The Philadelphia 76ers have now made the playoffs in eight out of nine seasons, but they were the NBA’s punching bag prior to that. The 76ers infamously entered a full-scale rebuild titled “The Process” in 2013, and lost games at a ridiculous rate over the next three seasons.
Former NBA player Robert Covington was a 76er during those dark days and explained what those were like during an appearance on the Run Your Race podcast.
“18, 10, 28, 52, that was my four years in Philly,” Covington said. “… We were the second-worst team in NBA history.”
Covington joined the 76ers in 2014 after they had gone 19-63 in 2013-14. If you thought that was bad, worse was to come.
The 76ers went 18-64 in 2014-15 and then a woeful 10-72 in 2015-16. Their .122 win rate in 2015-16 was the third-worst in NBA history. Covington believes those teams weren’t as bad as the record suggests, though.
“We were actually in games; we just ran out of gas,” Covington stated. “… We didn’t have the sustainability. We get to the fourth quarter, we’re still playing the same way we played in the first quarter.”
That was to be expected with how young those 76ers teams were. Then-general manager and team president Sam Hinkie was the mastermind behind “The Process,” and he had traded away almost everyone of value for unproven young talent.
Hinkie took over in 2013, and his first big move was trading All-Star Jrue Holiday to the New Orleans Pelicans on draft night that year for a package centered around sixth pick Nerlens Noel. Noel was recovering from a torn ACL at the time, and would miss the entire 2013-14 season.
The 76ers then selected Joel Embiid with the third pick in the 2014 NBA Draft, and he’d miss his first two seasons. So, not only had they parted ways with almost all of their experienced players, but their best young talents were injured as well. That is a recipe for disaster, which is exactly what the 76ers were. To go with all this, there was no continuity either.
“Bro, everyone was on a non-guaranteed contract,” Covington said. “… If you weren’t drafted, everybody’s on a non-guaranteed contract. T. J. McConnell was stressing every goddamn day.”
Co-host Theo Pinson remembers how much the 76ers chopped and changed the roster those days, and he wondered how many teammates Covington had back then.
“I had 27 teammates in one year,” Covington stated. “… At one point, I didn’t even get to know the person that was next to me.”
In Covington’s first season in Philadelphia, a total of 25 players played at least a game for the 76ers. He said here that somebody was added and removed from the team’s group chat every week. To say that isn’t an ideal situation for young players would be an understatement.
The 76ers would eventually manage to dig themselves out of this mess. Hinkie resigned on April 6, 2016, to bring an end to “The Process.”
The 76ers improved to 28-54 in 2016-17 and then took a massive leap the following season. They went 52-30 in 2017-18 and even won a playoff series.
Covington, who had gone undrafted in 2013, had turned himself into a key piece for the 76ers by then. He finished fourth in DPOY voting in 2017 and made the All-Defensive First Team in 2018.
Covington wouldn’t be a 76er much longer after that, though. He was traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves in November 2018 as part of the package for Jimmy Butler. Considering Butler left a year later, that wasn’t a move they should have made.
