The Sixer Sense
Fansided

Our 76ers Hinkie Hope: The Most Relevant Sports Figure in the City

By Dan Falcone

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Eagles fans are preparing for another 10-6 year. Flyers fans would like Bobby Clarke, Bill Barber and Reggie Leech to return to the ice, and the Phillies held on to 2008 for the last half decade. Shaq was correct when he said of Hinkie, “he’s playing it right, chess, not checkers.”

But who is he?

Sam Hinkie is not your average executive in Philadelphia professional sports. Some execs are home grown and considered too emotionally invested to be objective and competent. Others are too cold and detached from the fabric of this city and fail to resonate and understand the locality of the Philly sports fan base. It is my hope that Sam Hinkie turns out to be the outlier we are all hoping for.

The general manager and President of Basketball Operations for the Philadelphia 76ers was raised in Marlow, Oklahoma, and has a high school football and basketball playing background. He went on to focus on academics and became an outstanding student at the University of Oklahoma in Norman and received high honors in graduate school studies at Stanford University.

Hinkie is recognized as a pioneer in the overall study of draft strategy, and utilizes research based statistics to target team needs in evaluating specific attributes concerning personnel. This all sounds good to non-jock or hokey nerd types.

The pressing questions are: Is Hinkie doing a good job? Does he know what he is doing? And are the Sixers being set up for ultimate success? The answer to all three is yes. I am not basing this on Hinkie’s reputation, fancy language, use of numbers or higher educational degrees. I am basing this on three areas: team transactions, the draft stock, and the hiring of Brett Brown.

Most fans in Philadelphia are Eagle fans, followed by the Phillies or Flyers and then the 76ers. The fan base follows largely the college basketball teams in the area and only tolerates the 76ers. In any event, Hinke took advantage of this distracted group and what should be a limited shelf life of negative attention in dealing away of an All-Star and a Rookie of the Year.

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In a limited information environment, this gives way to the likes of Charles Barkley and Howard Eskin, whose opinions carry weight, or are at least widely heard. Fans in Philly therefore have a negative reaction to Hinkie for two reasons: their misunderstanding of basketball and their lack of devotion to it. Most understood seems to be the other three teams and their desire to remain stale.

Barkley was a great player for the 76ers and overall, but that does not mean basketball analytics is a faulty methodology. Eskin was a good journalist, but the fans not caring about basketball may stem further back then when he claims.

Let’s look at Sam Hinkie as he simply wants to be seen; as a very private person. His potential dubious worldview on contemporary affairs is irrelevant at this moment. Hinkie has qualities many in Philadelphia, a top five market, should like and admire. Sam Hinkie thus far shows all the symptoms of a rabid workaholic. He traveled extensively to watch players in pre-draft workouts and it was reported that the month before the draft he was not home for more than a few hours.

Yes, he has done unpopular things. I wished he kept K.J. McDaniels, but so it goes.

This might work out, let’s hope.