The 76ers, coming off their first non-losing season since 2004 but in apparently disarray, are facing a problem: what to do with marginally successful but apparently disliked Head Coach Tony DiLeo?

Today we’ll look at the options. In the interest of balance I’ve got four for each side …

Get rid of the bum

• He Lost the Locker Room

In the immediate wake of game six Theo Ratliff called out the coaching, Andre Iguodala didn’t exactly endorse his coach, Reggie Evans, who DiLeo hadn’t played at all in the pivotal game, said the teams performance was embarrassing, and the next day Theo and Andre Miller didn’t show up to their final meeting or even provide an excuse, a slap in the face of the rookie coach. If the 76ers intend on bringing either of those guys back it would be a hard sell that DiLeo is the right man for the job.

• He Lost Game Six

Speaking of that elimination game, it really did not speak well of the head coach that the young team lacked energy and drive in his first elimination game. For whatever reason the 6ers didn’t respond in the biggest game of their season, instead they laid down in front of their home crowd. As a coach, effort is on you.

• He’s not interesting

Last year the 76ers spent money, were marginally competitive, and reached the playoffs. No one seemed to care. The 76ers couldn’t sell out game six of a series that had already had three buzzer beaters.

To be blunt, the fans don’t care about this team.  As long as money remains important, and income is dependent on fans, that matters. Tony DiLeo, who is far from a sexy name, won’t change that fact. Getting a ‘name’ coach like Stan Van Gundy or Eddie Jordan might.

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Keep the bum

• Where is the team headed?

I mean this as a serious question – what is the goal of this 76ers team? Do you know? Do they? They’re not winning a championship, and with the 17^th pick in the draft and no cap relief coming they’re not in a full scale rebuilding mode either. The direction they’re going to take depends a lot on how the offseason shakes out.

Further, Dalembert could be on the move, Miller is probably out of the door, and who knows what else Stefanski has up his sleeve. Because much of this offseason is going to be structured around addition by subtraction, the pieces that come back are far from determined. If the Sixers can move Sammy for a pass first heartbeat they’d do it in a second. Same thing with a shoot first two. Since different coaches demand different personnel (Larry Brown and Mike D’Antoni couldn’t succeed equally with each other’s teams) bringing in a coach before you have an idea of what the team is going to look like doesn’t make a terrible amount of sense.

Enter DiLeo. Always the company man, Tony is going to be willing to be a placeholder until the team starts to truly form. While bigger name coaches obsess over their personal records, DiLeo will do what he imagines to be in the best interest of the team, even if it hurts them in the short term. If Stefanski wants to see if Marreese Speights can play point guard while Lou Williams focuses on his rebounding and some rookie can pull double duty as a Hare Raiser, DiLeo will enforce the marching orders.. On a team where players are expected to be shuffled in and out of their natural positions, that isn’t nothing.

• Won’t somebody think of the Children?

Keeping DiLeo signals to the young players that they’re important. DiLeo got chided by his players for coddling the teams’ youth. If he stays on Speights, Young, and Lou Will will know believe that while their coaches faith in them brought criticism upon himself, it was rewarded by management. Just because several vets called out the coach, not everyone in that locker room necessarily felt the same way.

• Both teams played hard.

Tony DiLeo had the Sixers ready to play. They did play hard, and putting game six aside it was a rare day that they didn’t show up at all. Besides, even getting to that game six was better than most people expected, and it wasn’t in small part due to the effective defense DiLeo put in place.

UPDATE: Kate Fagan tackles the same subject and has some smart insidery things to say.

Now, three stories that interest me …

• The Philadelphia MLS team has a name and logo. As the great Miss Springfield once ordered, Gentlemen, start your whacking.

• It’ll be hard to convince me to prop any nationals player up over my guy Shane Victorino (btw, 15 game hit streak and counting!) but Sons of Sam Horn look just about to run with an impossible good idea: vote now-minor leaguer Lastings Millidge to the All Star game.

• and Sheldon Brown for Anquan Boldin is apparently all but a done deal

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 4:25 pm and is filed under Afternoon Rounds, Sixers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.