Sam Hinkie Innovated More Than Player Selection

Can’t Put This Genie Back Into The Lamp

The words of Jerry Colangelo were as predictable as the eventual resignation of Sam Hinkie.   These were the words that gave it all away:

"“I think that any time you have an opportunity to enhance your organization, and you bring people in to accomplish that, you consider it. Big time. You really do,” Colangelo said. “And I think in our case we have a very bright young guy in Sam Hinkie, who holds the title of president and GM, and in his space he’s really strong. One could build a case for saying you’d like to have more people added who have experience in other aspects of those jobs. That’s the kind of conversation that’s going on. The first step was me being asked to come in, because of my experience, to maybe help and add to the mix. And the question you’re asking is, ‘is there a need or requirement for someone else?’ Maybe. Probably. That’s all being discussed…. I’m just saying adding people to the front office. And that’s not demeaning who we have. You want to be strong. If your goal is you want to be in the Finals… you have to take all the steps required to become that. I’d like to hear people say ‘they’ve got the strongest front office in the league.’ That’s a goal. That’s an objective. So it’s going to require more people to make that happen. That’s all.”"

At the time it was easy to interpret this as new players, perhaps via a trade or via free agency. But now, in hindsight, one can read the words of a father seeing a chance to reunite with his beloved son once more.  In the words of “Is there a need or requirement for someone else?” , you can see the beachhead of the father creating a place in the organization for his son to swoop in and take over in areas of basketball operations.

Colangelo looked at the process, but did not see.   He heard the sales pitch of Sam Hinkie, but he did not listen.  He thought about the plans of Sam Hinkie, but he never understood.  In Jerry Colangelo’s world, a handshake deal supersedes the contract.  Gut instinct supercedes basketball analytics.  Signing NBA talent and dealing with other NBA general managers was always about the relationship building process, and never the cold and calculated matrices spewed from a computer program.

And in some ways he is right.   It takes both.  But that is not the organization chart of the Philadelphia 76ers going forward.  Executive Jerry Colangelo gets information from his son, general manager Bryan Colangelo who gets information from the Scouting department who gets their information from the basketball analytics department.  After seeing the light of day for three years, owner Joshua Harris and executive Jerry Colangelo wanted to push Hinkie’s genie back into the lamp.

Next: Wasted On The Way