The Sixers’ failure to mine Villanova for talent, Travis Konecny’s value to the Flyers, and more

First thoughts and final thoughts …

It has been said before, by my friend and former colleague Mike Jensen most eloquently, but it is worth saying again: The 76ers’ refusal or inability to acquire and retain the talent that Villanova has produced should go down as one of their major failures over a decade riven with major failures.

The Knicks’ 110-96 win Thursday night at the Wells Fargo Center — with Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, and Donte DiVincenzo combining for 55 points, 18 assists, and 17 rebounds — was just the latest example. In fact, an NBA player-personnel chief would be on his or her way to building a fine team this season just with former Jay Wright players alone.

Those are five starters/rotation players already. And for bench depth, the team might dip into the G League to sign forward Jermaine Samuels, who is scoring more than 21 points a game for the Rio Grande Valley Vipers and has appeared in 11 games for the Houston Rockets, and point guard Collin Gillespie, who in seven games with the Grand Rapids Gold has averaged a near triple-double: 21.0 points, 10.9 assists, 9.3 rebounds. Gillespie also happened to drop 18 points in 24 minutes for the defending NBA champions, the Denver Nuggets, in their 127-112 win Friday night in Portland. Not too shabby. And don’t forget Ryan Arcidiacono, who played in 257 games over his seven NBA seasons before the Detroit Pistons waived him a couple of weeks ago.

» READ MORE: Sixers mailbag: ‘Which coach would have gotten the Sixers past the Celtics last year?’

Aside from the hour or so on draft night 2018 that Bridges belonged to them after they picked him and before they traded him to the Phoenix Suns, the Sixers never got their hands on any of those players. “To see what is in front of one’s nose,” the hoops aficionado George Orwell wrote, “needs a constant struggle.” It’s a shame the Sixers haven’t been up to it.

Travis Konecny’s rise into one of the Flyers’ best players, into one of their essential players, isn’t a redemption story per se. He has been a solid to excellent player since his NHL debut, when he was 19, back in 2016. But until this season, it had always been fair to wonder whether his highest value to the franchise would be as a mainstay or as the centerpiece of the kind of trade that could supercharge a rebuild.

For a forward as talented and tenacious as Konecny, the Flyers might acquire draft picks, prospects, young players, or any or some of the above. And if the team played to or below the meager expectations most people had for it, general manager Danny Briere and president Keith Jones might be more inclined to move Konecny, just because the Flyers would have had so much less to lose.

» READ MORE: What do the Flyers do with Scott Laughton, Sean Walker, and Travis Konecny at the trade deadline

All that speculation is pretty much pointless now, not just because the Flyers were 30-20-7 (and a prospective playoff team) after their 3-1 victory over the Blackhawks on Wednesday night, but because Konecny, who missed Saturday’s game against the Rangers with what the team called an upper-body injury, has continued improving as an all-around player. He has 27 goals — including a league-high five shorthanded — and 54 points and is a plus-15 in 57 games this season after averaging more than a point per game last season. He is still just 26. Trade him? Forget it. The Flyers regard him as their version of Brad Marchand or Matthew Tkachuk, a scorer/instigator with a unique combination of skills who can and should be a fixture here for years to come.

The time for them to commit to Konecny, based on that belief, is coming up. He has one more year left on his contract — a six-year, $33-million deal that he signed in 2019 and that counts, in its annual average value, $5.5 million against the Flyers’ salary cap. They already have driven over a couple of deep, damaging potholes along their road back to relevance. Their presumptive franchise goaltender, Carter Hart, will likely never play for them again. Their top prospect — Cutter Gauthier, arguably the top prospect in all of amateur hockey — made it clear that he did not want to play for them. The decision to sign Konecny to another long-term deal promises to be one of the easier, smoother stretches of their ride.

The Big 5 Classic, held for the first time in early December at the Wells Fargo Center, might yet revive the rivalries among Philadelphia’s Division I men’s basketball programs. (And yes, Villanova is a Philadelphia Division I men’s basketball program. Let’s not be annoying and pedantic about geography.)

But if and until the City Series makes that comeback, the Philadelphia Catholic League’s two big doubleheaders — the boys’ semifinals last Wednesday, the girls’ and boys’ championship games this Monday — now best represent the magic of what Palestra basketball was, is, and still can be. The old place was packed and humming the other night, and it will be again for Carroll-Wood and Roman-Ryan.