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Sixers tank job: The generational divide

Let's begin with what this column is not. This column is not an attempt to re-litigate the wisdom or integrity of the 76ers' rebuilding plan. For one thing, the sides have already been chosen in that debate, and they are intractable. The conversation is redundant and tiresome. For another, given the Sixers' play this season and, in particular, their performance Wednesday night in their 112-85 loss to the Indiana Pacers, it's natural to ask, Weren't things supposed to be better by now?

Let's begin with what this column is not.

This column is not an attempt to re-litigate the wisdom or integrity of the 76ers' rebuilding plan. For one thing, the sides have already been chosen in that debate, and they are intractable. The conversation is redundant and tiresome. For another, given the Sixers' play this season and, in particular, their performance Wednesday night in their 112-85 loss to the Indiana Pacers, it's natural to ask, Weren't things supposed to be better by now?

The Sixers are 0-12. They have lost 22 straight games dating to last season. They committed 31 turnovers Wednesday against the Pacers, the most turnovers by an NBA team in 15 years - after committing 27 in their previous game. Their head coach, Brett Brown, appears so sapped of energy and hope that his postgame news conferences have become a form of sadomasochistic performance art, as if he were a character in a Mamet play that you know will end terribly.

This is the here and now of the Sixers, and it is ugly, and no one can deny it. This is also where public opinion about the franchise's future bifurcates. There are those who believe that the Sixers' course of action - paying little attention to wins and losses, hoarding draft picks to try to get themselves a superstar or superstars, maintaining roster flexibility by refusing (or being unable) to sign veteran players to long-term contracts - is a sucker's play. And there are those - and I count myself among them - who have argued that the plan could work in a way that the franchise's previous efforts to win a championship never would.

Again, that divide is an old story by now. What's interesting about it, though, is that it seems to break down cleanly along a generational line. That is, broadly speaking and boiled down to its simplest, catchiest essence, older people don't get what the Sixers are doing, and younger people do.

OK, now the parameters and disclaimers. In using the terms "older" and "younger," I'm setting the age of 40 as my Line of Demarcation. That doesn't mean that every Baby Boomer or Gen Xer wants to roast Sam Hinkie on a spit, or that there aren't Millennials whose souls bleed every time the Sixers lose a game and who wish the team had taken a different tack. It does mean - based on such anecdotal evidence as the opinions expressed by traditional media members, bloggers, talk-show hosts, and fans - that people over 40, people who are supposed to see the bigger and broader picture and be more experienced and rational in their perspectives, tend to dislike the plan. And that people under 40, people who are supposed to be full of emotion and conviction and passionate intensity, tend to be more supportive of the plan, or at least more patient in evaluating it.

Why the counterintuitive nature of this split? Here's a theory:

If you grew up as a basketball fan in the 1960s, the 1970s, and even the mid-1980s, you're likely to remember the Sixers as a proud, prosperous franchise with a history of great players: Wilt Chamberlain, Billy Cunningham, Hal Greer, Julius Erving, Mo Cheeks, Doug Collins, Moses Malone, Charles Barkley. Those are precious memories, and the Sixers' approach these days - purposely putting an overmatched team on the court for the sake of starting fresh - besmirches those memories and that tradition.

But if you grew up as a basketball fan in the 1990s and 2000s, you're likely to remember the Sixers having a long tradition as bottom-feeders. From 1991 through 1998, they averaged 26 victories a season, and their drafts were the stuff of standup routines: Clarence Weatherspoon, Sharone Wright, Shawn Bradley, B.J. Tyler, Larry Hughes over Paul Pierce, cue the laugh track. Then, after a modest five-year uptick when Allen Iverson was in his prime, they went through an 11-year stretch in which they had two winning seasons, won one playoff series, and were bad enough to secure a top-five draft pick just once. And with that pick, they drafted Evan Turner. You think these Sixers are hopeless? You haven't known hopelessness until you've seen Bradley try to body Shaquille O'Neal in the post.

That fallow period informs the younger generation just as the franchise's glory days inform the elder one, and in comparison to the haphazard incompetence of Brad Greenberg and Eddie Jordan, the cold logic and possible windfall of Hinkie's plan have great appeal. More, this younger generation of sports fans/followers has been conditioned to evaluate teams vis-a-vis salary caps and the goal of sustaining success over time - a calculation that, in previous eras, no one had to take into account. In 1976, eight years before the NBA implemented its cap, the Sixers could buy Erving's contract from the ABA's New York Nets for whatever sum was necessary ($6 million, as it turned out). The move was seen, rightly, as a sign that they expected to contend. In 2005, the Sixers signed Samuel Dalembert to a six-year, $64 million extension. In a salary-cap world, the move was seen, rightly, as a sign that they had no idea what they were doing.

Do they know what they're doing now? Put it this way: Your answer to that question probably depends on your answer to another. Who was your favorite Sixers player when you were a kid: Andrew Toney or Andrew Lang?

msielski@phillynews.com

@MikeSielski