What They're Saying: Sixers' off-season an NBA blueprint
The Sixers’ off-season hasn’t been sexy. They haven’t acquired a Hall of Fame point guard like the Knicks and Lakers or pulled off a big trade like the Nets.
But they have shed salary and gotten even younger to build for the future and avoid stagnancy as the Eastern Conference’s seventh, eighth or ninth best team.
David Aldridge of
NBA.com and Sean Deveney of
The Sporting News both praised the Sixers’ off-season this week.
Aldridge, who listed the Sixers’ moves as one of the six storylines he’s “feelin,’” writes that in Nick Young, Maurice Harkless and Arnett Moultrie, the Sixers added three contributors for less than $8 million in first-year salaries.
Deveney goes a bit more in-depth, essentially referring to the Sixers’ off-season as the blueprint for NBA franchises looking to improve.
“The Sixers, as they were constructed, were not going anywhere,” Deveney begins. “The Sixers are slipping into a rebuild, but they’re doing it with some advantages. They already have a point guard they like (and will have to pay) in Jrue Holiday, and have loaded up on frontcourt players. ... Jettisoning [Lou] Williams, and perhaps [Andre] Iguodala, now means the Sixers will find out what, exactly, Evan Turner can provide on the perimeter.”
These moves by the Sixers go against what many NBA teams have spent this off-season doing – awarding pricey contracts to mediocre players. The Bucks are close to giving Ersan Ilyasova $45 million. The Blazers gave Nicolas Batum the same amount. Gerald Wallace will make $40 million from the Nets. Hell, even three-point specialist Steve Novak will make $16 million from the Knicks.
These are all teams paying for players that almost certainly won’t make the difference between a playoff berth and a deep run, especially for $10 or $11 million.
The Sixers took the opposite approach, and if their own pieces continue to grow and develop, will see the fruits of the 2012 off-season several years down the road.
E-mail Corey Seidman at cseidman@comcastsportsnet.com
