Equally precarious is ownership’s apparent decision that the man to fix a problematic front office is that front office’s current leader. The Sixers are at a precarious moment that can easily see them return to the ranks of perennial also-rans within the next couple of seasons.
There has been a lot of talk about accountability with regard to the players, and it is enough to scramble your mind to think that the general manager can’t be held similarly accountable. No doubt, this whole rigamarole will sound more than a little frustrating to Sixers fans who have spent the last two years watching one of the more exciting offensive teams in the NBA become more dysfunctional with every move. “As I’ve been taking a deep dive on where we failed, what went wrong, and how we get better, I felt like we need to strengthen our organization from top to bottom, and that starts with the front office,” Brand said, “balancing our strengths with analytics and strategy with more basketball minds, or whatever happens.” » READ MORE: Sixers GM Elton Brand: ‘I’m not looking to trade Ben or Joel' So I’m taking time to assess where we are and how we get better.
“I’m doing a thorough assessment of our front office,” Brand said. And he will also play a leading role in the restructuring of the front office. But what we do know is that, according to Brand, he will be the man in charge of the Sixers’ search for Brown’s replacement. To some, that’s the appeal of collaboration - it shrouds responsibility. We might never know the extent to which his own strategies and evaluations drove each individual decision that led the Sixers to this point. Harris, the group’s general managing partner, did so in a statement to ESPN in which he promised “a real assessment of how we got here” and said that he expects “more changes will need to be made in order to get this organization back on track.”īrand seems to have little doubt about the nature of those changes. Given the grisly nature of the roster that all of us discovered this season, as well as the unmistakable footprints that were circled around it, the team’s ownership had little choice but to confess. While managing partner Josh Harris spoke glowingly of his belief in his former player’s roster-building aptitude, he did so in a way that offered more questions than answers about the true source of the vision that would be guiding the organization. Then came Brand’s appointment as Colangelo’s full-time successor less than two years after his career in personnel management began. » READ MORE: Before Sixers owner Josh Harris replaces Brett Brown, he needs to hire someone who can replace Sam Hinkie | David Murphyįirst came coach Brett Brown’s summer-long stint as assistant general manager, a stretch that saw them draft Mikal Bridges and then trade him away for Zhaire Smith and a first-round pick. Loaded with a war chest of draft picks and cap room and desirable young trade pieces, the Sixers arrived at their moment of action and decided to form a committee. The Sixers had entered and exited the most pivotal and irrevocable stage of their quest to build a championship roster without anyone in charge.Įven after the haphazard and contradictory flurry of trades and signings and reconsiderations that we have witnessed in the years since Sam Hinkie went out in a blaze of glory and Bryan Colangelo set the fire to himself, the admission still comes as a shock. With one stunning sentence, Brand confirmed what outsiders had long suspected and what insiders were all but certain had been the case. He might not have meant them as such, but those 13 words served as a damning and near-incomprehensible indictment of the Sixers’ power structure over the last two years. “To be frank, we feel that the collaboration days didn’t work too well,” Brand said as he fielded questions from reporters for the first time since the Sixers’ season ended in a four-game sweep by the Boston Celtics on Sunday. Sitting in a neutral-colored interior room, an arched bookcase and heavy wooden door visible behind him, the Sixers general manager bore the cool yet engaged countenance of a man whose moment had only just begun. If Michael Corleone had held a Zoom call after having Emilio Barzini knocked off on the courthouse steps, he might have looked a lot like Elton Brand on Tuesday morning.
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