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.
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 17th 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.
Last night, barely three minutes into arguably the biggest game of his life, Dwight Howard did this:
Howard, whose frame I’ve compared to the exterior of an SUV, is built the way foreign children imagine all NBA players are built. His shoulders reach as far as my wingspan. I’m exaggerating, but barely. Dude is enormous. If Dwightconnects cleanly with that elbow, Samuel Dalembert, himself not exactly a small man, may very well be in the hospital.
Worse, the elbow occurred outside the scope of play. It wasn’t an aggressive man angrily clearing his opponent away from the ball; it was an angry man aggressively clearing an enemy away from himself. If it happened outside the realm of sport it could have been criminal. If it had happened on the blacktop, the aggressor would have been thrown off the court. It didn’t happen in the real world, though — it happened in a crowded arena, surrounded by thousands of onlookers and three men paid to keep order. There, in that setting, it was a technical foul, and, despite explicit language in the NBA rulebook demanding the opposite, Howardwas allowed to stay in the game.
Good.
I mean it.
This is the NBA playoffs, and come playoff time, the league has a responsibility to the fans (and, more cynically I suppose, their sponsors) to produce the best possible on-court product. Howard, a surefire all-NBA first-teamer, is that product. 24 and 24 doesn’t happen every 24.
Is it fair? No, and Dalembertwas absolutely correct when he mused if the roles had been reserved he’d be suspended already. Hell, Stu Jax would have had that man locked up. But, to paraphrase Jimmy Johnson, the roles weren’t reversed, and Dwight Howard just is a little bit more equal than Sammy D. Keeping him on the court is a greater good than narrowly sticking to a rule.
As far as precedent goes, this (and not the awful game-changing call in the San Antonio/Phoenix series) needs to be the incident that sets it. The league followed their laws to a T two years ago and ruined an entire season by eliminating the 7 Seconds or Less Suns.
I’m not suggesting throwing out the rule book, but rather allowing for a bit of executive leeway within it. David Stern should make Howardfly out to meet him face to face, and he should do it today. He should let the media make a big deal over the will-he/won’t-he drama and then, at the end of the day, he should let Howard play. Then, at the end of the year, he should make it very clear that referees have the authority to enforce specifics of rules as they see it.
Will that happen? No, and I’d say its about 50-50 Howard suits up tomorrow. Dwight himself seemed resigned to the fact that it might as he responded to post-game questions with answers of how he was trying to set a more physical tone for the game. If it does, it’ll be a shame, and if I were the 76ers I might rather try my chances with a “down to my last strike” Howard for Games 6 and 7 than a vengeful supe in 7. (Assuming they even got that far; the last time they 76ers thought they were headed to Game 7 because an opposing Big Man was out, Magic Johnson became Magic Johnson).
Now, thoughts on the game itself:
Hard to be terribly upset with the Sixers last night. They don’t have anyone who can score in the post and they can’t shoot — there are going to be games where those two things combine to really, really hurt the team, and last night was one of them. Still, they managed to stay in the game until the end.
All season long the 76ers have been one of the worst, if not the single worst, three-point shooting team in the league. Through four postseason games, they were one of the best. Last night, they were one of the worst. I’m scared to guess which trend holds tomorrow night.
Andre Iguodala is a hell of a defender. Even with their various injuries slowing them down, Hedo and Rashard are comparable offensive players, and yet one always seems helpless out there. The reason? AI2 is locking them up. If the 76ers move him back to the 2 next year, they’ll lose a lot on the defensive end.
The blogs have already gotten all over this, but wow did Lou Williams not have a good game last night.
This February the NBA trade deadline passed with the Sixers holding onto Andre Miller, an expiring contract who is expected to bolt at the end of the season. At the time I believed the move made little sense, now I’m not so sure. Lets look at the two sides:
Gotta Make the Move.
Miller had more value to a team attempting to clear cap space than he did here in Philly, where barring drastic moves the 76ers won’t be able to pursue free agents no matter what they do. On top of that, because the Sixers won’t be able to easily maneuver this offseason, getting worse (the effect trading Miller would almost certainly have) would provide the team with a better draft pick, their one noticeable draft pick.
With Miller gone, the logic went, next year the 76ers could build around Iguodala, Elton Brand, and the young core of Thaddeus Young, Marreese Speights, and an incoming draft pick. If they slipped into the lottery and a guy like Tyreke Evans fell to them they could a hell of a core to play with.
The sixers stood pat though, and last night aside, almost certainly won’t make it out of the first round of the playoffs. Keeping Miller was worth a couple of wins this year and a couple less next. For a team who couldn’t use a couple more wins this year, not turning him into some sort of asset was insane.
But Wait …
In the NBA there are two way to get better. The first, and most obvious way, is to bring in better players, either through the draft or free agency, and yes, Millers presence made that slightly harder. What he may have made much easier, however, is the second way: a teams’ own players can improve.
Not only do young guys like Thad Young and M16 have better chances to succeed catches passes in the right spot from Andre Miller than they do fighting for rebounds from Lou Williams, but entrance into the playoffs has also given Andre Iguodala a stage to show off. For the Sixers, if they’re about anything, the 2009 playoffs are about the continued development of Andre Iguodala. AI2 was awful in last years’ postseason, a black mark on an up-and-coming team’s two postseason wins. Â This morning Rich Hofmann wrote that – for both better and for worse – reputations are made in the postseason. Last postseason, AI2 did not help his reputation.
This year, after putting up 20, 8, 8, and a game winning jump shot, he already has. Andre Iguodala led sportscenter, and he fronted Sports Illustrated’s home page. Better, he knew it. After hitting the game-winner Iggy mugged for the cameras. He wanted the shot – there was not way he was passing there – took it, and hit it. He wanted to be the man, and came through as the man when it mattered. It would have been an important shot in the first 82, but only in the second set was it truly big.
If Andre Iguodala becomes that guy, the guy who can hit a game winner in the playoffs after playing a well-rounded do-everything type game (you know, this guy) then not trading Andre Miller gave the 76ers one of the pieces they need to be an elite team.
Look, AI2 isn’t ever going to win the MVP, and he’s probably never going to be the best player on a 50 win team either (he certainly wouldn’t be the best player on any of this year’s nine 50-win teams), let alone a championship level one. But, neither could Pierce, and he has emerged as a closer with a ring. If this matchup is the stone Iggy needed to step on to because AI9 (which he prefers) instead of AI2 (which everyone calls him instead), well then maybe the drop from 11 to 16 isn’t that bad after all.
Like damnneareveryoneelse out there I’m picking the Magic in 5, and I’m doing it for pretty much all the same reasons (the Magic shoot better, defend better, are better coached, have more talent, and didn’t enter the playoffs in the midst of their biggest slump of the year). Still, on any given night I suppose any given group of players can beat any other given group of players, and with that in mind here are five reasons why the 76ers could possibly (if not plausibly) shock the world:
Two months ago the NBA trade deadline passed with only one ‘big’ move being made: the Chicago Bulls, then out-of-the-playoffs-looking-in, moved Andres Nocioni (a do-everything hustle guy who played both forward sports and everyone loved … right up to the moment when he got his too-fat contract and became a do-nothing-well unskilled tweener who everyone hated) and Drew Gooden’s contract for center Brad Miller and former Sixer JohnSalmons.
In the short term the move improved the Bulls. They added two versatile veterans to a largely inexperienced core, increased their talent, and won more. Since the trade John Salmons has averaged 19 and a half points (on just 13 shots), and shot 50% from the field over about 37 minutes and Miller is putting together 12.5, 8, and countless veteran big-man little things that the Bulls were missing. Tyrus Thomas and Joakim Noah may be elite-level athletes and hard workers, but they aren’t in Miller’s league when it comes to angling screens or timing when and how to fit opposing players when they’re on defense. If the game is close 8 of his 27 or so minutes will come at the end of the contest.
The move helped the Bulls in the long term too. Moving Nocioni and Gooden freed up minutes Noah and Thomas at the 4, and talented players can only help a young stud point guard like Derrick Rose develop. They realized that maybe playing their young big men over guys who had reached their ceiling was a good idea, weren’t afraid to shake things up a bit, and didn’t even kill their team from a money perspective in doing so. Standing pat they were a mediocre team, making the trade gave them the possibility of being slightly more. Since the deadline passed they’ve leapfrogged the Sixers, a team who did not make a move, in the playoff standings
Speaking of those 76ers: tonight, in their regular season finale, the Sixers try to become just the second team to beat the Cavaliers in Cleveland all season. They won’t, but if they do, for the second straight year, they will enter the playoffs as the 7th seed, with a record of 40-42.
Look, I know that having a monster like Derrick Rose anchoring your team for the foreseeable future makes a lot of moves look good, and in the grand scheme of things Salmons and Miller won’t mean a championship, but it is important to note that last year the Bulls were one of the worst teams in basketball, and this year they’re better than the Sixers. That isn’t a shock – Derrick Rose is really good, adding him to a team makes them noticably better. Still, it isn’t like the Bulls managed to out-scout the world for Rose. They got him the same way nearly every team gets good – by getting bad. Right now there are six teams above the sixers in the eastern conference; lets take a quick look how they got there
Cleveland – Drafted LeBron first overall
Boston – traded a stockpile of young assets (including a top five draft pick) and expiring contracts for two stars
Orlando – drafted Dwight Howard #1 overall
Atlanta – threw assets at a borderline star, surrounded him with capable young draft picks
Miami – drafted Dwayne Wade 4th in arguably the most loaded draft ever
Chicago – drafted Derrick Rose 1st overall
Of those six only Atlanta isn’t built aroundsuperstars, or guys will almost certainly will become them one day soon. The point isn’t to rake the 6ers over the coals for being worse than the Bulls, its to point that that no matter how many minor steps forward a .500 team makes, they’re going to keep getting passed by the giant boosts that bad teams have forced upon them. Now, with the playoffs approaching, we shouldn’t be surprised it happened again.
AI2 didn’t have any lines, but seemed to acquit himself well nonetheless as a stand-in for the Obama administration. Of course, Fallon ID’d Andre as the Sixers’ power forward, which just isn’t the case but also sounds more intimidating than small forward/swingman.
Joseph Heller, playing off of Shakespeare’s famous Twelfth Night musing, once wrote that“some men are born mediocre men, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.” It is a discouraging thought all around – who strives for the average? – but the second part seems especially distressing. It is one thing to be mediocre, be it by birth or inaction, but to aim for and achieve it? Surely that is no noble goal.
We’re bringing this up because the 76ers – with their .500 record and complete inability to beat elite teams – are really mediocre, and this weeks’ column, Sixer Savior, focuses on how to change that: more Marreese Speights.
It’s a move that could backfire – Speights‘ flaws are both real and apparent – this while team is not great, nor will they likely have greatness thrust upon them, shouldn’t they at least be aiming for something better than mediocre?
The main point, that Dalembert may be unhappy but isn’t making a stink out of it, is well taken (although, I’d argue, not entirely correct: Dalembert often appears to actively mope on the bench when he doesn’t get his time) but it a small fact London slides in which really caught my eye:
[W]ith the recent exit of some veteran Eagles, the 6-foot-11 Dalembert is now the fifth-longest tenured pro sports athlete in Philadelphia, having been with the 76ers for eight years.
(The only four who have been here longer: the Eagles’ Donovan McNabb and David Akers, the Flyers’ Simon Gagne and the Phillies’ Jimmy Rollins)
London rightly points out that people still think of Dalembert as a bit of an unproven commodity, a guy who can be more than he is now if he just dedicates himself to rebounding/ focuses on the plays/ stays on the ground on shot fakes/ [insert your favorite Sammy criticism]. The truth, though, may be that now after eight long years, the Dalembert you see may be the Dalembert you get.
When the 76ers first drafted Thad Young he was, by his own admission, a bad defensive player. Then halfway through his rookie year he dedicated himself to D, showed that he was willing to do whatever it would take to get on the court, turned himself into a legitimate defensive presence and ended the season starting. It was an impressive addition to his game, and it was followed by another one this year: he added a jump shot. by now we’ve come to accept that the kid is both a hard worker and a quick study on the court. What may come as a surprise is how quick of a study he was in the classroom too:
[Thaddeus] graduated from Mitchell with a 4.3 grade point average, proving he was ahead of the curve and shook the haters by his actions early on despite intellectually lazy critics.
“I did motivational speaking in high school,” Young recalled, smiling as he spoke to Philadelphia media. “They’d send me to talk to sixth graders. I was the success story around Memphis, (called) the best since Penny Hardaway. They were writing stories like ‘Books Over Ball,’ because I was a great academic student in high school. I always felt that, if basketball didn’t work out, I’d have something to fall back on.”
It isn’t an unknown story but it is an underreported one, and one that is probably worth passing along whenever it pops back up.
“Sometimes that’s because of matchups, sometimes foul problems,” coach Tony DiLeo says. “Sometimes (rookie forward-center)Â Marreese Speights is playing well, or (forward)Reggie Evans. But (Dalembert’s) per-minute rebounds and per-minute blocked shots are very, very good.”
Dalembert, in his seventh NBA season, is averaging 16.8 rebounds and 3.45 blocks per 48 minutes, up from 14.9 and 3.38 last season.
and here is what is between them: Dalembert isn’t getting less court time in spite of his per-minute averages, sometimes it’s largely because of them. Dalembert loses playing time to matchups and foul troubles, both of which actually attribute to his per-minute rates.
It isn’t a that the Hornets’ jumped out to a big lead Monday largely due to David West’s early effectiveness (he had 14 in the first). He was so effective because Dalembert, time after time, kept falling for his pump fake in an attempt to block his shot – it was a bad matchup because Sammy was out to block shots, not in spite of it.
Foul trouble is the same way, Dalembert’s aggressiveness to get rebounds means he’s picking up cheap fouls left and right: I’m not breaking news when I suggest an increased per-minute rebound rate corresponds with an increased foul rate.
Tony DiLeo, who is a basketball guy through-and-through, gets this, which I why I think his response to the question is so smart. Outwardly he’s complimenting his big man, who will read the quote and believe that his coach has his back to the public. However, in coupling the compliment with the explanation, DiLeo also offers a real explanation as to why the big guy’s minutes are down.
Staff Blog
Why the 76ers should and should not keep Tony DiLeo
