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Over the course of the Sixers’ recent rebuild, I have had
many people tell me very matter-of-factly that the team needs to secure a
scorer. Carter-Williams is quickly cited as the distributor, Noel as the paint protector,
and Embiid as the mystery man, leaving the spot of designated ‘scorer’
inherently open.
While having players capable of scoring consistently is of
critical importance’s to a team’s success, the addition of a ‘scorer’ alone is
far from a championship guarantee.
As the team builds itself back into a contender, they will
need to add a couple quality perimeter players that can consistently generate
offense and create their own scoring opportunities. All championship-level
teams have such players, and it is an area where the Sixers, as currently
constructed, are sorely lacking.
Finding those offensive pieces to the puzzle remains a
challenge laying ahead of the Sixers, but it goes beyond simply securing the
best scorers.
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| Image from forbes.com |
The best scorers, in NBA-terms, are ranked by their points
per game averages. The league’s leading scorer at the end of the year is
considered to be the league’s best scorer that season. By that logic you would
think that having the best scorer would correlate positively to championships
won, but that is not quite the case.
In fact, since 1975 only two NBA players have led the league
in scoring and had their team win the title that same year. Those two players?
Michael Jordan, six times, and Shaquille O’Neal, once. Jordan led the league in
scoring in each of his six championship seasons, 1992-93 & 1996-98, which
is beyond pretty impressive, while Shaq led the league in scoring the season
that he won his first title, 1999-2000.
Other than those two legendary superstars, no player has
ever won an NBA Championship and an NBA scoring title in the same season. Some,
like Kobe Bryant and Dwayne Wade, have achieved both pieces of hardware, but
never in the same season. In fact, many players synonymous with scoring success
are also known for their lack of postseason accomplishment. Carmelo Anthony and
Tracy McGrady fall into that category, while other league-leaders like Allen
Iverson and Kevin Durant were unable to take their team to a title, despite
scoring a whole lot. (Durant obvious still has ample opportunity ahead of him
to claim a title).
The Sixers know as well as anyone. Their own Iverson was a
four-time scoring champion, and his recently-retired #3 and a 2001 Eastern
Conference Champions banner are all they have to show for it. Had the
organization found some better-fitting pieces to plant around A.I., maybe they
would have taken home a title. Regardless, his tenure in Philadelphia
illustrated that the presence of a scoring champion alone does no guarantee a
title, and considering the route with which the organization has utilized to
rebuild itself, it seems safe to say that their aspirations are to build
Philadelphia back into an NBA-title town.
So while the Sixers certainly need to add several consistent,
and reliable offensive options as they continue to build back up into a
contender, the issue is a little more in-depth than simply securing a great
scorer, as scoring titles don’t necessarily correlate to team titles.
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