Sixers' season a waste; it's time to step it up

'LET'S GO. Let's go. Push it."

During his 241-game reign so far as head coach of the 76ers, coach Brett Brown has shouted those words to his players thousands of times. From the day he was hired in August of 2013, that is the style Brown felt would give his team its best chance to compete.

He might be shouting those same words to management come the end of the season. Brown has won just 46 of those 241 games, and has never been given a roster with a chance to succeed. It is understandable if Brown's words to management this offseason are the same as they have been to his players: "Let's go. Let's go. Push it."

Because, quite frankly, this third year of The Process has been a complete waste.

It's no secret that the basis of general manager Sam Hinkie's plan was to garner as many losses as possible these first three seasons and thereby acquire as many top draft picks and assets as he could.

In that area, he has had some success, and this June the team could be looking at four first-round draft picks.

I get it. And we'll see how that plays out.

But at the beginning of this season, as much as any other subject, the talk was about developing the players who already were here, particularly the ones with whom the organization expected to move forward. In that regard, this season, which has yielded a 9-68 record so far, is a complete failure.

It all started in training camp, when Hinkie gave Brown a high quantity of players at point guard, but none good enough to be a regular starter.

"Many of them are known to be great passers," managing owner Josh Harris said of the point guards at training camp on Oct. 1. "I don't believe in any way that will inhibit the growth of our major assets."

At the time, six players were vying for the position. Of those six, two still are playing point guard for the team: backups T.J. McConnell and Kendall Marshall (whom Harris called Kendall Martin at the time. Isaiah Canaan is mostly a shooting guard now. Gone are Scottie Wilbekin, Pierre Jackson and Tony Wroten. Marshall and Wroten weren't even scheduled to return from ACL surgeries until around Christmas, so Brown was left without someone to manage his team for the first 31 games (1-30).

That meant rookie Jahlil Okafor and fellow big man Nerlens Noel had to try to learn to play together devoid of the most important position to help them do so. It wasn't until a Christmas Eve trade to bring back Ish Smith that the team became relatively formidable for a short period. Forget the fact that Hinkie had to spend two second-round picks for a player he could have just signed in the offseason; the real detriment was to the progress of Okafor and Noel. Instead, it was a waste of 31 games.

Then came the experiment of moving Okafor to power forward and Noel to center. That didn't result in any confidence that those two could carry a future that might or might not include Joel Embiid.

Another theory put forth before the season was that with the addition of Nik Stauskas, along with the progress of Robert Covington and Hollis Thompson and the hoped-for improvement of Jerami Grant's outside game, the inside would be open for Okafor and Noel to find room to make plays. Not so much.

Stauskas has struggled most of the season with his shot, draining just 33.3 percent from beyond the arc. Covington's three-point shooting rate has declined from 37.4 to 34.6 percent, and none of the others has made much, if any, improvement.

Defense was the story a year ago, as the team finished 13th in defensive rating (points allowed per 100 possessions) at 105.7. But that skyrocketed this season to 123.8, which is next to last in the league. There are just so many holes at that end of the floor - on ball pressure; wings long and fast enough to get out on shooters, and Okafor's liabilities - that there was no scheme Brown could dream up to hide the many flaws.

Perhaps the biggest progress made this season, and most of it we just have to believe what the Sixers tell us, is the improvement in the right foot of Embiid. All insist his twice surgically repaired right foot is improving and that he is diligently following the plans laid out for him. But there still hasn't been any real basketball activity, save for some some jumpers and baby hooks against no competition after practices and before games.

Yes, this summer is the biggest time yet in The Process moving forward. Chairman of basketball operations Jerry Colangelo insists going after free agents is in the plan. If all that comes to fruition, if Embiid can get on the court, if Dario Saric comes over from Turkey, then a dream can start to form.

But Noel and Okafor weren't able to improve their games much, if at all, with the circumstances surrounding them. Okafor will have played just 53 games when the season ends and is on crutches after suffering a torn meniscus. Stauskas is a question mark moving forward. The two players the team thought would be their starting backcourt, Wroten and Marshall, aren't that. And so on and so on.

Perhaps when other pieces are finally brought in - a starting point guard, two or three free veteran free agents and a starter out of the draft - many of those players will fall into a place Brown and Hinkie envisioned. But this year certainly didn't help them at all.

And to ensure that doesn't happen again in the 2016-17 season, this summer is the key.

"Let's go. Let's go. Push it."

@BobCooney76

Blog: philly.com/Sixersblog