Philadelphia 76ers press conference
Posted: Sun Dec 17, 2017 8:31 pm
Welcome everyone to the 76ers press conference. I wanted to begin today talking about last season. First off we had a huge season despite falling to the hawks in round one of the playoffs. Our team went quickly from rebuilding mode to a 50 win squad that pressed a much more mature team to the brink.
We had a bunch of break out seasons, from Gordon Hayward to Ben Simmons. Simmons finished second in the rookie of the year contest, which we don’t agree with but respect. Ben also has never been about that type of reward and that’s why he began the season off the bench. He earned a starting role by sim 3 and the rest is history. Gordon had another great year in being moved to the point guard spot , which paved the way for some of our offseason moves that I will discuss later.
What we did learn though is that we had a team that could challenge for a few years while our core of Simmons and Grimaldi grow. With Hayward leading our team at the pg spot, we decided we could move on from Chet Dooley , who we didn’t have major plans for and Kemba walker who was a good player for us but always struggled to find a spot on our ever changing depth charts.
We moved our 10 pick for Harrison Barnes. Barnes gave us the flexibility to move GH to the one full time. We also made a move for Enes Kanter who as you may remember we thought we had in RFA a few seasons ago. Enes is an elite rebounder, a strong defender and can score. He’s a two way player we covet. With that we were able to snag a young guy In Kevin Whittaker.
With Walker out of the lineup we have high hopes that Grim and Kanter can pick up his slack and add to our somewhat anemic offense last year.
Along with these additions, we also have Marcelle Fultz who is fresh off of his redshirt season which we tend to do to our rookies. We probably see Kevin taking the same redshirt this year.
Our starting lineup to start the season will look as follows:
C Enes Kanter
PF Ben Simmons
SF Harrison Barnes
SG Grim Reaper
PG Gordon Hayward
With that I’ll open it up for questions
We had a bunch of break out seasons, from Gordon Hayward to Ben Simmons. Simmons finished second in the rookie of the year contest, which we don’t agree with but respect. Ben also has never been about that type of reward and that’s why he began the season off the bench. He earned a starting role by sim 3 and the rest is history. Gordon had another great year in being moved to the point guard spot , which paved the way for some of our offseason moves that I will discuss later.
What we did learn though is that we had a team that could challenge for a few years while our core of Simmons and Grimaldi grow. With Hayward leading our team at the pg spot, we decided we could move on from Chet Dooley , who we didn’t have major plans for and Kemba walker who was a good player for us but always struggled to find a spot on our ever changing depth charts.
We moved our 10 pick for Harrison Barnes. Barnes gave us the flexibility to move GH to the one full time. We also made a move for Enes Kanter who as you may remember we thought we had in RFA a few seasons ago. Enes is an elite rebounder, a strong defender and can score. He’s a two way player we covet. With that we were able to snag a young guy In Kevin Whittaker.
With Walker out of the lineup we have high hopes that Grim and Kanter can pick up his slack and add to our somewhat anemic offense last year.
Along with these additions, we also have Marcelle Fultz who is fresh off of his redshirt season which we tend to do to our rookies. We probably see Kevin taking the same redshirt this year.
Our starting lineup to start the season will look as follows:
C Enes Kanter
PF Ben Simmons
SF Harrison Barnes
SG Grim Reaper
PG Gordon Hayward
With that I’ll open it up for questions