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State of the 76ers | Team Confident in Summer Progress

About halfway through the 76ers’ stint in Las Vegas during the MGM Resorts NBA Summer League, team managing partner Josh Harris and head coach Brett Brown, also currently acting as the Sixers’ head of basketball operations, conducted a joint roundtable media availability with a group of reporters.

In the days ahead, we’ll highlight several of the major themes that emerged from the session in a ‘State of the 76ers’ series. Here’s our latest installment:

The 76ers’ primary goal heading into an important off-season was to get better and to build off the promising foundation that was laid during last year’s 52-win campaign, which ended in a second-round loss in the Playoffs.

With the pace of this summer’s league-wide wheeling and dealing having now settled from a rolling boil to a simmer, the Sixers’ top acting basketball decision-maker believes the franchise has put itself on a path towards fulfilling this mission.

While taking in some of the action at the MGM Resorts NBA Summer League in Las Vegas earlier this month, Brett Brown reiterated that the Sixers, in an overarching sense, are intent on “star hunting,” and “star developing.”

That the organization has been associated with some of the highest-profile names available on the mark this year would only seem to reinforce Brown’s words.  

And even as the Sixers remain focused on establishing the Delaware Valley as a destination for upper-echelon talent, they were still in recent weeks able to make significant moves that left Brown bullish on the team’s direction.

As he explained it, the Sixers weighed every opportunity that presented itself - the draft, free agency, trade proposals - and did their best to collaboratively settle on smart decisions that would either a). immediately improve the Sixers’ roster or b). strengthen the franchise’s stash of future assets.   

What do the Sixers have to show for their efforts from the past four weeks?

Via a draft night swap with the Phoenix Suns, they snagged Zhaire Smith, whom they long had eyes on, and picked up an unprotected 2021 first-round pick. The transaction was widely praised by draft analysts.  

A few days later, once free agency got underway, the Sixers managed to retain an elite perimeter shot maker in JJ Redick, and the necessary floor-spacing ripple effects his skill set provides.

The team is bringing back trusted big man Amir Johnson as well. In the event of injury, or the need for a stabilizing veteran presence, his solid track record spoke for itself last season.  

There was also the trade the Sixers made with the Denver Nuggets, which yielded swing man Wilson Chandler, plus future second-round considerations. Chandler, Brown believes, possesses the versatile prototype of a “modern day NBA player.”

Mix all these ingredients together, and the resulting outcome is an encouraging combination, especially when accounting for the continuing development of All-Star Joel Embiid and Rookie of the Year Ben Simmons.  

And wait one more sentence - Brown wants you to keep this part in mind, too.  

“To have the complete lightning-in-a-bottle, excited-to-see-what-we-have thing in Markelle Fultz, really, by all measurements for me, is going to be as exciting a judgment as anything,” said Brown.  

Fultz, the 2017 no. 1 pick, closed the regular season in auspicious fashion, his return underscored by the memorable triple-double he posted against Milwaukee in the Sixers’ finale.  

Insert a full-strength version of the 20-year old guard into the equation, and the Sixers’ prospects for 2018-19 could get that much brighter.  

Added Brown, “We look back together and feel that we’ve achieved a very, very large majority of what we tried to do.”

The statement was said with the confidence of someone who’s got the finger on the pulse of his team, and its capabilities.  

And who knows? The Sixers could still have a couple of irons left in the summer fire.