In Camden, the Sixers’ ‘trust the process’ motto takes on a different meaning for a schools overhaul

What if I told you I had a radical plan to help the Philadelphia 76ers win an NBA championship?

Here’s the plan: Over the course of several seasons, make decisions counter to constructing a competitive team to stockpile high draft picks and assets. At some point in the future, use the good picks and assets to build a basketball dynasty poised to win multiple championships. Do you trust the process?

Believe it or not, a little more than a decade ago, a lot of Sixers fans bought into this very idea. After 10 seasons, as a result of the process, the team is practically in the same place it was 10 years ago. In fact, during the years the team was supposed to be good, it was still behind all the teams that didn’t try to lose. By now, we all realize “The Process” was antithetical to the spirit of basketball and an abject failure. Oddly, for the past 15 years, Camden public schools have been following the same model with the same results.

Unfortunately, The Process used by the Sixers has a fatal flaw: It depends on the organization being good and bad at the same time. Good enough to draft players other teams wanted. Bad enough that the combination of players you picked didn’t win.

It was so confusing. For instance, I remember games in the early Process days when the Sixers were playing well. Too well. Hours before a game, the general manager traded the only point guard, which essentially left the team with no way to run their offense and score points.

In Camden, we were subject to something very similar. The state would publicly talk about how it was trying to help Camden schools, but behind the scenes, it was undermining the district to meet its greater goal of a takeover. Flat funding and budget cuts left the district unable to function.

Just in case you think Camden’s public school system and the Sixers are totally unrelated, consider the following. In 2010, when Chris Christie became governor, he essentially cut public school funding in favor of economic incentive programs in the state. In 2014, the Sixers received more than $80 million in incentives to build a practice facility in Camden, while Camden public schools faced close to $80 million in budget cuts.

From 1986 to the present day, the Sixers have made mostly bad decisions. Everything from trading away the chance to sign future five-time All-Star Brad Daugherty to not having any draft picks in 2023. The entire program hinged on an organization that made a lot of bad decisions reversing course to make great decisions.

Although the plan to transform Camden public schools was never dubbed “The Process,” it was practically the same blueprint. Christie changed the board from a hybrid board in which the voters, the mayor, and the governor each picked three board members to the mayor picking all nine. To be clear, changing the board configuration was akin to expecting a process that produced bad decisions to reverse itself.

The frustrating part about the Sixers and Camden schools is that both are mired in the legacy of bad decisions.

The funny thing about bad decisions is how they eventually come back to haunt you. Within a year of the mayor appointing all nine members, the board was so dysfunctional that the district was taken over. One of the mayor’s appointees was Wasim Muhammad, eventual board president, accused of sexually assaulting a student when he was a teacher. As a result of his behavior, the district was ordered to pay close to $2 million in damages to the victim.

The frustrating part about the Sixers and Camden schools is that both are mired in the legacy of decisions that went against the spirit of their respective domains. When The Process started in 2013, the Sixers, the Boston Celtics, and the Milwaukee Bucks were experiencing similar futility.

Instead of embarking on being bad to eventually be good, the Bucks simply tried to get better each season, winning a championship in 2021.

After close to 20 years of state intervention, Camden schools have made no material progress. Graduation rates are better, but that improvement could easily be because of changes in graduation requirements and not actual academic progress.

Ultimately, there is no shortcut or novel way to improve outcomes. We have seen how the lose-to-win model works — and when it comes to the Sixers and Camden schools, I’ve seen enough. Regardless of whether we are going for an NBA championship or improving student success, the only way to win is to always try to win.

Theo Spencer, a Camden native, served on the city’s school board from 2007 to 2010.