Philadelphia 76ers' Tony Wroten reacts to a call during the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Portland Trail Blazers, Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, in Philadelphia. Portland won 114-104.Matt Slocum/The Associated Press
Imagine working every day on, say, an auto assembly line, intent on doing your best but knowing your bosses actually want you to fail, for the steering wheel to shake and the brakes to squeal and the bumper to fall off. They assure customers ("suckers" is the official term) they'll produce terrific cars a couple of years from now.
Welcome to the world of the Philadelphia 76ers, a once-proud hoops franchise in the second year of an uneasy exercise in team-building. Philadelphia, where America began its experiment with democracy, is now testing the efficacy of tanking and the limits of fan loyalty – maybe not as momentous as that nation-forming thing, but intriguing nonetheless.
It goes like this: Dump your best players, draft highly touted youngsters (preferably injured or playing overseas, so as not to interfere with the prime enterprise of losing) and hope that one day, when the kiddie corps grows up and a few vets sign on to explain about winning, the future will turn Sixer red-white-and-blue. In the words of coach Brett Brown: "I see a big, bright light at the end of this."
Maybe; maybe not. But the present is dark and butt-ugly: an 0-14 record, heading into Wednesday's date with the Brooklyn Nets. A roster comprised of a few promising kids and D-League fodder, cap space patently unused. Home attendance dropping near the bottom of the league, from the middle ranks in the team's last playoff season of 2012.
If the NBA were soccer's Premier League, the Sixers would be relegated to a lower division, and good riddance.
As it is, the immediate fascination is of the ghoulish sort: Will this singular assemblage of hard-court spare parts snap the NBA record for most consecutive losses to start a year – 18, set by the 2010 Nets, then of New Jersey? Will it break the full-season mark for futility – nine wins, 73 losses – rung up by the 1973 Sixers? That team at least wasn't trying to be terrible; it earned its place in history.
At this point I should come clean: I am Philadelphia-born and raised, a long-time Sixers fan. I remember when the franchise moved south from Syracuse in 1963, when Philly's own goliath Wilt Chamberlain returned to town, when his powerhouse squad captured the NBA crown in 1967. I remember Julius Erving, Moses Malone and company repeating the feat in 1983. I rejoiced.
Yes, I have now lived in Toronto for nearly three decades, and time and distance have done their work. I cheered on Vince Carter's Raptors against Allen Iverson's Sixers in the 2001 playoffs – but I retain some vestigial affinity for my hometown team. It hurts to see the Sixers this bad.
Last year they dropped 26 straight games, equalling the NBA's longest losing skid in any stretch of the schedule. They finished the season a sorry 19-63. That roster looks like a juggernaut beside this one.
Of course, the real pain belongs to the players. Keep in mind: In the larger realm of run-of-the-mill humanity, they are superb athletes, every one. They have scored bushels of points, racked up assists and rebounds, raised championship trophies in previous basketball lives. They just aren't good enough, in the current collective, to beat NBA teams actually designed to win. That's not for lack of effort on the players' part, and it burns them no end.
"Losing sucks," says Sixers point guard Michael Carter-Williams, venting on a website called the Players' Tribune. "I don't care how much money you make or what stats you put up. If you're competitive enough to make it to the NBA, losing is absolutely brutal."
Carter-Williams was one of the few bright spots for the Sixers last season, chosen the NBA's rookie of the year. How does he cope with losing? By tuning out hoops and turning on The Ellen Degeneres Show. (Seriously.) What does he say to anyone who doubts his effort?
"You can question my shooting. You can question my ceiling. Just don't question if I'm giving my all every single night. Don't talk to me about tanking."
No, talk to owner Josh Harris and general manager Sam Hinkie, the tanking architect. Their rationale is simple: The most dreaded description in the NBA is "mediocre," a middle-of-the-pack team slipping into the playoffs but exiting early, never securing the high draft picks – the potential Michael Jordan, Tim Duncan, LeBron James – who beget championships.
Hinkie doesn't care how it looks. "I think it's pretty important that you learn how to keep your own scoreboard and how to be focused on what truly matters over the long term," he says.
Bloodless, steely-eyed, an analytics-wielding gunslinger, but fair enough. Hinkie didn't invent tanking, after all. Look at baseball's Florida Marlins, repeatedly stripping off assets and now, poised to win again, signing slugger Giancarlo Stanton to the fattest contract in American sports. Look at the sad-sack Buffalo Sabres, skating for the bottom and Connor McDavid.
But Hinkie has turned tanking into an extreme sport, gaming the NBA system. The problem is, it's rarely that simple. The league's last-place team must still rely on the bounce of Ping-Pong balls, with only a one-in-four chance of winning the lottery. And even No. 1 picks are no guarantee of anything – can you say Andrea Bargnani? How about Edmonton Oilers?
Nor is tanking the only path to success. Remember the Raptors dealing Rudy Gay last year and then potentially Kyle Lowry, the white flag starting up the pole, only to stun everyone by winning? Sport isn't all analytics; sometimes it's alchemy, sometimes it's magic.
Then there's the long-term toll on the Sixers' future core, on Carter-Williams, Nerlens Noel, Joel Embiid. "At some point," says former NBA guard and coach Mark Jackson, "you've got to develop a culture of winning and winning habits and gaining some results so the guys can believe it."
Never mind the poor fans, asked to embrace patience, to pay now and forget later. My friend Tom, another member of the Philly diaspora, puts it this way: "I don't see them giving away free tickets while they tank."
As the Founding Fathers might have said, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that not all tanks are created equal – and the Sixers' is downright revolutionary. Is it within the rules? Yes. Could it work out wonderfully? Sure. Do I wish the Raptors had gone the same route?
No – no tanks. Because, my guess is, it will not work out wonderfully at all. My guess is that this undertaking, profoundly cynical, hideous to behold, is doomed to fail: producing a team of talented, damaged, confused kids not far removed from an NBA freak show – a team hell-bent for mediocrity.