Derek Bodner’s Blog

This 76ers offseason is typical of the offseasons that 76ers fans have come to expect. It started off with talk of defense, rebounding, and changing of team culture. It then went on to the solid, albeit unspectacular, draft, then signing players to long-term contracts that nobody else would have even thought about offering, and concluded in a team that has no discernible direction or future.

Ah, what a combination that is.

This is a team that really needed to decide what direction it wanted to go in. To begin the rebuilding process by trading its high-priced veterans, gaining whatever assets for the future it could, and knowing full well that it would lead to two very large steps backward in the hope that it could eventually take three steps forward. Or the team needed to go in the other direction, acquiring veteran players whose strengths fit in with Allen Iverson’s style of play (and can cover his weaknesses), and could help propel this team into solid playoff contention to set itself up for a run these next few years.

Instead, the team brought back essentially the same group of players, plus rookies and Alan Henderson.

Does anybody wonder why there has been an eerie lack of excitement for the coming season?

Does anybody think Rodney Carney is going to have enough of an impact to propel this team to 10 more wins? That he will be a significant enough improvement to improve a team that won 38 games last year into a legitimate contender? The really scary part is that team was relatively healthy last year. If Iverson, Webber and Iguodala combine to miss only 17 games this year, we would have to consider ourselves very fortunate.

And what has Willie Green, in any year much less one he came back from major knee surgery, shown to warrant a guaranteed 5 year deal? Would anybody, any other team in the league, have used their Mid Level Exception on him and lock him away for that long? Is this contract not eerily reminiscent of the extensions handed out to Kenny Thomas, Eric Snow, Dikembe Mutombo et al that have gotten this team in the predicament it’s currently in?

Even the offseason’s biggest success, the drafting of Rodney Carney, has to be tempered with who we passed up. I like Carney, but when the 76ers came on the board at pick 13, my priorities were 1) Ronnie Brewer, 2) Marcus Williams, 3) Rodney Carney. I can understand the passing of Marcus Williams with the pick, but I think it could prove to be a mistake three years down the line to pass select Carney over Brewer.

That right there sums up the 76ers offseason. The biggest victory of the offseason was, in my opinion, still open to questioning. Exciting, indeed.

That does not mean there is nothing to look forward to. Iguodala could very well have the breakout year he’s shown flashes of. Korver, while not on the cusp of turning into a star and likely to always have defensive shortcomings, has shown steady improvement in the time he’s been in the league and we can probably expect that to continue. Carney might not have been my first selection at 13, but I do like him as a player. And Shavlik Randolph looks to have been a diamond in the rough (let’s not take this out of context, he’s still a bench player, but for the expectations of an undrafted rookie, that’s quite a find).

However, in the end this is still a team that if it overachieves could reach .500 and lose in the first round of the playoffs. Is that kind of “excitement” worth delaying the inevitable rebuilding? We’ll see. With that kind of upside, it may be time to go in another direction.