FanPost

Remembering the 97-98 Sixers

No real point to this fanpost. I'm not intending to draw parallels to the current team (though there may be some lessons), more just taking a trip down memory lane (and probably dating myself).

Before the Sixers found the right formula for success with AI, there were some interesting seasons of development. Lot's of players came and went who either had takent that couldn't mesh with AI, or who were great prospects that never panned out.

The 97-98 Sixers began the season with AI (picked first overall), Derrick Coleman (1st overall pick), Stackhouse (3rd overall pick), Jim Jackson (4th overall pick), and Tim Thomas (7th overall pick). It was pretty clear early on that Stackhouse and Iverson couldn't coexist, In December, Stackhouse (and Montross) were dealth for Theo Ratliff and Aaron McKie. In January we traded Jelani McCoy for Eric Snow. And in February Jim JAckson and Witherspoon were traded for Joe Smith and Brian Shaw.

So after the trades we had three guys (Iverson, Coleman, and Joe Smith) who were first overall picks, along with Tim Thomas (7th). In June that year we would draft Larry Hughes 8th overall.

McKie, Ratliff, and Snow would eventually form the core of the '01 team that went to the finals (with Ratliff of course being traded mid-season for Mutombo). Thomas, Joe Smith, and Hughes didn't work with AI, and it's fair to say none of them reached their draft potential. Coleman returned a few years later a more mature vet and a Larry Brown favorite.

The 97-98 team was both wildly disappointing AND a key team in terms of setting the correct lineup around AI. If anything, maybe the lesson is to be thankful that this current team has Simmons and Embiid, two stars/stars in the making. It was reasonable to expect that out of Stackhouse, Jackson, Thomas, Smith, Hughes that ONE of those guys would have grown into a second star with AI. Yet none of them did. It was probably a combination of AI being really difficult to play with (if you wanted the ball and lots of shots), and none of those guys being as good as projected. In hindsight it's interesting to see all of the young talent that cycled through that season, and also the irony that a year or so later Larry Brown had thrown in the towel on AI and traded him to Detroit. Only to see Matt Harpering reject the trade, leading a motivated AI to take us all the way to the finals. That 97-98 team was twenty years ago. I wouldn't have believed that season that so many years later most of the young talent on that team would underwhelm for their careers.

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