Over the last decade Philly has gone through a rebuild and built themselves into a perennial upper echelon team, despite them reaching very limiting success in the playoffs in that time frame. In that time they have almost destroyed everything they have worked for and multiple top 5 picks and two number one picks that are no longer on the team with only one remaining.
Whatever the cause may be you can argue that they have essentially taught a master class in what not to when it comes to asset management. Outside of the Nets, they are the only team with multiple hold outs, whether that comes from the front office, ownership, fanbase it is pretty interesting how they have managed the team.
To start off they traded Mikal Bridges for Zhaire Smith. Then they picked Tobias Harris over Jimmy Butler(Still blows my mind), then signed aging Al Horford with money they could have used towards Jimmy, then when they that inevitably failed, shipped him and a first round pick off to OKC. Then when Ben Simmons was exiled from the team and city they traded him and a couple firsts for James Harden. Then the general manager pisses him off and ships James Harden off for a bunch of back up, mid at best role players, a pick swap an unprotected first and then another first from somewhere.
In what was a team that was supposed to contend for a championship for over a decade is now left a perennial 2nd round exit.
just a great example of how not to spend money.
nobody really speaks about this but they very easily could have fired doc rivers after the 2022 meltdown as well. financial issues were the only reason they didn’t… maybe if they weren’t paying so much to a certain sixers player it wouldn’t have been that much of a problem.
it’s really sad that they wasted last year’s roster (which was, to me, the best roster they put around embiid since 2019) by keeping doc there for another year, then when they finally get a real coach they can’t come to an agreement to keep the past season’s assist leader in town