Trying to be Rational About the Spencer Hawes Contract and Everything Else

Every Sixers-related argument seems to derive from the same place: Where do you think the Sixers are as a team and what direction would you like them to take? If you don't agree on those basic questions, then any move or decision or quote or anything the Sixers do will be ultimately and painfully disagreed upon. Such is the news that the Sixers have signed Spencer Hawes to a fairly minimal two-year deal.

All I care about is building to a champion. If I don't think a particular move is helpful towards the Sixers winning a championship then I will not like it. It's not blind bashing and it's not being negative for the sake of being negative. Why would I do that? I simply don't feel that a majority of the moves the Sixers make are the right ones. And it's because the Sixers front office and I, as I've said, disagree on a number of those fundamental points.

So it is with that forward that Jordan and I and the rest of the Liberty Ballers crew hate the decision to re-up Spencer. I don't think Hawes is the worst player in the league. I don't think he was as bad as the eye test made him out to be, nor was he as good as some particular stats say he was. He was mediocre. Just like the Sixers last year. Just like the Sixers the past 10 years. Mediocre. And signing him was, for all indication, another memo from the Sixers fax machine to my face saying they're content to keep the continuity just for the sake of not taking one step back to take two forward.

Spencer Hawes will never contribute to a Sixers championship. They should not have signed him for that very reason. People say they needed a starting center and there were worse options available. This is true. But if they're not going to seriously contend anyway, there's no difference between Spencer at center or Lavoy Allen at center. Or Nikola Vucevic. Or Jordan's mom. Because at the end of the day, the fact remains that this team is barely above mediocre on its best day and it doesn't matter if they didn't sign anybody to play center. "Need" is meaningless when you're mediocre. The only thing they "need" is a superstar - everything else is tertiary until they get one.

If you're the fan that just wants them to be semi-competitive and doesn't want to risk being actually bad for long enough to get a good lottery pick, that's fine. "Do you", as they say. That's just not the way I think. I want the Sixers to win a championship in the worst way. And if they're not winning one, I want them to be making the moves that will eventually set them up to contend for one. Signing Hawes is not one of them. Keeping the status quo of a bleh season is not one of them. The Suns signing Michael Beasley is also not one of them. The Sixers are not the only team in the league that does this -- most teams do. But this is where my allegiances lie and when they sign a player that simply WILL. NOT. help them win a championship now or ever, I'm going to react.

At this point, all this says to me is that the Sixers will continue to delay the breakdown of this roster that is not close to a championship. I'm not okay with settling for mediocre basketball. I don't want them to be either. But from where I'm sitting, this is what Sixers basketball has become. Trying to take solace in the fact that while what they did was terrible, it's not the worst thing they could have done? Not for me.