Bob Myers and the Sixers’ new player-personnel chief have to … yes … change the team’s culture
The Sixers have a hard road ahead. The first step is to find a basketball operations chief to bring some good sense and stability to the franchise.
One little line. One short disclaimer. That’s all it would have taken.
The biggest mistake that Bob Myers made earlier this month, while laying out the future for the 76ers’ front office, was coming off like the competent, respected executive he has been throughout his career — and never making it clear that he wouldn’t be a day-to-day decision-maker.
If Myers had thrown in an I’ll be handing this off or a The person we hire will handle that during that May 14 news conference following Daryl Morey’s firing, the road ahead for him and for an organization caught in a perpetual credibility crisis would’ve been so much smoother.
Instead, the Sixers will have a harder time solving a problem that has plagued them for a quarter-century. From the moment in July 2001 that team president Pat Croce tried and failed to run a power play on Ed Snider, that Croce declared he wanted to be Comcast Spectacor’s CEO and Snider patted him on the head and told him to run along, the Sixers have been a franchise with a thousand faces. Their perfect front man over all those years would have been Daniel Day-Lewis.
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Now they have to find a president of basketball operations or director of player personnel or whatever title they plan to bestow on whomever they end up hiring. And Myers’ command of the room fed the false notion that this new executive would be a powerless underling, that Myers would be, for all intents and purposes, alone in reshaping the Sixers’ roster. No, this will be a two-man job, a difficult one, and their first consideration should be a vital concept that the Sixers have ignored for too long: culture.
As the president of Harris-Blitzer’s sports division, as the Sixers’ interim president, as a rare person whom everyone in the NBA takes seriously, Myers has a chance here to set the Sixers on a stable course, finally, with this hire.
Yes, they were denied permission to speak to Onsi Saleh, the Atlanta Hawks’ GM, a rising exec who worked under Myers with the Golden State Warriors. Yes, given that Josh Harris still has Morey and general manager Elton Brand on the payroll and that Myers, according to a source with knowledge of the details, makes more than the two of them combined, there’s little chance that Harris will bring on anyone close to Myers in stature or compensation. But there are attractive candidates still out there: the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Mike Gansey, the Minnesota Timberwolves’ Mike Lloyd, Jameer Nelson from inside.
Any of those three would meet the threshold that Myers and the Sixers should establish: Stop chasing shortcuts to and formulas for success, and just pinpoint, hire, and promote the best people you can find.
From trading too much for Andrew Bynum to letting Sam Hinkie embark on The Process, from selling out Hinkie at the behest of the league office to settling for Bryan Colangelo, from “star-chasing” to “bully ball,” from Ben Simmons to James Harden to Paul George, the Sixers have been adrift throughout Harris’ ownership tenure. There’s always one more gambit, one more coach or player, one more change of direction that will set everything right … and never does.
For all the anger that Morey inspired here, for all the unmet expectations over his six-year tenure, no one can deny the brilliance of his analytical mind. But Morey’s interpersonal skills have always been among his greatest weaknesses, and a leader can keep himself on an island, can be resolute that he alone has all the right answers, for only so long before the morale among those who work for him starts to decay.
Myers likes Morey; they just see the world differently. During that dynastic near-decade in Golden State — four championships and six finals appearances in eight years — Myers’ strength was in managing the egos and personalities of many of the major figures: Joe Lacob as the owner, Jerry West as a powerful consultant, Kevin Durant and Draymond Green as future Hall of Famers who required either finesse or a firm hand and someone who knew when to wield which.
Those attributes should serve him and the Sixers well here. Despite the impression he created in that news conference, Myers doesn’t have to and doesn’t want to relocate his family to Philadelphia and assume total control of basketball ops. He doesn’t have to pull the trigger on every trade and 10-day contract.
What he can do is tell tough truths to Joel Embiid, to George, to anyone else who might fall into the Sixers’ previous pattern of kowtowing too often to their biggest names and most important players. What he can do is understand that, in Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe, the Sixers have two high-character, centerpiece-quality talents, and exhausting every possible resource and option to maximize them has to be the franchise’s highest priority.
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What he can do is hire a player-personnel chief who fosters an atmosphere of collaboration and offers some stability and good sense. What he can do is make the final calls on the most important moves and supplant the cringy, mealy-mouthed, notes-shuffling Harris as the face of ownership.
Considering the Sixers’ current condition, considering that they’re likely stuck with Embiid and George and those albatross contracts that Harris was happy to hand out, those measures don’t sound like much. But they’re necessary if the Sixers are to have any hope of sloshing out of this swamp and preventing themselves from sinking to the bottom.
No one wants another multiyear rebuild here. No one wants another Process. Bob Myers doesn’t have to run the Sixers himself, but he does have to find a partner who can help him change the perception and reality of a franchise that has been lost for a long time. It’s the first step on a hard road.
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