The 100 Greatest Sixers of the 2010s: 60-41
Finally, Fultz is ranked.
Andrew Unterberger is a famous writer who invented the nickname 'Sauce Castillo' and is now writing for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the 'If Not, Pick Will Convey As Two Second-Rounders' section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.
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This week at If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second Rounders, AU is counting down The 100 Greatest Sixers of the 2010s -- ranking players by on-court contributions, as well as general symbolic and cultural importance to the 76ers decade that was. Read on for Nos. 60-41 below, find a more detailed intro and Nos. 100-81 here, 80-61 here, and check back all week as we make our way to No. 1.
60. JaVale McGee (2015)
I don’t even remember whether or not we tried to buy into Shaqtin GOAT JaVale McGee being Actually Good; by the time he showed up at the 2015 trade deadline -- along with Sixers Great Chukwudiebere “Chu Chu” Maduabum, sadly ineligible for this list -- I think we were all just kinda along for the ride. He only lasted six games before being waived, but not before managing a thunderous throwdown against Indiana that probably still rates as an all-time Top 10 pure Process highlight.
59. Damien Wilkins (2012-2013)
The swingman who became most synonymous with the pre-Process strategy of throwing as many veterans as possible at late-schedule games in the hopes of eking out an extra win or two. Consequently, no Sixer in history may ever have been more hated than Damien Wilkins simply for exceeding on-court expectations, as his late-season surge was contained to games that didn’t mean anything except costing the Sixers tanking position. (He wasn’t even that good, just competent enough to allow Philly to play ball that was more middling than outright subpar as he got 31 minutes a night.) When the kids ask us why Sam Hinkie was necessary, point them to Damien Wilkins.
58. Amir Johnson (2017-2019)
Amir Johnson was a valuable lesson in how thin the margin is between valuable veteran bench big and washed-up stiff -- he came to the Sixers mostly as the former, but a slight dip in quickness and general athleticism later, he was unplayable in games that actually mattered. (Not that Brett Brown was able to avoid playing him anyway.) Still, even as a piece of lightly burned toast, he was still good for a surprise rack attack or two a season, and despite how horrifically ugly his shooting form was from distance, it always seemed like it was going in.
57. Lavoy Allen (2011-2014)
Played for Philly longer than you might recall, especially considering that my last memory of him as a Sixer was him mostly getting cooked in the 2012 playoffs as an overextended rookie bench big against the Bulls and Celtics. Still, he was certainly bright spot of that lockout-shortened 2011-2012 campaign, a relatively smooth (if conspicuously undersized) two-way big who was a local favorite from his days at Temple. These days we’d probably be able to suss out his lack of a real NBA future pretty quickly; back then, we took what we could get from our prospects.
56. James Anderson & Justin Anderson (2017-2018)
The controversial primary return in the unforgivable Nerlens Noel trade, Justin Anderson was a former late-first-round wing for the Mavs who you could maybe see some potential in if you squinted hard enough. The scrappy, largely neckless Justin Anderson certainly had some memorable moments in Philly -- 19 in a blowout win over his old Dallas team, a minor dust-up with Dwayne Wade in the 2018 first round -- but he’s perhaps best remembered for only scoring over 20 twice for the Sixers, both times coming on the irrelevant final game of the season. In the words of Steve Coogan-as-Tony Wilson: beautiful, but useless.
Admittedly, James Anderson should probably be a little higher than this on our list -- if solely for the James Anderson Game, delivered against his old Rockets squad in the magical early-Process days of late 2013. But, uh, I forgot him on my original list and it the only joint spot where it makes some degree of sense for me to shunt him in. Apologies, JA1.
55. Timothé Luwawu-Cabarrot (2016-2018)
Man, there were stretches with TLC -- little four-game heaters here and there when it seemed like he was the answer to our three-and-D prayers, only to immediately revert to cold shooting and subservient D as soon as we were getting comfortable with him. I felt for sure he would end up figuring it out for another team, so he was certainly the perfect player to torch us off the bench for Brooklyn last Sunday at the one Sixers game I’ve attended since the opener this season. (Just surprised it didn’t happen in Atlanta first.)
54. Nik Stauskas (2015-2017)
It just never happened for Sauce here. He will forever go down as the starting two-guard of #SixersJanuary in 2017 -- a.k.a. the greatest month in Process history -- though in truth, even that month he didn’t offer the Sixers a ton besides floor spacing. Turns out there’s a difference between being more athletic than people think and actually being able to get your own shot at the NBA level, and Nik sadly found himself on the wrong side of that divide. Still possible he comes back from overseas and shoots 40% from three for the Rockets or what have you, but I found it surprisingly easy to cut the cord with Sauce in Philly. (Though the trade that sent him out remains a top three blunder of the Colangelo administration.)
53. Tiago Splitter (2017)
Profoundly indefensible for Tiago to be this high on our list, but it was a top 10 dumb regular season moment of the decade for me when I was at the game in Brooklyn in 2017 when he made his thoroughly unexpected Sixers debut: the starting five for two championship-competing Spurs teams not even a half-decade earlier, now a backup center for a banged-up Sixers team who couldn’t get to the offseason fast enough. I dunno, I loved it. He was a fine Sixer.
52. Brandon Davies (2013-2015)
Undoubtedly the best Process Sixer to ever get traded in the middle of a regular-season game. Brandon Davies was about as offensively lacking a frontcourt player I can remember watching, mostly because his physical profile suggested a versatile scorer, but his actual half-court output was proficient in precisely zero ways -- aside from a rare stretch of early-season prolificity to start the 2015-16 campaign. (He averaged 13 and 3 on 61% shooting as the team went 0-5; I think I already started wondering if he could elbow his way onto the All-Star squad.) Of course, he was ultimately dealt to Brooklyn for Jorge Gutierrez and Andrei Kirilenko, the special kind of trade that leaves everybody involved fucking livid and ultimately means nothing for anyone.
51. Jonah Bolden (2018-2019)
Mostly up here for the fact that he made 34 total threes last year, and nine of them came across two games against the Minnesota Timberwolves, the kind of single-team torturing that any Process Truster can instantly understand and appreciate. He may not have the highest understanding of the game and may never play another meaningful minute in Philly, but never forget that “Does the Sixers’ offense function better with Bolden at center than Embiid?” was a real take that people (read: Mike) were toying with last season. I still believe, Jonah. Kinda.
50. Jodie Meeks (2010-2012)
The shootiest Sixer we had for fucking ages, though for a guy who shot 40% from deep for an entire season, I still feel like there was never really a time when we actually trusted him with shots of any degree of an importance. Nonetheless, he was just exponentially more prolific a bomber than the Sixers had in the years before or after him -- including a classic six-triple run in the first quarter of a Sixers-Bobcats game in late 2010, which probably got us much more excited for Jodie Meeks’ potential than we ever should’ve gotten.
49. Alexey Shved (2015)
Could we have asked for a better player to get unreasonably invested in at the start of the 2014-15 season than Alexey Shved? Coming from Minnesota as part of the Thaddeus Young trade, the Russian wing still had just enough of the prospect whiff to him for us to talk ourselves into there being unrealized upside there -- I even remember doing the stat deep dive to argue that he had played better in Minnesota the more minutes he got, which Derek Bodner countered by pointing out that usually players tend to get more minutes when they’re playing well. Anyway, he had some nice moments in Philly but not a lot, and the Sixers lost all 17 games he played in before trading him to the Rockets for a sack of doorknobs. (This related Anthony Capelli meme from years later remains an all-timer.)
48. Dewayne Dedmon (2013-2014)
“Getting Dewayne Dedmon hilariously overpaid on a multi-year deal by the Sacarmento Kings” might not be the No. 1 accomplishment of the Process era, but it’s definitely on the shortlist. Dedmon was the kind of guy every NBA team hopes to find on the scrap heap -- solid, definably roled, low-maintenance, and more versatile than you’d expect -- though most of them hope to do so while only cycling through about 1/10th of the scrubs the Sixers had to work their way through first. He only played 11 games here but he was obviously a pro; if he’d made his way to us a half-decade later he might’ve been the difference in the Raptors series.
47. Markelle Fultz (2017-2019)
What the Twitter/media trolls who love snarking about Markelle Fultz thriving in Orlando after washing out in Philly seem to miss -- not that they’d really care to get it -- is that he was well on pace to become that player here. It was already clear that Fultz could’ve been a very solid backup point guard in Philly, with good athleticism, playmaking and defense -- he just couldn’t play alongside Ben Simmons or T.J. McConnell as a non-shooter, and Brett just trusted T.J. more. In other words, until he starts actually hitting shots in Orlando -- like, long ones -- we don’t really have to worry about miscalculating this one. (22.5% on under two attempts a game so far, btw.)
46. Zhaire Smith (2018-2019)
May not be fair to rank Zhaire over Markelle, since drama aside, the latter’s actual on-court production has still far outstripped the former’s extremely minimal PT thusfar in their respective still-brief NBA careers. But as a concept, Zhaire still remains golden in Sixers lore, presumably forever improving out of the spotlight and ready to support (if not outright captain) Team Fuck Shit Up upon his eventual return -- if he doesn’t get put in any one of 500 trade proposals between now and the deadline, anyway. Hell, we nearly killed the kid with a sesame seed a year ago, the least we can do in return is give him a generous ranking here.
45. Furkan Korkmaz (2017-2019)
Have we decided if Furkan Korkmaz is officially back to bad yet? It’s been a pretty rough December for the Korkmeister -- just five points a night on 40% FG / 33% 3PT -- and his stats for the season are about back to where they were in his disappointing first two seasons, while his defense has proven a liability in several games against playoff-caliber opponents. He might be worth sticking with a little longer this time, but chances seem pretty good that his primary Sixers legacy will forever be the comeback-capper against the Blazers in Portland -- which, honestly, still enough to easily earn him the No. 45 spot here.
44. Boban Marjanovic (2019)
Yeah, we’re getting into the good ones now. Bobimania swept the Sixers fanbase for the final two months of the regular season and into the first round of the playoffs, where he tortured the Brooklyn nets like… well, like, you’d expect a nine-foot, 450-pound basketball to torture just about everyone. Then the Raptors forced him to move his feet (and lift his arms) and the dream was over. Still, Boban’s star burned Rutger Hauer-bright in his 33 combined games here, and the standing O he’s all but guaranteed to get when the Mavs play in Philly on Friday -- assuming he’s still traveling with the team, anyway -- will be well-deserved.
43. Jason Richardson (2012-2015)
Respect for the original J-Rich, a young man of 53 when he joined the Sixers along with Andrew Bynum in the summer of 2012. He was lovably competent as our veteran starting two for a team that desperately attempted to tread water until Bynum’s return from injury, and then quickly gave up and drowned once it became obvious he wasn’t coming back. Richardson missed most of that season and all of the next one with a knee injury, but fought the long way back to make his return with the 2014-15 squad -- admirably dropping 29 against OKC in a game the Sixers nearly stole, before going relatively gently into that good NBA night from there.
42. Carl Landry (2015-2016)
The player return from the pickswap deal who actually stuck with the Sixers -- next time, Jason Thompson -- Carl Landry started the season injured and didn’t end up playing for Philly until we were already well on our way to one of the worst regular seasons in NBA history. He didn’t exactly save us from that, as the Sixers went 5-31 in the 36 games he played, but he did give us some surprisingly efficient frontcourt scoring as a blessed distraction over that stretch, including career-high numbers in FG% (55.6) points per 36 minutes (22.2) and PER (22.4). And yes, we did rain “MVP!” chants down on him in one game, after his 22 points on 9-10 shooting led the Sixers to a record-avoiding 10th win against the New Orleans Pelicans. (Whoever dubbed those chants “ironic” in that YouTube link there clearly didn’t watch much of the 2015-2016 76ers.)
41. Norvel Pelle (2019)
Too high? Recency bias at play? Possibly, but it’s hard not to get a little too excited about Norvel Pelle: Like Mike tweeted recently, he is by far the most Process player to ever play during the Sixers’ actual contention years. That alone might not merit him ranking above some true Process paragons here, but hell, if there was a band that sounded exactly like The Strokes that unexpectedly crashed Top 40 radio in 2019, they wouldn’t necessarily have to even be that good for folks to get friggin’ pumped about them.