The new-look Sixers have a chance to establish an identity in a way that last year’s group never did | David Murphy

The first rule of NBA free agency is that teams do not talk about NBA free agency. At least, not until everybody else has already spent the previous week doing so.

It’s the strangest part of this time of year. It has been nearly a week now since the competitive landscape of the NBA underwent a seismic shift with a flurry of moves that erupted in the minutes that followed the official start of the new league year on Sunday evening.

The ensuing days have seen teams put the finishing touches on their rosters for their upcoming season, to an extent that we can say with reasonable certainty that the Sixers should break camp in October with a roster that is as close to legitimate title contention as any that the franchise has fielded in decades.

And yet, mum remains the word from the club itself, with Elton Brand and his front office forced to wait until the end of the NBA’s five-day transaction moratorium to make their bonanza of trades, signings and re-signings official. So, next week will feature a long line of press conferences in which we will finally get to ask the principal actors the questions that we have already been asking each other with rasp-inducing frequency. What’s old will be new again. Or, at least, we’ll pretend it so.

Among the more pertinent questions that will almost certainly be asked, in one form or another: Do the Sixers view themselves as the team to beat in the Eastern Conference? What makes that more true today than it was heading into Game 7 against the Raptors? What do they envision the identity of this team being?

That last one’s interesting. As competitive as the Sixers were the last couple of seasons, this is the first time that they appear to have settled on a group of players -- and, thus, on a brand of basketball -- that they will be counting on collectively to carry them through the next three or four seasons. Not only is Joel Embiid the team’s only player acquired by former general manager Sam Hinkie, but he and Ben Simmons are also the only significant players on the roster who were acquired using the assets that Hinkie stockpiled.

Once Simmons signs his contract extension, each member of the starting five will be under club control for at least the next two seasons, with Simmons, Embiid, Tobias Harris, and Al Horford all locked up for the next four. That’s significant when you consider that the Sixers came within minutes (or inches, depending on how you look at it) from beating the eventual NBA champs while playing with a starting unit that had entered the postseason having played a total of 10 games together.

This isn’t just a matter of continuity. Rather, it’s a matter of identity. Simply put, the Sixers never ended up developing one last season. It’s the reality of the situation they created for themselves by entering the season with one starting five, then trading two of those starters away for Jimmy Butler, and then, months later, adding another high-volume offensive player in Harris to the mix. All while attempting to emphasize a couple of young players who had yet to establish their own identities as NBA players.

On the rare occasions that these guys played together, they looked very much like a group of strangers, each of whom was so individually talented that the collective could get by simply by alternating opportunities to showcase those talents. The number of different identities they showed in the postseason alone was rather remarkable, from the Embiid/Simmons show that turned the tide of the Nets series in Game 5 with Butler ejected, to the various stretches of hero ball that Butler turned in.

As a collective, it was never clear how that group would work in the long run, particularly with regard to the uncertain fit between Simmons and Butler. Perhaps that is why you didn’t hear much in the form of anonymous sniping from either side as it became increasingly apparent that Butler would be headed elsewhere in free agency: It seems more than possible that both Butler and the Sixers sensed that, long term, life would be far more pleasant for both parties if they each went their separate ways. One can argue that the most likely logical conclusion to the re-signing of Butler to a five-year max contract would have been the trading of Simmons somewhere down the line. At the very least, the Sixers would have had to decide that they would be open to considering the possibility should it come to that.

The elimination of that potential storm cloud is the most rational justification for bidding adieu to Butler. The Sixers might have ended up with a better roster in the short term had they re-signed Butler and JJ Redick and then filled out their rotation by mining the deep value that this particular free-agent market has offered at its middle and lower reaches, particularly at the four and five spots. Doing so would have carried a much greater risk that the pieces would never completely fit, since Butler’s presence affected Simmons and Harris alike.

We know that this new Sixers rotation is going to be something. The smallest wingspan in its starting five is 6-foot-10. Four of its five members are above-average defenders, at least three of them significantly so. They will have an identity. What will be interesting to hear from Brand and coach Brett Brown is what, exactly, they envision that identity to be.

Will Harris’s role look a lot different from when he was playing next to Butler? Will he be the one with the ball in his hands in late-and-close situations? How does that square with some of his struggles handling ball pressure in the postseason? How will Brown leverage the defensive possibilities of having a couple of centers on the court at the same time? What might this halfcourt offense look like?

What do they envision this starting unit being by the start of next postseason and beyond?

The answers will be fascinating to consider, and at some point, we will get them. Just not this week.