Sixers: Prepare for long winter

If the fortunes of a sports franchise are dictated by the moves made in the offseason, Philadelphia fans can expect an especially harsh winter ahead. For the Sixers and Flyers, this is truly a summer of failure.

What has become painfully clear about the upstart Sixers is their new ownership is better at talking a good game than playing one. While marquee players flew across the NBA landscape last week, the Sixers managed to re-sign the softest player on their roster, Spencer Hawes, to a two year deal, sign Nick Young to replace his NBA twin, Lou Williams, and to dump Elton Brand.

Place on mute all of the bloviating by CEO Adam Aron for a moment and ask yourself one simple question: Are the Sixers any better now than they were at the end of the season? Uh, no. And they won’t be any better as long as the face of the franchise is Andre Iguodala, who is like a cockroach in a nuclear war — the ultimate survivor.

Meanwhile, the Flyers are always aggressive both at pursuing the top players available, and at then twisting the facts to serve their purposes. After Zach Parise and Ryan Suter turned down offers totaling at least $200-million combined and headed to Minnesota, GM Paul Holmgren proclaimed that he was very happy with the offseason so far.

Really? He added two scrubs, Ruslan Fedotenko and Bruno Gervais, traded James van Riemsdyk for Luke Schenn, and lost Jaromir Jagr, Matt Carle and Sergei Bobrovsky. Are the Flyers better? No way. They are not as deep and not as good.

I’m no meteorologist, but the forecast ahead — based on the offseason so far — is for a winter of discontent for Philadelphia sports fans.