Similarly if Philadelphia tanks for 5 straight seasons and gets a gimpy embiid, a bust in Okafor, a guy they sold for pennies in Noel a gimpy Simmons and one good but not great player this year (obviously this is all worst case scenario), they will universally considered a disappointment/failure.
Even if they get a top-5 player Embiid and top-10 player Simmons, but never win a title, I doubt that would be sufficient compensation for what their fans had to go through.
They haven't tanked for 5 straight seasons though. You would have to include this one and next year to get to 5 seasons of a tank. If they do that they will have a lot more than just those assets.
Right... they've tanked four straight seasons. And tanked way harder than any team ever has. But I'm sure next year is THE YEAR.
I don't think they tanked this year, that was my point, and I certainly don't think they will tank next year. They tanked for 3 seasons, which is in line with the Thunder, Bulls (post-Jordan), and other teams that have tanked recently. I mean people forget the Bulls went from a three peat to winning 13 (50 game season), 17, 15, 21, 30, 23 in the six seasons post Jordan and that includes a full reset at exactly the mid-point of that 6 season stretch (trading Brand for Chandler).
Preceding the current run, the Warriors went 12 seasons without making the playoffs, made the playoffs 1 year, and then went another 5 seasons without making the playoffs. Obviously they weren't tanking the whole time, but 1 playoff appearance in an 18 year stretch is just downright terrible.
People act like the Sixers are unique. They aren't. They were more open about what they were doing than most teams have been, but they were only the worst team in the league 1 time in the 3 seasons they tanked, and didn't have the worst 3 year stretch in history (I know the Nuggets, Clippers, and Mavericks all had worse 3 year stretches, I don't know about any others).