In the NBA, there's nothing wrong with being bad. We all know that inadequacy and inferiority can be rewarded with the league's top prize: the No. 1 selection in the NBA draft. Being bad is good and the good thing about being bad is that you can save money along the way.
In the NBA, deciding to become bad is a little like moving cross-country: You must choose which furniture is valuable enough to pay for its move, because bringing it with you will be costly. That's why it's often smartest to buy new furniture once arriving at the destination.
That's what happens in the NBA. Teams unload salaries and talent that isn't crucial, go about losing a lot of games, and then rebuild on the other side.
What's backward with this Sixers franchise is that right now it's posting results on par with the NBA's worst teams while carrying one of the league's most expensive rosters.
How's that for a trick?
The Sixers' current roster costs about $70 million - approximately $12 million over the salary cap - and ranks No. 9 in most-expensive NBA rosters. Entering Saturday night's NBA schedule, the combined record of the eight more-expensive teams was 27-12. The combined record of the four teams just below the Sixers - the Atlanta Hawks, Milwaukee Bucks, San Antonio Spurs, and Portland Trail Blazers - is 15-7.
It's easy to be cheap and bad (see the Sacramento Kings and Minnesota Timberwolves), but it's much more difficult to be expensive and bad. And it's truly remarkable to go from being expensive and bad to more expensive and worse.
Which is what happened this summer to the Sixers.
Here are the moves:
Trading Samuel Dalembert ($13.4 million) to the Kings for Andres Nocioni ($13.5 million over two seasons) and Spencer Hawes ($2.9 million), which resulted in an additional $3 million to the payroll over two seasons.
