Core to build around?

Once you get the superstar, he becomes your core, and you build your pieces around him. Getting a legitimate superstar is the hard part, and should be the focus of personnel moves up to that point. Putting pieces around him then becomes feasible. You look up and down this Sixers roster, and the guys you would consider to be your core are both young (Holday's 19, Young 21, Speights 22, Williams 23 and Iguodala 26) and, outside of Iguodala, cheap. Should you get a superstar level talent that doesn't fit your current roster? You can get value for each of these, including Iguodala. Trading them for slightly lesser talents that fit in better with your new centerpiece is certainly feasible.

Without a Tim Ducan, LeBron James or Kobe Bryant, Iguodala and Holiday are luxuries.

The problem is, how do you get one, and how does it affect your personnel decisions?

The most common method is through the draft, and it's the most immediate time the Sixers core is going to be tested. There are other ways to acquire a superstar, both via trade and free agency, but with the trade deadline being in the rearview- mirror and the Sixers not looking to be players in free agency, we'll use the draft as the most immediate -- and likely -- example.

When looking at the draft, are you looking for the player with the highest upside, or are you looking for a piece that can get the most playing with the current talent on the team -- and, in a way, get the most out of the current talent on the team.

To provide some examples, should the Sixers be lucky enough to draft in the top two, the top prospects, in my book, are John Wall and Evan Turner.

If there are two positions the Sixers appear to be set at, it's point guard and small forward. Jrue Holiday is a young, long term fixture of this team. Some might say that, since point guard is not a position of need, it might be beneficial to look past Wall to someone better equipped to fill a need, and fit in with Holiday. The talent gap between Wall and Holiday is so great that you probably would not hear that argument coming from all that many, and even those Jrue Holiday fans -- I consider myself one -- would understand that Wall is simply too great, and too rare, of a talent to pass up.

A more interesting case can be made for Turner, who some hypothesize would be redundant with Iguodala. This isn't something I necessarily believe, as I think Turner and Iguodala are vastly different players in the half court, but I can understand concerns whether or not the two would flourish together with their lack of consistent range. Should the Sixers pass on Evan Turner and perhaps go with someone like Wesley Johsnon, a guy with, in my opinion, less of a chance to develop into a superstar type offensive talent, but one who might better maximize Iguodala's skillsets?

If the Sixers went that route, I would qualify that as a mistake. I've mentioned in the past some of my reservations about Iguodala's half court offensive game, and I think trying to maximize his efficiency rather than getting a player truly capable of being the focal point of an offense would be a mistake. If I have done my homework and I've come to the conclusion that Evan Turner can be a Brandon Roy type offensive player with better defense, I don't pass on that to further enhance a fundamentally flawed offensive player.

(It bears repeating, I'd love to see Turner and Iguodala together, and I don't think drafting Turner would signal the end of Iguodala, but I'll leave that to my upcoming draft previews.)

What happens when you go further down the draft and get away from the projected superstars? The question becomes a little tougher the further down you go, and if the Sixers end up drafting around 10th as it looks like they may have a chance to do this may become irrelevant. The question then becomes do you take a guy like Xavier Henry or Avery Bradley, both guys who are deadly spot-up jumpshooters but may lack the ability to really create for themselves or teammates, and do you move them up a tier over guys that could have more potential? That depends largely on how likely you feel the higher ceiling guys are to maximizing their potential. If you're looking down the draft and you think you see a potential Andrew Bynum? Don't pass on him because you already have Samuel Dalembert and you really needed Raymond Felton or Martell Webster. This team isn't close enough to competing to pass on a potential talent of that magnitude. If this team already had a superstar to build around? Then I can understand the notion of going with high probability role players.

Right now, I don't look at the Sixers team needs as being either a position or a skillset, but rather a skill level. I'm making moves to maximize my chances of getting a top 10 to 15 player in the league, and I'll determine whether my current pieces fit around him once that player has been acquired. Should two players skill level, potential, and probability to reach their potential be equal, then I'll look at the guy whose skillsets augment my current talent. I don't look at the Sixers as having a "core" to build around. I look at the Sixers as having a few players who, to varying degrees, could be nice pieces to add around the right superstar. My priority isn't to augment flawed players, but to get a game changer, on both ends of the court.