The Sixers still don’t have a general manager. This makes me uncomfortable. I’m trying to decide if that’s the right way to feel.
Related: Report: 76ers hire Lindsey Harding as full-time scout
I was talking to Angelo Cataldi about the Sixers last week. Really. It was after his show one day, he settled into his chair, and he said, “Spike, do you think the Sixers will name a general manager tomorrow.” I laughed, and said, "Of course not.”
It reminded me of a situation several years back, when Angelo was up in arms about the Sixers not having hired a head coach deep into the summer. “The only person who thinks this is a big deal is the media,” I told him back then. “I’d rather take their time making a decision and make the right one than make the wrong one quickly.” I said it louder than that, but it was the crux of what I was saying.
I thought of the irony of my total comfort in the time it took to find a coach, and the relative anxiety I feel about the time it’s taking to name a general manager. Maybe, just maybe, I’m being a hypocrite.
But these situations are not the same. I was comfortable with the coach situation because I was comfortable with who was in charge and leading that search (we both know who that was and we don’t need to belabor the point that this person made a great hire as well as being the reason the team has Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, Dario Saric, Robert Covington and TJ McConnell). I’m uncomfortable with the general manager search because I:
a) don’t know who’s in charge of it,
b) don’t know if actually exists at all, and...
c) by my count the team is one for three in GM hires during the current ownership’s reign.
So with a general lack of information regarding the search (aside from a mostly made-up interview with Daryl Morey), I’m going to imagine with is possibly going on, and just how worried we should be about each of them on a scale of 1-10 (with 1 being a “IT’S TOTALLY FINE!” non-worry and 10 being a “THIS IS NOT FINE AT ALL!” a lot of worry).
The Internal Guys Already Have The Job (5 of 10)
This is potentially the least troubling of all of the scenarios because at least someone is in charge. I will take a bad person (not suggesting any internal person is bad) being in charge over nobody being in charge every day of the week.
In this scenario, it’s likely Marc Eversley, Ned Cohen, or Alex Rucker acting as general manager with Brett Brown as a president of basketball operations who has some sort of final say. It’s the latter part of this that is the reason this is a 5 of 10 and not a 3 of 10.
I love Brett Brown. I think he’s the best. Truly the best, as a person, as a coach, as a guy with a basically unduplicated Australian-Boston combo accent. But the history of “coach as decision-maker” in the NBA is not littered with much success. Too many times, the jobs of coach and personnel decision maker have different timelines with different biases. As much as I want Brett Brown to succeed as coach and to have a say in personnel decisions, I do not want him to have veto power over any deal.
The other troubling thing here would be that they decided on new leadership without having appeared to talk to much of anyone outside of the organization, as well as leaving basically every person in place who was part of a Bryan Colangelo regime that made mostly bad moves.
The Internal Guys Are Auditioning For The Job (7 of 10)
Imagine you ran a business. Imagine, for a moment, you were at one of the three most crucial times for decision making in the history of this business. Now, imagine letting someone run this business as a trial run during this very same period. This does not seem like a great idea.
Having the internal guys tryout for the job on the job is a bad idea at a worse time. They’d be better off naming the internal guys as the permanent guys and then moving on if something better came along.
The Timing Of Bryan Colangelo’s Firing Made This Difficult (3 of 10)
It’s possible, that because of when Burnergate happened, that it made it difficult to interview, decide, and hire a lead decision maker with so many important decisions to make immediately. It’s also possible that ownership was not impressed with anyone who was potentially available at such a time and thought it best that consistency was the best bet.
But this seems more like a bullshit way of making excuses for them than anything rooted in reality. This would have not been an easy situation to step into immediately, but it’s a good situation with good players and a good coach and a giant practice facility with awesome food. Most importantly, there are only 30 of these jobs and you’d have to believe they’d have had at least close to their pick of the litter.
This is a 3 of 10 on the concern scale if it’s true but on the “that’s probably not what’s going on scale” it scores much higher.
The Owners Want To Hire Someone Who Wants To Keep Everyone In Place (9 of 10)
It was suggested after Colangelo was run out of town that the owners wanted to hire a general manager who was comfortable keeping most of not all of the current basketball operations personnel in place.
This is a great idea if you’d like to narrow down your choices to “people who would want to run the Sixers but not choose their staff.” Seems like it’d probably be an unimpressive list. Even 94WIP’s Joe DeCamara who has demanded an interview on several occasions would want a crack at hiring his own staff.
It’s possible that whoever they’d hire would find value in many of the people currently working for the team. But to make that a necessary condition for employment would be a horrible mistake. Choosing the comfortable thing over the right thing is rarely the correct thing.
Nobody Knows What They’re Doing And This Is A Ship Without A Rudder (10 of 10)
I mean, it could happen. It seems really unlikely that this is the case but I suppose crazier things could happen.
Conclusion
While telling us what’s going on with the search is not the most important thing, I have a hard time having any confidence in all of this without it. Maybe that’s more about me than it is about them, but I don’t think it is.
Just because the NBA Draft and free-agency are done with for the year, does not mean someone does not need to be in charge. The Kyrie Irving trade happened in August last year and you never know when opportunity will present itself. What a previous GM, who I will not name so as to not appear biased, always tried to show is that you don’t get to predict or plan when opportunity will strike, only that you are ready when it does.
The Sixers need to be ready. Let’s hope they know what they’re doing.