Welcome to Hoop Dreams, a season preview unlike any other you’ll read before the 2016-17 season tips off. The premise is simple. We’ll be providing 30 of these fictional forays because it simply stinks that only one team can win the title each year. The list of contending teams seems to shrink with each campaign, and we wanted to provide something to those fans who only get to dream of Larry O’Brien during the offseason. Before October, every team can win the NBA title. Don’t believe us? Then keep reading. – Ed
The Sixers can win the NBA title this season. Yes, the Philadelphia 76ers. Laugh if you want, but for the first time in what feels like a decade, there’s real excitement around this team, thanks in large part to the on-court presence of a certain 7’2 first-round draft pick who is finally on the verge of contributing after two seasons of recovering from foot injuries. Add in two baby-faced 6’10 point forwards with magical passing ability — one of whom could return from his own foot injury in a few months, and the other of whom is named Dario — and a few legit NBA players on the perimeter, and suddenly this is starting to look like a real, actual basketball team. Will winning the title be easy? Well, no. Will the team need some help? Yes. But we’ll get to that. I swear. Just promise to hear me out.
And so, without further ado, here is my very simple 10-step plan for the Sixers to win the 2016-17 NBA season.
STEP 1 – Joel Embiid must remain healthy all year and begin developing into the player Sixers management thought he could be when they drafted him a few years ago. The importance of this can’t be overstated. Embiid’s potential is almost limitless. He’s a 7’2 shot-erasing giant with the speed and agility of a small forward and shooting range out to the three-point line. His top-end comparisons are basically “Anthony Davis but bigger” and “Karl-Anthony Towns but way better at social media.” If he pans out, it changes the entire future of the organization, beginning this season. So that’s where the plan has to start.
STEP 2 – Ben Simmons must return from his broken foot around Christmas and quickly develop into the passing virtuoso he showed glimpses of being both at LSU and during Summer League. He probably won’t be a point guard in the strict, dictionary-defined sense of the position, but he will have the ball in his hands and he will be initiating the offense, and the Sixers haven’t had a top-end player capable of doing this since… I honestly don’t know. Things got so bad last year that they brought Ish Smith back and he looked like Chris Paul by comparison. But like, better. Ish Smith looked like a better version of Chris Paul. That’s what I’m saying. Trust the process.
STEP 3 – There must be a virus. Not a lethal virus. We’re not trying to kill anyone here. But someone must create a synthetic virus that temporarily saps people of their ability to play professional basketball, kind of like the space laser the aliens used in Space Jam, but contagious and lasting for exactly one calendar year only. Then everything goes back to normal, with no long term side effects or lingering damage.
STEP 4 – The Sixers must trade Nerlens Noel, Jahlil Okafor, or both, preferably bringing back a shooting guard or wing with range in the process. It would actually be better long-term to get picks back because the actual veteran return they’d receive would probably be a little ehhh. But this is about winning the title this season, so picks do us no good. Hell, the Sixers can package both of them along with their 2017 first-round pick and the one the Lakers owe them and orchestrate some kind of convoluted three- or four-way trade to bring in an All-Star. Or maybe two. No point in leaving any bullets in the gun in this scenario. You ever start a franchise mode in Madden and then immediately trade away all your future draft picks for good current players, play like two seasons, then just scrap it all and start over? Like that, basically.
STEP 5 – The virus must be released on Opening Night, preferably at a West Coast game, and preferably in a way that only results in the players being infected. There’s no reason to take away the fans’ basketball ability if we can avoid it. Like, we don’t want to blast it through the ventilation system or anything. Unless there’s a way we can rig it so it only affects the players. We’ll have to work with the scientists on this one. Maybe we put it in the water? I don’t know. A little collateral damage is probably okay, if there’s no way around it. But we’re not supervillains here.
STEP 6 – Other young players must step up. Robert Covington must find a consistent jump shot to help spread the floor to create room for Embiid in the middle. Richaun Holmes must fill the void in the front line we created a couple steps ago by trading Noel and Okafor in one lunatic swoop. Jerami Grant must continue to try to do vicious tomahawk dunks every time he touches the ball, both because it will provide energy for the team and because it is cool and I like it a lot when he does that. Most importantly, Euro phenom Dario Saric must develop into something like a Simmons-lite, passing and scoring from the stretch four, and possibly leading the second unit once the team is back to full strength. We’ve heard about Brett Brown’s ability to develop players for years. Well, now it’s time to see what he’s got.
STEP 7 – The virus must spread through the league quickly, from team to team, and to every player added to a team from the D-League in a panicked attempt to infuse something resembling talent, until everyone in the NBA is infected. I’m talking by… oh, let’s say Thanksgiving. That early. Will it create a season of god-awful garbage basketball where previously great players are out there running around donking the ball off each other’s heads like one of those little kid leagues where they roll in 8-foot rims and let traveling slide just to avoid piercing the parents’ ear drums with a near-constant stream of whistleblowing? Well, yes, and that will suck tremendously, because the NBA is awesome right now and I love watching it. But again, this isn’t about the long-term health of the league. This is about the Sixers winning a championship in about eight months. Drastic steps must be taken, consequences be damned.
STEP 8 – The Sixers must sign Allen Iverson to a one-year contract. Admittedly this has nothing to do with actually helping the team on the court. I just think if the team is going to win a title, they might as well get AI a ring. I think he would like it.
STEP 9 – We must give the antidote to the Sixers and the Sixers only, so that they are the only team in the league that has normal basketball abilities. This will create a great deal of controversy. Once it becomes clear that the Sixers are in possession of a cure for the virus, there will be a lot of pressure put on them to share it with the rest of the league. These pleas must be ignored. They can’t even trade or release a player once the antidote has been administered, just in case another team signs that player and they are able to reverse engineer it from the player’s blood. This is very important. And it will be difficult for the team’s new Colangelo-led braintrust to be this ruthless because of their collegial relationship with other movers and shakers in the league’s executive suites. They will be tempted. They will worry about the game as a whole. They might crack. This brings us to the final step…
STEP 10 – The team must bring back Sam Hinkie and install him as President of Basketball Operations, with complete authority. Only Sam Hinkie possesses the robotic commitment and total disregard for anything that doesn’t further the plan he has created to pull this off. We’ve seen him do it before with his strip-mining of the team to build through the draft. Only the type of man who can remain committed to The Cult of The Process while turning in a steady stream of sub-10-win seasons can lead this type of effort. Go ahead, call Sam Hinkie and ask him to share the antidote. You won’t get anywhere, at least not until after your team has been completely eliminated and he offers you two vials in exchange for 50 second-round picks that stretch over a period of years longer than he can reasonably expect to live. (Classic Hinkie.) Nope, Sam will stick to the plan until the banner goes up and the team parades down Broad Street, led by league MVP Joel Embiid, who will have just polished off his record-setting 85 point and 200 block per game rookie season.
It’s almost too easy, really.
