Sixers' CEO Scott O'Neil joined Angelo Cataldi & The Morning Team today on SportsRadio 94WIP to talk about the current state of the franchise, and what they envision moving forward.
On plans for the future of the franchise:
"There are some great models out there. You can look at Oklahoma City and what the Thunder did. The Golden State Warriors, the Toronto Raptors and the Washington Wizards have all had a similar type of program. It starts with drafting really young, exciting, and talented players, and giving them playing time to emerge and develop as stars.
As you are allowing them to emerge and develop, you start to find different pieces that you can put around them. Again, Oklahoma City is the easiest example. They happen to get Kevin Durant who is an elite, elite player. Next they pick up Westbrook, then Harden, and Ibaka. They missed on some draft picks along the way. Three years unfortunately missing the playoffs, the fourth year is when they started to emerge and grow up. You remember a lot of the questions around all of them. 'Is Durant tough enough?' Seems as if he is. 'Does Westbrook turn the ball over too much?' Seems like he solved that problem.
The challenge is, when you are coming in 19-years-old or 18-years-old, you are playing against men. For us, we believe that given Brett Brown and his philosophy on player development, we will give the kids the minutes to develop into really talented NBA players. In the meantime, we are like the guy who started with a rubber band and traded up to a house on eBay (actually, a paper clip). When Sam and I got here, there wasn't as much in the kitchen as we would have liked. So, we are evolving.
Trading players is really hard, especially when they are great kids. Jrue [Holiday] is a great kid, Michael [Carter-Williams] is an amazing kid, and are really good players. Fans get attached to good players who are good kids for sure. If you look at what happened to Jrue Holiday, we ended up with Nerlens [Noel], [Dario] Saric, a first-round pick and second-round pick. That to me is the best revelation of what's to come in terms of this team."
Cataldi: "How do you come on to say 'develop young kids'? You get a kid. This kid is the Rookie of the Year, and a second later you unload him for door number three. No one even knows where the pick is. The fans in this city do not understand how that coincides with what you just described."
"First off, Michael did everything and more that was expected of him when he was here. He was a good kid, worked hard, played very well, numbers off the charts, Rookie of the Year at the 11th pick, which is tremendous. If there's an opportunity to give us a chance to get better in the future we're going to take it every single time.
The most interesting thing to me is, seeing the process unfold. You are going to have to make some really tough decisions over time. Because this is such a public business, and because there is so much public scrutiny and pressure, those are the most difficult decisions to make. I've been in other organizations where we haven't made those tough decisions. In reality is, I think the fans are right. There is uncertainty and that is really difficult for fans, for me, and for Sam.
If you flip it and say, 'what would you have to get in return to give up our lottery pick this year?', you would be hard-pressed to find more than ten players in the league [you would give up your lottery pick for]."
On Charles Barkley's comments that analytics panel at the All-Star Game with Phil Jackson, Mark Cuban, Magic Johnson, and the Spurs' General Manager, R.C. Buford, all agreed with him that 'analytics are just stupid.':
"I was in the room during that so-called 'panel'. I will tell you, I think he took some liberties in terms of everything agreed. There was a clear divide in the room. There was definitely an old-school set of folks on the panel, and then there was like kind of a Mark Cuban and R.C. [Buford] group. The R.C. group and the Mark Cuban group were pretty clear, and which I whole-heartedly agree with, when they said 'every single business in the world will tell you that if you have more information, you can make smart decisions faster.' You would be hard-pressed to agree that you wouldn't want more information to make smarter decisions.
The one [line] I did like Barkley saying, in which he is 100% right, is that 'great players make great teams'. I think that unanimously, we all agree that we are going to need elite players here to drive this franchise to where we want to go. Everybody agrees with that."
Cataldi: "Did you have a lot of information on MCW?"
"Yes, of course."
Cataldi: "Then you didn't know that he wasn't a good shooter and threw the ball away a lot?"
"[Laughs] You know, a lot of people said that about Russell Westbrook, and he turned out okay."
Cataldi: "Then why did you trade him?"
"Well, he is a really good player. To get anything of value, you have to give up something special. That's the hard part. Like I said, the personal part of this job is really hard. But at the end of the day, you want us in these jobs to make really tough decisions. We think it's right. It's hard. It's not like this is the easiest decision ever made."
On recent report that Darnell Enrique, the team's new hire who plays Franklin, is not at all a Philadelphia sports fan:
"I cannot confirm not deny who is in the costume. I can tell you though that Franklin has very big paws and it's very difficult for him to tweet, as you would imagine. Sometimes he has people sub-in for him. He is in the dog house for sure. I just want to add that the alleged remarks were from four years ago. In dog years, that's 28 years ago."
O'Neil has been the Sixers' Chief Executive Officer since July of 2013, when he was announced as the replacement to Adam Aron.
Matt Rappa (@mattrappa) is a contributor to Sixerdelphia.com.
