" is? 

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/the-ignored-evolution-of-the-sixers/

I know Rec Leagues and the NBA are like the Sun and Pluto apart, but when I play on a bad team in a good rec league I definitely play differently, but a lot of the time I get to use my moves more which helps me get them more fluid.  I don't think it makes me worse.

Some interesting tidbits include:

The Sixers may be taking the first baby steps toward semi-respectability. They are 2-14 since a humiliating 53-point loss in Dallas, and 2-6 this month. They’ve been somewhere between run-of-the-mill bad and historically bad in those 16 games, and for Philly, that represents progress. The Wolves and Hornets have worse point differentials in that span, and Philly’s per-possession scoring margin is in the same ballpark as that of Detroit. The Sixers are sixth in points allowed per possession in December against a quality schedule that has included San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Atlanta, and Memphis.

I would much rather have our team in a losing situation than put all of our salary cap eggs into the mediocre free agent basket.  The Hornets are the poster child of that.  I would take Nerlens Noel's development over that this year 999,999 times out of a million.

Still, the Sixers today don’t give off the whiff of a team learning fatal long-term habits. They look inexperienced, which is an entirely different thing. Brown and the coaching staff understand that the players are still learning, and they’ve given most Sixers permission to stretch themselves. There is no better way to learn whether Sims might be able to shoot 3-pointers during games than to let him shoot 3-pointers during games.

That is not so different from what Boston did last season with Jared Sullinger’s 3-pointer. Wroten may end up a keeper, but even if he’s not, Philly has stoked leaguewide curiosity by unleashing him as a rampaging scorer with a killer hesitation dribble.

I totally agree with all of this.

Anyways, great piece, check it out!

[D.o.s.]

Quetz, I see you post a lot about liking players that "play the right way", and most of the definitions of "losing habits" that I see tend to involve players being encouraged to "play the wrong way" as it were.

I don't know if I agree with it, but that's how it usually shows up, in my experience.

[Fafnir]

Losing habits are selfish plays and inconsistent effort.

Lazy shot attemps and passes, not driving to the rim because its easier to settle for jumpers, not working hard on defense. Failing to get back in transition, leaking out when you're supposed to help rebound, etc. etc. Failing to work to get around screens, not taking game plan and preperation seriously.

The list goes on and on, losing habits are really easy to define. The issue is attributing them in specific cases.

MCW is discussed in the article and its clear the coaches saw the same junk plays towards the end of last year that many of us did, and are trying to coach him up into a better overall PG.

[kozlodoev]

Losing habits are selfish plays and inconsistent effort.

Lazy shot attemps and passes, not driving to the rim because its easier to settle for jumpers, not working hard on defense. Failing to get back in transition, leaking out when you're supposed to help rebound, etc. etc. Failing to work to get around screens, not taking game plan and preperation seriously.

Took me a minute to realize you're actually not talking about the Celtics.

[slamtheking]

Losing habits are selfish plays and inconsistent effort.

Lazy shot attemps and passes, not driving to the rim because its easier to settle for jumpers, not working hard on defense. Failing to get back in transition, leaking out when you're supposed to help rebound, etc. etc. Failing to work to get around screens, not taking game plan and preperation seriously.

Took me a minute to realize you're actually not talking about the Celtics.

beat me to it.  a lot of this could be said of the C's on a number of nights.

[Quetzalcoatl]

Ha nobody has ever called me out on what players I like before, TP D.o.s.

Anyways, I feel that a lot of bad habits go away immediately when you get some alpha dog, blue chip players in the locker room (and some veteran role players).  If we got vintage KG on this team out of nowhere tomorrow, I promise you Sully and KO would amazingly look way better at D.  That is the nature of the game.

The kind of "bad habits" that I like the least are low effort on defense and inefficient shot selection, but I mean Kobe won a few titles with all of that.  I don't think that a lot of the players on the 76ers or the Celtics will necessarily even be on the team when it's time for them to compete.  Both of our teams will have great young prospects and then most likely with our salary cap situations, a couple of nice FA or traded players to round out the roster.  I just think that tanking for picks and keeping your cap flexibility is worth the trade off of having a couple of your good prospects slack on D for a season or two.

[MBunge]

Losing habits are selfish plays and inconsistent effort.

Lazy shot attemps and passes, not driving to the rim because its easier to settle for jumpers, not working hard on defense. Failing to get back in transition, leaking out when you're supposed to help rebound, etc. etc. Failing to work to get around screens, not taking game plan and preperation seriously.

Took me a minute to realize you're actually not talking about the Celtics.

It could be said of every team in the league on at least a few games throughout the year.

Mike

[kozlodoev]

Ha nobody has ever called me out on what players I like before, TP D.o.s.

Anyways, I feel that a lot of bad habits go away immediately when you get some alpha dog, blue chip players in the locker room (and some veteran role players).  If we got vintage KG on this team out of nowhere tomorrow, I promise you Sully and KO would amazingly look way better at D.  That is the nature of the game.

The kind of "bad habits" that I like the least are low effort on defense and inefficient shot selection, but I mean Kobe won a few titles with all of that. I don't think that a lot of the players on the 76ers or the Celtics will necessarily even be on the team when it's time for them to compete.  Both of our teams will have great young prospects and then most likely with our salary cap situations, a couple of nice FA or traded players to round out the roster.  I just think that tanking for picks and keeping your cap flexibility is worth the trade off of having a couple of your good prospects slack on D for a season or two.

Kobe may be guilty of many transgressions against the way basketball should be played, but I don' t think low effort was ever one of them.

[Fafnir]

Ha nobody has ever called me out on what players I like before, TP D.o.s.

Anyways, I feel that a lot of bad habits go away immediately when you get some alpha dog, blue chip players in the locker room (and some veteran role players).  If we got vintage KG on this team out of nowhere tomorrow, I promise you Sully and KO would amazingly look way better at D.  That is the nature of the game.

The kind of "bad habits" that I like the least are low effort on defense and inefficient shot selection, but I mean Kobe won a few titles with all of that. I don't think that a lot of the players on the 76ers or the Celtics will necessarily even be on the team when it's time for them to compete.  Both of our teams will have great young prospects and then most likely with our salary cap situations, a couple of nice FA or traded players to round out the roster.  I just think that tanking for picks and keeping your cap flexibility is worth the trade off of having a couple of your good prospects slack on D for a season or two.

Kobe may be guilty of many transgressions against the way basketball should be played, but I don' t think low effort was ever one of them.

His poor defensive effort and ball-watching started well before age would excuse it. Though he was always trying to "win" and mean mug after the big shot I guess.

[celticsclay]

I generally like Zach lowe a lot, in fact he is one of my favorite writers. Unfortunately this piece for me, while still well written seemed like a bit of a puff piece for their coaching staff.

It is cool he is tracking his players water levels and giving them sleep timers, but if this stuff was really effective you would expect them to have more surprising performances ( I admit they have had a few, most recently against Memphis) and more than two wins.

I also am really pretty baffled by love affair some have for Noels right now. He is a decent interior defender, but really doesn't seem to show too much else. Obviously he could still develop, but does he really look like a franchise cornerstone?

[kozlodoev]

His poor defensive effort and ball-watching started well before age would excuse it. Though he was always trying to "win" and mean mug after the big shot I guess.

Kobe Bryant was all-defense 2nd team in his age 33 season, for whatever it's worth.