The 2015-16 NBA Season starts soon, preseason hoops are in full swing, and playoff prognostications have begun in earnest. Since season previews can get bogged down by team-specific minutiae, and we cover every basketball team, we’re providing our readers reasons why you should care about all 30 teams in the Association.
DIME MAG’s 2015-16 NBA Season Previews
Some would call the NBA season a slog. Others, a grind. And those verbs might adequately sum up Sam Hinkie’s five-year plan to return Philadelphia professional basketball to prominence. Heck, if you ask most fans, they’d be happy for a return to mediocrity. Except that’s the point, isn’t it — to be so bad, you skip the middling tiers of NBA irrelevance, which can drag on for decades, and somehow land a bunch of talent on the cheap in the draft. Then, bingo bango, you’re a title contender.
It’s that bingo bango part that complicates what seems easy to fans.
Logically, this all makes sense, but it also means very few people are excited about the 2015-16 Sixers. Even Nae Naeing Betsy is leery of shaking her rump if it’ll just mean a win total in the teens and a team that makes more headlines for the stunning amount of a non-alcoholic beverage their injured young big man consumes than actual basketball.
But there are actual basketball things to be excited about. We’re serious. Let’s explain.
The way Nerlens Noel and Jahlil Okafor complement each other on the front court
Spacing will be an issue because no matter how many jumpers Noel takes, we’re not sure he’ll ever be a viable threat from the perimeter. But that’s OK, even in today’s stretch-four-heavy NBA. Just because small ball is now a part of a casual fan’s lexicon, doesn’t mean every team has to implement that sort of scheme. Sure, Brett Brown would love a motion-heavy system where at least four of his five players could knock down a 3-pointer, but you can’t always get what you want. And if Brown waits long enough, Hinkie might deal Noel anyway. (That was a joke. We think.)
While Noel can be ignored outside of 15 feet on the offensive end, you better pay attention to him on the other side of the court. In last season’s second half, he was one of the best defenders in the whole association. His improved play on the defensive end came too late to make a real push for Defensive Player of the Year (even though, ironically, Kawhi Leonard sat almost of a quarter of the season with a hand injury), but it’s the perfect antidote to what plagues Jahlil Okafor, Philadelphia’s first-round draft pick in June.
Okafor is that big guy who you play pick-up with, but he’s just as deadly from 15 feet away from the hoop as he is steamrolling you in the post. He’s as offensively developed as any big man entering the Association over the last 10 or 15 years, and the Sixers should definitely use his presence in the post to get the defense to over-commit.
But the biggest knock on him coming out of Duke was his reluctance to do the dirty work, specifically on the defensive side of the ball. Do you see where we’re going here? It won’t be as simple as Jahlil carrying the front court on offense and Nerlens on defense, but the fact their two weak spots cancel each other out is a nice attribute despite the cramped half-court.
Will this matter at all if the Sixers’ backcourt of — wait for it — Nik “I’m more well known for my Sauce Castillo nickname than I am for my game” Stauskus and Kendall “I make cool vines” Marshall. Probably not, at least in terms of wins. But a complementary front court can still be called a part of Hinkie’s “process.”
All the hidden assets Sam Hinkie has found
There’s something to be said for success breeding success. The Minnesota Timberwolves are taking that approach to rebuilding. Kevin Garnett, Tayshaun Prince and Andre Miller are in Minneapolis to teach an impressionable group of youngsters what it takes to carve a lasting niche in the NBA, helping mold players like Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns into the cornerstones of a future title contender.
It may very well work, too. There’s no blueprint to development in the NBA; prospects mature into players at different speeds and intervals, and countless different factors go into determining whether their potential is reached. To say the influence of Garnett will hinder the evolution of Towns, though, is foolish. The future Hall-of-Famer may not be the driving force behind his teenage teammate’s rise to stardom, but he certainly won’t stop it from occurring, either.
The Philadelphia 76ers don’t care. General manager Sam Hinkie sat on the free agency sidelines again this summer, choosing to horde cap space like he does second-rounders. A vocal majority of longtime league analysts look at the Sixers with disgust. Philadelphia isn’t trying to win, their thinking goes, and another offseason of inactivity on the free agent market is just the latest example of that reality. What’s the most glaring one? Beginning the 2015-16 season with a roster full of re-treads, no-names, and long-shots for the third year running.
But that assessment belies crucial context in more than the most obvious way. The Sixers, for all of the talk of tanking, continue to find diamonds in the rough of second-round picks and undrafted free agents – and it’s not solely because their NBA hopefuls are more talented than others, either.
Robert Covington is Philadelphia’s most obvious success story. The Tennessee State alum won D-League Rookie of the Year after going undrafted two years ago. He signed a four-year, non-guaranteed deal with the Sixers last November after being cut by the Houston Rockets in training camp.
There’s no telling for certain either way if Covington is the next DeMarre Carroll or Khris Middleton, but early returns are certainly encouraging. He shot 37.4 percent on a crazy 6.4 three-point attempts per game last season, knocking down at least four triples on 17 separate occasions. He has quick feet for a wing his size, and the length to capably defend both forward spots in the modern NBA.
Covington will never be a star. But he’s a viable player already, and has the makings of a ‘3-and-D’ bench cog at the very least – assuming he doesn’t make major strides off the dribble or as a cutter. If those improvements come, the 24-year-old will be the next relatively anonymous wing due an extremely notable salary. Not bad.
Jakarr Sampson, Jerami Grant, Hollis Thompson, and others aren’t quite on Covington’s level for now. But those three players in particular – all of whom Philly owns on cheapo deals for at least the next two seasons, by the way – have shown flashes of tools that suggest legitimate NBA talent. Will they significantly move the needle for the Sixers immediately or even in the future? Of course not. But every team in the league needs role players, and Hinkie keeps finding them.
Assets, obviously, are the name of the game for Philadelphia. But they’re not only in the form of draft picks or even young, potential-laden players like Nerlens Noel and Jabari Parker. Under the mightily impressive tutelage of coach Brett Brown, the Sixers are in the process of churning out players who seem primed to eventually make an impact in the league – whether it comes in the City of Brotherly Love or elsewhere.
