How much better would the Sixers be this year with MCW, Turner and Thad Young?
Everybody needs luck to put together a great team. Nobody besides Hinkie has ever relied exclusively on it, though.
Mike
I don't think the Sixers would be particularly good with MCW, Turner, and Young. They'd just be bad instead of downright terrible.
Hinkie is placing all of his eggs in the "draft a superstar" basket, to the point where he's almost completely throwing away the opportunity to find and develop a cast of useful role players. I'd agree that teams rarely, if ever, commit so completely to chasing the top pick that they ignore everything else.
All the role players in the world might get you to 40-45 wins, but they won't give you meaningful, lasting success, and they definitely won't win you many playoff series. In that sense, the Sixers and the Celts will be in the same boat until one of them secures a player who is good enough to raise their ceiling beyond "good job, good effort."
By that reasoning, the Celts are relying on luck, too. We just have the luxury of having another team do the tanking for us. If the Nets' picks don't work out, however, we might have to rely on the incompetence or desperation of another GM to gift us a superstar. Are the odds of that happening better than a 25% chance at the top pick?
It's an assumption that PHI even becomes a 40-45 win team. Several things have to fall into place for them to have any sort of success.
-Retain current assets. If you're Noel, for example, do you resign? I'm guessing no. They'll need to trade him anyway, right? Well, what happens to his trade value by 2017? His production since moving to the bench has taken a precipitous drop ... better hope that doesn't continue. What about the glaring holes in his game? Player development must be tough down in PHI...
-Saric needs to join the team. He will, eventually. But just showing up doesn't mean he's going to be a transcendent player. Good prospect, sure, but also a long Euro -- poor track record there. Definitely not a sure bet.
-The likelihood of winning the Simmons sweepstakes is also not good. Could they net someone else with value? The likelihood of Embiid becoming a transcendent player is likely worse. J. Brown/Ingram/whoever could work though, right? Sure, or not...
-Can Hinkie develop and manage a roster?
If all the above go well, he still needs to move at least one asset and effectively fill out the roster. What FAs are going to be attracted to PHI? Realistically, next-to-none... which is partly why they've chosen this strategy to begin with. Poor timing, too -- everyone will have cap space.
It's definitely not a foregone conclusion this works out. Others have pointed to it being impossible to determine when/if the experiment fails because there is no real timeline. But there is a built-in timeline, realistically, because PHI won't be able to retain their draft picks if they don't turn the corner sooner than later. Could it work out? Sure, it could. But it could also not, and it's a far riskier experiment than what seems to be suggested.