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76ers' future may be bright, but present is bleak

The big chill Monday inside the Wells Fargo Center was caused by the building's ice hockey configuration. The cold reality was provided by the return of the 76ers, the city's professional basketball franchise that wants you and its roster of NBA neophytes to believe it is building for a better tomorrow.

The big chill Monday inside the Wells Fargo Center was caused by the building's ice hockey configuration. The cold reality was provided by the return of the 76ers, the city's professional basketball franchise that wants you and its roster of NBA neophytes to believe it is building for a better tomorrow.

Year Two of the Sixers' Get-Better-By-Being-Bad Plan - it's more commonly known as the Tank Initiative - officially kicked off with media day, where talk about the future could be perceived in entirely different ways.

Prepare to be depressed if you want to talk about the near future. It's not going to be much different than the near past, which means this season's version of the 76ers will be quite capable of winning fewer than the 19 games won by last season's team. This season's team will also be capable of breaking the NBA record of 26 consecutive losses, a mark that last season's team could only match.

"I think media day always has a lot of excitement about sort of what will unfold," general manager Sam Hinkie said as he stood on the black covering that sat atop the Flyers' home ice. "I think that's true with every team. I think that's true with our team this year, too. I can't wait for practice to start [Tuesday]."

Really, it's all practice for the Sixers right now. (Please don't tell Allen Iverson.) Eighteen of the 23 players the team listed on its roster Monday are 25 years old or younger. Only two - Jason Richardson and the recently acquired Keith Bogans - are over 30 and Hinkie is not positive either one will play for the team this season.

The Sixers have a total of six guys who have scored more than 1,000 career points - two of them are Richardson and Bogans - which would be great if they were a high school team. Even with Richardson and Bogans, the 23-man roster has fewer career points than Kobe Bryant. Take away the two veterans and there are 59 players in the league who have scored more career points than the Sixers' roster.

"For our players, so much is unknown," Hinkie said. "Most of our guys are so young. For them, I think there is a lot of excitement. We all know the realities that will come soon and they'll be surprised by all sorts of lessons they learn."

They are hard lessons, as Michael Carter-Williams discovered a year ago when he won the league's rookie-of-the-year honors but lost 63 games. Shoulder surgery may prevent the point guard from being ready to start this season, but he promises he is ready to be the team leader despite the fact that he is just 22 years old.

"It was tough for me to lose however many games we lost last year because I hate losing more than anybody," Carter-Williams said. "You just have to flip the page. You lose a game, you have to go on to the next one and try to win. I'll take the falls as long as we're getting better each and every day and playing hard every single possession."

Power forward Nerlens Noel, who will return to the court after sitting out last season while recovering from knee surgery, swears he can see the promising future in his mind's eye.

"I think about it every day," Noel said. "I imagine me and Joel [Embiid] on the block, Mike driving the lane, getting to the rim and finding me and Joel. I think me and Joel are big targets. I think it's really going to be an easy thing for Mike to get to the basket and really create. And especially defensively, I think that's going to be something special with me and Joel down low being able to man the paint."

Hinkie, 36, makes no promises about the estimated time of arrival for that future.

"We look forward to that day when we can be out there every night and say tonight we have a chance and, in fact, they're sort of fearful coming in here to play us," Hinkie said. "When that comes, I don't know. I think a lot of that is . . . about the development of our young guys. As our young players come along, we'll see, but right now there is an unknown to that."

It is a great unknown.

Embiid is recovering from foot surgery and isn't likely to play this season. Dario Saric, the team's other big draft-day addition, is locked into playing at least the next two seasons with Anadolu Efes of the Adriatic League. He played for Croatia in the FIBA World Cup in Spain this summer and the Sixers' projected core of Carter-Williams, Embiid and Noel made the trip to see him along with Hinkie and coach Brett Brown.

It's the last time they'll be together for a while. In the meantime, it will be much easier to predict the losses in the Sixers' near future than the victories in the distant one.

@brookob