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In 1983, the Houston Rockets were putrid.

In the 11 seasons since the former San Diego Rockets settled in their more aptly named hometown, there had been little for the football-frenzied Houston sports public to get excited about. A relatively minor NBA Finals run in 1981, propelled by an improbable upset of the Magic Johnson-helmed Lakers, was the height of Rockets fever in Space City.

The Rockets had a deliberate eye on University of Virginia star Ralph Sampson. A 7-foot-3, long-limbed gazelle of a man, Sampson proved to be a panacea for the franchise which once employed an elite big in Moses Malone. At the time, a center was considered the centerpiece of a basketball team — the engine which made the team go — and Sampson had tons of horsepower.

In a much-publicized coin flip, the Rockets won the No. 1 (by being 14-68) and the No. 3 picks (the latter because the Cleveland Cavaliers of that era were a factory of sadness). Sampson was a Rocket, 1983-84 attendance leapt (from 7,491 a game to 10,631), but the Rockets were not done systematically gaming the NBA powers that be. They wanted the Big Kahuna, University of Houston superstar Akeem Olajuwon — the house brother of Phi Slama Jama.

In an unprecedented move, the Rockets lost 17 of their last 20 games to go 29-53, snugly fitting into a coin-flip battle in front of new commissioner David Stern and the Indiana Pacers (who inexplicably traded their selection to Portland). Houston won again, Olajuwon was theirs, and in 1986, they lost to the Boston Celtics in the NBA Finals.

The foresight of Rockets brass, including then-owner Charlie Thomas, to publicly strip down the franchise and sell off its assets for two core bigs in the mid-1980s is one of U.S. professional sports’ most egregious instances of “tanking” — intentionally throwing away a season (or several seasons) in an effort to acquire a high draft pick.

“Tanking” is not a word the NBA takes lightly. In a recent interview with league commissioner Adam Silver, a Philadelphia 76ers reporter used the unofficial fan-created phrase “Trust the Process” to express their support for the Sixers’ successful rebuilding effort. Silver coyly responded along the lines of, “I’m not going with that expression.” (Silver didn’t, allegedly intervening with 76ers operations by deposing general manager Sam Hinkie and replacing him with basketball’s made men, the Colangelo family.)

For a sports league whose likeability and followship hinges on America’s acceptance of primarily black, opinionated, culturally expressive athletes being presentable for the wider sports-watching public, the NBA is extremely sensitive of its product being compromised. Stern was notorious in this regard. A former league lawyer, he took over the NBA when the Larry Bird vs. Magic Johnson feud had played out with the sport’s most storied brands, the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers. (Much like Phil Jackson, Stern was probably fortuitous.) The marketing of this rivalry, along with Michael Jordan’s rise to fame and glory and the increasing availability of cable television, helped make the NBA a solid-footed pro sports league — a direct contrast to its prior 40 years of existence.

“Tanking” was supposedly solved by the creation of the NBA lottery in 1985, but it too was under scrutiny. While the Sacramento Kings (freshly moved from Kansas City) and Indiana Pacers were among the NBA’s worst teams, a new conspiracy arose: since the New York Knicks, long regarded as the vanguard of the NBA, were a paltry 24-58 in the 1984-85 campaign, somehow the league was rigging the lottery to the Knicks’ benefit. Especially considering Georgetown superstar and East Coast hoop icon Patrick Ewing was the waiting prize, this theory caught fire in the years following Ewing’s selection by New York. (In a bit of irony, the Knicks lost one more game the season Ewing arrived.)

The “rebuild” is a long-held American pro sports tactic. In a public effort to build fan goodwill by being as bad as possible to win a top player (or players) in a highly-publicized draft like the NBA’s or NFL’s (or, in Canada, the NHL’s), fans are promised an opportunity for their team to compete at a high level. Every sports team at the bottom of the talent pool “rebuilds” — only savvy teams “tank.”

Sam Hinkie, who served as Sixers GM from 2013-16, made a fairly innocuous reference to a “process” in rebuilding Philadelphia’s professional basketball team sometime around 2013. Twitter, an increasingly popular meeting ground for NBA fans to discuss the game, took off around this time, and Sixers Twitter owned the Process so much that they made watching the draft a sport in itself.

In the seven years prior to Hinkie’s arrival, the 76ers went from a team helmed by a strong-willed Allen Iverson to a listless sports team in a market that had lost interest in the NBA. Despite Philadelphia’s bragadocious claim to “diehard fandom” of the Flyers, Eagles and Phillies, that brotherly love never really expanded to the NBA’s Sixers. Attendance, even with the venerable Julius Erving in the 1980s, was beneath full capacity, peaking at around 15,000 in the Spectrum’s halcyon days. Iverson was picked in 1996, joining a ballclub that was both piss-poor (18-64 in 1995-96) and next-to-last in total attendance with 11,935 patrons per game. (Of course, Iverson turned those attendance numbers around.)

The 76ers began their climb to the bottom by selecting Michael Carter-Williams (2013), who became Rookie of the Year who eventually was traded to the Milwaukee Bucks; Nerlens Noel (2013), who was heralded as a defensive big of the likes of DeAndre Jordan; Joel Embiid (2014), who was favorably compared to Hakeem Olajuwon(!); Dario Saric (2014), a Croatian big man who does…something; Jahlil Okafor (2015), one of the long list of eventually disappointing Chicago basketball stars; Ben Simmons (2016), the first generational talent from another country in the Anglosphere; and Markelle Fultz (2017), a sharp-shooter who is still looking for his shot.

Considering how the draft is a crapshoot which could have results like Sam Bowie or Greg Oden, the fact that Philadelphia has managed to nail most of these picks, keep the relevant ones and correctly move on from the lesser ones is impressive in itself. The fact that they’ve kept their coach, Brett Brown, during the whole ordeal is doubly impressive.

Sixers fans, however, have become the biggest stars.

My earliest memories of the 76ers are, of course, Allen Iverson, but the media circus that surrounded him, particularly Stephen A. Smith, who Iverson shouted out in his Hall of Fame speech in 2016 as “my big brother.” Stephen A. is best known today as the screaming half of ESPN’s roundabout debate show First Take, but in the early 2000s he was Iverson’s muse.

The Sixers had an all-star lineup of media help (hell, more so than Iverson did on the court), but Smith was its biggest mouthpiece. After A.I. left the cadre of Sixers talk all but vanished, except for that time they stunted Derrick Rose’s career in the 2012 playoffs. So did Stephen A.

In their, his and its place was a group of long-suffering 76ers fans, who had seen the era of Hip Hop, the now-defunct bunny mascot, and a very public plea to remake the 76ers in the classic image that they were once known for. Twitter accounts dedicated to chronicling the Sixers’ descent came about; the first, and best, was (and still is) “Did the Sixers Win?“, which can claim several Philadelphia icons (like CNN’s Jake Tapper) among its supporters.

Soon enough, the Sixers had the brightest core of young talent in the league. Hinkie fleeced teams like the Sacramento Kings, notably a pick-swap in an acquisition of backup guard Nik Stauskas. However, things weren’t always rosy. Simmons, Embiid, Noel and Fultz would miss extensive amounts of time due to a rotation of injuries, mostly for their entire rookie seasons. They would win a mere 10 games in 2016, which necessitated league intervention and the aforementioned Colangelo era. Hinkie was martyred. He wrote a 10,000-word resignation letter, started a Twitter account and moved to California. (He’s now teaching at Stanford.)

Fans have given Hinkie a second life, though. Never forgetting his three-year tenure as the most empowering 76ers era ever, the franchise is in better shape than it has ever been before. The past decade was arguably its worst, but after generations of fan apathy-cum-porousness-cum-brief-moments-of-sputtering-success, a full rebuild was necessary.

What matters is that the Sixers matter again. Fans pledge allegiance to Hinkie — so much they retired his name at Philadelphia’s draft lottery watch party in 2017. For the first time in the franchise’s 55-year history(!), they’ve sold every season ticket. I can’t put a finger on it, but no sports team has made as organic a local fan resurgance as the Philadelphia 76ers did. At one point they averaged 14,000 fans a game and made the playoffs — practically begging people to buy playoff tickets the day of the playoff game. Now their season ticket holders are numbered at 14,000.

Thanks to the Process, Sixers fans are begging the team for tickets. Soon enough, those will be playoff tickets too.

More NBA fans should be demanding a full-scale rebuild, as opposed to half-hearted contention. A sport dependent on star power and the ability for individual players to turn results almost single-handedly on their own requires greater distribution of said players to enough teams in the league.

The NBA has made free agency harder for itself, its players and its teams, purportedly to “save” certain teams in generally undesirable locales from losing their players to better locations or “superteams.” Living in Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco or Miami is likely superior to living in Cleveland, Oklahoma City, Portland or Utah, and the NBA desires to thwart any idea that its product isn’t competitive enough.

For those teams who don’t play in NBA players’ “dream towns,” the draft is the only answer to solve these problems.

It helps that Philadelphia is a vibrant city with overbearingly passionate sports fans. But couldn’t, say, the Charlotte Hornets or Orlando Magic get in on the fun? Those teams’ fanbases are tiny in comparison with what you can find in Philadelphia, but being listless with no plan or mediocre for mediocrity’s sake isn’t inspiring anyone. Since their return in 2004, the Bobcats/Hornets have never been higher than a No. 6 seed in a playoff series, and, more importantly, have made the playoffs only three times (once as the New Hornets).

With the rise of social media, uniting under sports (especially the NBA and soccer) has become easier. It’s also made rooting for losing easier. Take the website Tankathon: its Twitter account, at 11,300-plus followers and counting, was started in 2014. Because of the Sixers’ rebuild, Tankathon has seen their numbers explode, and with the start of public rebuilds in Dallas, Phoenix and Chicago, those fanbases have gotten behind the tank too.

Top 10 For Site Traffic In Last Week:

1 NYC

2 Chicago

3 Montreal (NHL!)

4 Philly

5 LA

6 Phoenix

7 Dallas

8 DC

9 Toronto (NHL!)

10 Ottawa (NHL!) Come on NBA fans in ATL, MEM, SAC, ORL… — Tankathon.com (@tankathon) March 1, 2018

Tanking is empowering to frustrated fans, no matter how few of them there are. It is one of the few democratic means a capitalistic sports system attempts to reward fans, especially if — in the case of Philadelphia — they have created their own methods of self-expression. Following new players your team develops as they grow from rookie to All-Star is cathartic. Everyone wants to witness the next Dirk Nowitzki — a Maverick for life and a sure thing to have his jersey number retired.

The risks are clear. Putting money on the future of 19-year-old freshmen or 18-year-old international prospects is borderline insane. Not every heralded recruit is LeBron James. Busts are common; they will sabotage the team’s opportunity to contend. But until the NBA allows for prominent franchises, such as the Chicago Bulls, to utilize the strength of their brand in free agency, it is in a fan’s best interest to root for the lottery.

This way of looking at the NBA allows for a healthier relationship between fans and their teams. Some will avidly watch the team sink into the pits of mediocrity, waiting for their reward in ping-pong-ball form. Others will drift away, lamenting the league’s lack of competitiveness and demanding insta-builds like football and baseball do.

Ultimately, in a sport where even Michael Jordan had to wait until he became a champion, there is no short way to greatness.

Make way for the tank.

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