When Did Sam Hinkie Decide to Resign?

Sam Hinkie is no longer the Philadelphia 76ers general manager after his recent resignation. When did he make his decision to step down?

The Philadelphia 76ers are tentatively without a general manager. Bryan Colangelo, the son of Vice President of Basketball Operations Jerry Colangelo, is likely to be brought onto the executive team very soon, but for the moment, due to Sam Hinkie’s resignation, the team is without a GM.

Hinkie officially submitted his resignation letter to the Sixers’ ownership group on Tuesday, April 6th, but there is a lot of question as to when he made his decision to leave. Some changes in how he interacted with the media point to a decision being made about a week before he officially submitted the letter.

Some think that Hinkie made his decision on Monday or even Tuesday, but I find that to be preposterous. Hinkie submitted a 13-page resignation letter that was well written and clearly very well-thought out. It’s not something that even a college student on a deadline could have pumped out overnight with several cups of coffee.

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No, this was a decision that was undoubtedly thought about and considered before the ultimate submission of the letter. According to The Vertical’s Adrian Wojnarowski, Hinkie was approached with his ultimate pending demotion “weeks” before his resignation and he sat on the idea for a while before his decision.

It’s sad that it ever came to this. Hinkie was optimistic from the start that he could work alongside Colangelo, but Jerry made it impossible, and reportedly leaked the 13-page letter that was clearly very private and personal to the media. Not a good look, nor a good start for the Colangelo chapter of this franchise, Jerry.

Tom Moore’s Twitter feed from Friday morning gives us some clues about a change of mindset from Hinkie (the following quote is three different but consecutive Tweets).

"“When I texted Sam for story about his HS playing days, he initially didn’t want to talk on the record… then Sam changed his mind & answered questions via text while on airplane flight 8 days ago. Responses were very thorough… Sam sent me a text after story was published thanking me for being “fair” in piece & called me “dogged” for tracking down HS coach.”"

This is an interesting and sudden change from Hinkie. He went from wanting nothing to do with the piece to complying with Moore’s questions and complimenting Moore on his work. The piece Moore is referencing details Hinkie’s high school athletic career, and how hard of a worker Hinkie was in those days (the piece says Hinkie deadlifted 500 pounds). It was published on March 31st, six days before the resignation.

Then, on April 5th, just one day before Hinkie’s resignation would be leaked and two days before it was supposed to be made public, Hinkie appeared on The Lowe Post Show podcast. He likely recorded this podcast on April 4th or maybe even earlier on the 5th.

Both of these instances indicated a change in Hinkie’s way of thinking. Some see it as a last ditch effort to show the Sixers he could improve in areas that he had failed — he had never been very good with the media — but I believe this was his last hurrah before he left, and a demonstration to other teams around the league. He wanted to put himself out there before quitting to show that he could communicate with the media and do better when he gets his next job.

These instances show us publicly the change of mind for Hinkie, but I believe that the initial seed of “my time is done here” was planted as soon as Jerry Colangelo was hired. Hinkie tried to make it work, but it didn’t. I believe Hinkie was ready to leave the team, and ultimately made his final decision to leave and started his first draft on that 13-page letter about two weeks ago.

Next: Hinkie's Departure Shows Flawed Ownership

Whenever it happened, we should have seen something coming with the increased media interaction from Hinkie.