Sport Team-Philadelphia 76ers (NBA)

Planning: Philadelphia 76ers

The Philadelphia 76ers is a professional NBA team located in Philadelphia. The team was founded in 1946 and was named the Syracuse Nationals. The team is one of the oldest NBA franchises, producing numerous basket hall of fame players. Philadelphia 76ers won the NBA championship in 1955, 1967, and 1983 (76ers). Similarly, in 2001, the team made it to the NBA finals. Danny Biasone founded the Philadelphia 76ers as part of the National Basketball League (NBL), where it played for three seasons before joining the NBA. This team’s core principle is to nurture a courageous and positive attitude among players and devotion and commitment towards attaining prolific goals. Similarly, the team aims to enable young men to attain personal goals through discipline and commitments. The team is also committed to fostering positive change in the lives of young men within Philadelphia in court and life. As a basketball team, the Philadelphia 76ers is a sports organization that is reported to have a working budget of over two hundred million dollars during the 2018-2019 season.  The budget enables the team to participate in the NBA league competitively. The working budget is sourced from fans, sponsors, and television revenue (76ers).

The Philadelphia 76ers provide both products and services to the community of Philadelphia. The team’s primary product comprises the team whose primary role is to compete in the NBA, which is its main source of revenue. However, it plays an extensive role within the community by supporting numerous initiatives. They comprise the Sixers youth foundation, the Wilt Chamberlain Memorial Fund, and the Community Relations Initiative. The Sixers youth foundation is a nonprofit organization committed to utilizing its influence in basketball to empower underprivileged and susceptible youth within Philadelphia (76ers). This is accomplished by investing significant resources in community-based programs that aim to seize the attention and interest of the young members of the community in two major ways. First, it nurtures academic triumph among the youth, and secondly by supporting behavior that leads to personal health and wellbeing. The Wilt Chamberlain Memorial Fund is a community initiative to encourage and support high school students in Philadelphia with financial assistance to pursue their careers and college endeavors (Ulas and Üniversitesi). The fund was conceptualized in 2005, and it has awarded over 80 scholarships to high school seniors who have demonstrated exceptional hard work, commitment, and ambition. In addition, it supports other initiatives aimed at creating pathways to ensure that students can accomplish their academic goals (76ers). Lastly, the community relations program aims to develop strategic initiatives that connect fans and communities by investing resources and human capital in activities and events that are inspiring, engaging, and informative. The activities are supported by the teams’ employees, players, and coaches to cultivate and develop healthy mindsets and behavior among the young fans.

The Philadelphia 76er's core vision is to empower the Philadelphia community, primarily players, by ensuring that they create an environment whereby they can acquire the skills to pursue their dreams and ultimately lead productive lives (Zheng Cao et al.). Similarly, the vision of the Philadelphia 76ers is to use the power of sport to inspire and educate the younger generations by creating a community where they can work and play. The Philadelphia 76ers have unique goals and aspirations. Like other teams in the NBA, the Philadelphia 76ers have overarching themes on how it goes about accomplishing its goals (Ulas and Üniversitesi). However, unlike other teams in the NBA, whose primary goal is to compete professionally and win the championship yearly. The business philosophy for the Philadelphia 76ers comprises two main parts, earning as much basketball-related revenue for the team and winning as many games as possible. In addition, the NBA offers the Philadelphia 76ers a strong media presence in the league, boosting their revenue. Similarly, strong advertisements for the team’s merchandise enable the Philadelphia 76ers to gain global recognition.

There are two main weaknesses that the company faces. First, the BRI of the Philadelphia 76ers is used to calculate the team’s salary cap. Since the team’s BRI is not as high as other teams, the team’s salary cap is low, presenting an economic disadvantage to the team (Wear et al.). As a result, the tea cannot compete with big market teams that can acquire highly salaried players without paying a large tax to the league. Secondly, the revenue sharing system adopted by the NBA pulls annual revenue from all teams and redistributes it. Since the Philadelphia 76ers have a lower salary cap, it falls on the lower spectrum while redistributing revenue. Thus, the team can only acquire a small percentage of the generated revenue. There are a few threats for the Philadelphia 76ers, including competition from other sports leagues such as soccer and the probability of player gambling that can lower the team's legitimacy (Ulas and Üniversitesi).

Several opportunities exist for the Philadelphia 76ers, which contribute to its growth. Over the years, the NBA has expanded its viewership to Europe and China, making it one of the most popular sports. With the ever-expanding viewership, the Philadelphia 76ers have increased income revenues to include broadcasting rights, advertising, merchandising, and concession. A substantial portion of the Philadelphia 76ers' revenue is generated by Basketball Related Income (BRI) which encompasses ticket sales, TV deals, and merchandising rights. The global recognition of the NBA has created an enormous opportunity for the Philadelphia 76ers to gain an international market that can boost their revenue.

What makes the firm successful?

The Philadelphia 76ers is valued at 2.5 billion making it among the ten most valuable NBA franchises in the U.S. According to Forbes, the team's value has significantly grown in the past ten years. While the average value for an NBA team was 1.9 billion dollars, the value of the Philadelphia 76ers had shrunk by 15% from the previous year’s earnings (76ers). The team's decline in value is undoubtedly linked to the reduced fans, sponsors, and television revenue. According to Forbes, the only other team in the NBA that had not made a profit in the past season was the Cleveland Cavaliers. Earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation, and amortization for the Philadelphia 76ers were $46 million, a significant decrease from the two seasons prior (Price et al.). The team's success comes from winning NBA games whereby it managed to win only 17 out of 82 games; thus, the team boasted a revenue of $236 million, a decline of $30 million from the previous year. The team has an average attendance of 18,345 people per game during the 2018-2019 season, whereby the highest average ticket price was 120 dollars (76ers). Given that the team's revenue and value have been staggering, the team was necessitated to reduce the average ticket price to 60 dollars for the residents of Philadelphia (Price et al.).

The NBA is constantly evolving, which has resulted in the amalgamation of various situations, which has led to players using the situations to their advantage or club owners taking advantage of players, both of which are detrimental to the game. The argument that the NBA's talent pool has decreased compared to earlier years has caused controversy regarding signing NBA teams (Zheng Cao et al.). However, increasing players has only improved the chances of teams with bigger salary caps while smaller teams remain unimpacted, creating greater inequality among teams. There have also been instances whereby teams have lost money due to mismanagement, poor placement of teams, and bad ownership. Basketball has evolved since the 1980s; however, this appears to be worse due to new regulations that slow the game's pace. Players are constantly flopping and complaining, making the fans develop a negative attitude toward players who appear to be more concerned with fouls than using skills to play the game (Zheng Cao et al.).

Organizing

The roles of the Philadelphia 76ers coaches and managers are quite differentiated. The coach's role is to motivate, train and offer feedback to the players. Similarly, the players are required to engage in extensive and frequent practices and long tournaments, which necessitates the coach to motivate them to perform at their best. In addition, the coach provides the team with face-to-face leadership by pulling individuals from diverse backgrounds, talents, interests, and encouragement, ensuring they step up to responsibility and continual achievements as full-scale partners. The role of the coach does not only encompass instructing players but also believing and caring about them.

Three main coaching styles are adopted within the Philadelphia 76ers ecosystem. The coaches utilize the command style, submissive style, and cooperative style. Each of these styles has both advantages and disadvantages (Rose). The command style delegates the coach as the primary decisionmaker, assuming all responsibility leaving no room for team members to make any decisions. In this style, the coach’s knowledge and experience direct the players while the player follows directions. This style is particularly employed during training, where players are required to practice new skills and moves. This style of coaching is highly controlling and can result in communication disagreements between the players and coaches (Rose). The command style of coaching has been called dictatorship, whereby the player is given orders that the coach expects to be carried out by a means necessary. The advantage of this coaching style is that it establishes authority within the team. Similarly, it is quite defective during play when the coach's primary objective is winning. However, this style can significantly influence a player’s motivation and attitude. When the Philadelphia 76ers coach adopts this strategy, it has resulted in positive outcomes because fear motivates the team to win and outperform their competitors.

The cooperative coaching style is a collaboration between the coach and the team players. When the coach and the team collaborate in making vital decisions, the team can learn from their mistakes, enabling them to grow their skills and capabilities. According to the Philadelphia 76ers coaches, this is the most widely used coaching tactic. This strategy is widely adopted during matches, whereby the team is allowed to get into the flow of the game as they make their own decisions. The team’s coaches also believe that players have a better understanding of their opponents than coaches; therefore, empowering players to direct themselves has proven to be an extremely successful strategy. However, the team needs to find a balance between command and cooperative style. The submissive style is the least used coaching strategy employed by the Philadelphia 76ers coaches. This strategy features the coach offering limited instructions and guidance to the team and only intervening whenever they need to resolve to displace problems (Rose). New coaches often employ this style to learn how the team coordinates and plays. However, at a competitive level, the coach usually has some degree of control over what the team is involved in.  

Information within Philadelphia 76ers flows from the top management to each department. Although not all information is made public to all employees, departmental information remains within each department as stipulated by the confidentiality agreements that all employees sign (Rose). The department heads and special advisors brief the top management at the ownership level to manage the general partner. Department heads only collaborate under special circumstances when their roles intersect.

Defining the budget of an NBA team is a very complicated process with numerous factors to consider. Teams in the NBA have different budgets determined by the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) and the salary cap. The NBA has implemented several rules to ensure that teams with large budgets do not overspread their finances on players creating an unbalanced market. For example, the Philadelphia 76ers' budget is determined by the club owners in partnership with the league, while the finance department is tasked with budgeting it for the entire season (Price et al.). This is a highly complicated process since it features balancing the team’s salary cap to ensure that the team does not get to pay a hefty tax to the league for exceeding it.

Leadership

Two types of leadership styles are adopted by the Philadelphia 76ers, namely autocratic, participative, and paternalistic. The leadership hierarchy of the team starts from the Managing general partner, the co-managing general partner, and ten co-owners of the team. Below the ownership, the level is the special advisor to the managing general partner (Price et al.). Below this level of the hierarchy is the various departmental levels of the team, which comprise the basketball operations, strategy, broadcasting, ticket operation, business operations, brand marketing, community engagement, cooperative communication, corporate partnership, finance, public relations, and content marketing and digital marketing (Price et al.). Autocratic leadership involves the top leader giving orders and assigning tasks without consulting employees. Similarly, leader assumes responsibility for their actions. This strategy is employed within each department, whereby the director of each department is responsible for assigning tasks to the various coordinators under their respective departments. Participative leadership is employed at the ownership level whereby the managing general partner, co-managing general partner, and the ten co-owners are usually consulted before major decisions regarding the team are made. Each member is given equal treatment when formulating the team's plans. Lastly, paternalistic leadership is employed between the managing general partners and the head of departments (Jarrett et al.). The management level guides and instructs the department heads on the decisions made by the ownership management team. Likewise, paternal leadership is employed between the head coaches, assistant coaches, and team members.  

The Philadelphia 76ers have adopted several incentive programs. However, most of these incentives are performance-based and apply only to players. For instance, during the NBA tournaments, the Philadelphia 76ers strategy team measures various characteristics, including team and individual statistics. Individual statistics for players encompass shooting accuracy, ballhandling skills, dribbling speed, and how quick players are (76ers). When individual statistics are tracked, players are motivated to strive for their personal best since each score is compared to an evaluation of their technical, tactical, communication, and mental skill. Thus, it is easy for the coaches to measure a player’s progress irrespective of their teammates' achievements. Each player in the team has a contracted salary; performance evaluations play a significant role in determining what each player should earn depending on their contribution to the team (Huyghe et al.). When a player’s contract is revised, their metric determines whether their contract will be renewed or the team intends to sell the player. High-performance players also receive bonuses for their team’s progress during the NBA championship games. The Philadelphia 76ers do not have any incentives for other employees that are not directly involved with players since incentivizing other employees had no direct correlation with outcomes. Thus, players and coaches are financially incentivized with finances. This has advantages and disadvantages since they are easily replaced when top management feels that their performance did not meet the team's projected outcomes (Jarrett et al.).

Recruitment into the Philadelphia 76ers is an intensive process. The team must hire the right candidates to ensure success for the entire organization. The department is involved in sourcing candidates based on qualifications and experience. They also perform medical and psychometric assessments and shortlist and interview candidates. The Philadelphia 76ers have a talent acquisition department that scouts basketball players and recruits employees for other departments (Huyghe et al.). In addition, the Philadelphia 76ers collaborate with free agents who represent basketball players. Before players are signed into the Philadelphia 76ers, they undergo a rigorous evaluation from the coaching department, requiring them to perform a series of activities on the court. The performance-based recruitment focuses on the skills players possess instead of the experience and skills they possess. Every time the Philadelphia 76ers recruit a player, they are hired to fill a specific position. Thus, they only qualify if they fulfill the criteria for that position. Apart from performance, the Philadelphia 76ers also consider whether the player is a cultural fit for the team. Thus, players meeting the minimum performance standards are shortlisted for an interview whereby the coaches try to understand better their character and personality (Jarrett et al.).

Before hiring employees and players, the Philadelphia 76ers issue the prospects with employment contracts is an agreement between the employer/organization and employee. The employees must be accompanied by their lawyer, who will review the document and ensure that their client understands the stipulated requirements (Slaughter and Kausel). The Philadelphia 76ers employment contract is divided into several sections, namely employment, the extent of service and authority of employee, compensation, restrictive covenant, vacations, publicity, termination, work stoppage, assignment, waiver of a breach, governing law, arbitration, and notice (Slaughter and Kausel). Employees must understand each section to ensure they do not breach their contract out of ignorance (Huyghe et al.).

Evaluating

There are several ways that the Philadelphia 76ers evaluate their team's success. Evaluating an NBA’s team success is one of the most challenging tasks in basketball. The team’s data is continually collected and stored during the season for analysis and forecasting. Some of the collected data include team single-game records, team single-season records, individual single-game records, and individual single-season records (Arkes and Martinez). After the end of a season, the coaching staff, data analysts and scientists, and other stakeholders process the collected data and use it to identify which team members matter most. The data is used to construct effective projection models that will be vital in preparing for future seasons. When the data is processed, some of the defined outputs include the season's top performances, all-time performances, most field goals, most assists, most steals, most free throws, most turnovers, and most rebounds. The Philadelphia 76ers make it a point to collect the data of opposing teams so that they can also develop comparative models to learn opposing teams' weaknesses (Huyghe et al.).

The Philadelphia 76ers use the highlighted outcomes to identify the key factors required to win a game. They use three distinct mathematical models to develop predicted records for each team in the NBA. First, they adopt the linear square regression analysis method as the basis of their evaluation. According to this model, the Philadelphia 76ers can efficiently predict their shooting, turnovers, rebounds, and free throws, enabling teams to win. Second, the Philadelphia 76ers have identified four-team statistical factors that can be adapted to predict a team’s winning projection. They include effective field goal, turnover rate, offensive rebound rate, and free throw rate. Third, the Philadelphia 76ers data analysis team employs complicated algorithms such as Oliver’s formula to visualize complex data on a graph (Arkes and Martinez). The model can compare each team’s data for five seasons highlighting the team’s actual and projected wins. Another approach adopted at Philadelphia 76ers is the regression analysis of statistical modeling, which is used to accurately estimate the weight of different values simulated by the data scientist to offer insight into the team's performance. Thus, these models can project an individual player or a team’s statistics across different categories. By adopting such models, the Philadelphia 76ers can accurately identify the strengths and weaknesses of their players and team and opponents and their teams. Using outputs from the four factors model, the coaching department can develop offensive and defensive tactics that can be employed against specific teams and players with high accuracy. Hence, the data value cannot be emphasized enough to NBA teams since it can make the difference between winning and losing the NBA championship (Huyghe et al.).

Works Cited

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