Philadelphia 76ers Minus Hinkie Causes Historic Amnesia

Historical Amnesia For Philadelphia 76ers’ Fans

Okay sportswriters aged 50 and up, you got your tired, vintage, Dr. J, 1983 NBA franchise back. Dust off your programs that have Big Shot and Dana Barros on the cover and enjoy your NBA purgatory Philadelphia 76ers.

Why not try to rebuild the Philadelphia Spectrum why you are at it? Have them wear throwback uniforms and trot out Jeff Ruland while Doug Moe coaches. The Hooters can even play “And We Danced,” at halftime.

Sure, they might even go 40-42 and make the cutoff for the playoffs and feature an amazing talent like Vincent Askew. (Who I actually liked as a player) Everyone will be happy: the fans will enter the arena, the owners will sell tickets, the beat writers will have access to Bryan Colangelo and an array of pithy quotes, while Jerry Colangelo and Jerry Krause can tell stories about how great Mike Krzyzewski would be as an NBA coach – everything will be peachy.

Ok, this of course is hyperbole. I’m being harsh to make the point, but the two leading prevailing myths that accompany Hinkie’s exit are even more annoying and self-serving.

They are:

1) Hinkie was a charlatan and not a “basketball guy.”

2) Hinkie’s plan would have been tried before, if it could work.

Who, may I ask, are “basketball guys?” Bloggers, writers, fans, coaches, players? The term “basketball guy” is very vague and subjective. Is Jeff Van Gundy a “basketball guy?” Of course he is. Was Rick Majerus? Yes.

Both would be considered basketball guys even if you compared them to Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain, Larry Bird or Kobe Bryant.

Only five GM’s in the NBA have won an NBA title. The rest scurry for the best draft status possible. Additionally, twenty-three out of thirty GM’s in the NBA were players and coaches.

Hinkie was not one of the twenty-three but knows the game well. For some reason, this was the root of select Hinkie mistrust, and not his alleged sinister ways. In public, no GM has spoke bad of him. It was an internal sentiment of “figuring the new guy out.”

Recall that Isaiah Thomas took over the expansion Toronto Raptors and horded and stockpiled draft picks and traded shrewdly. I am not sure Isaiah was a “basketball guy” by the same standard being applied to Hinkie. It sounds crazy because it is. Both are basketball guys.

The Hinkie exception is because of his background in research and our current media age. By no means is Hinkie the first, or lone revolutionary smart guy member of the war-room. He also demonstrates he is a basketball guy, pretty common in the NBA.

Of course this estimation is subjective, but consider Hinkie’s own words:

"“Maybe someday the information teams have at their disposal won’t require scouring the globe watching talented players and teams. That day has not arrived, and my Marriott Rewards points prove it from all the Courtyards I sleep in from November to March. There is so much about projecting players that we still capture best by seeing it in person and sharing (and debating) those observations with our colleagues.What kind of teammate is he? How does he play under pressure? How broken is his shot? Can he fight over a screen? Does he respond to coaching? How hard will he work to improve? And maybe the key one: will he sacrifice—his minutes, his touches, his shots, his energy, his body—for the ultimate team game that rewards sacrifice? That information, as imperfect and subjective as it may be, comes to light most readily in gyms and by watching an absolute torrent of video.”"

Is this the rhetoric and the terminology of a non-basketball guy?

As to – “if the process worked, someone would have tried it already”

Philly.com writes:

"“If losing so much that you were in play to get a top draft choice every year was such a smart idea, somebody might have tried it before.”"

Yeah. People have tried it. Back in the day the Houston Rockets and the Chicago Bulls threw the end of their seasons in order to acquire Hakeem Olajuwon and Michael Jordan. They were both okay players as you recall and the teams won. Former Commissioner Stern had to change the lottery format multiple times over a course of a decade(s) to get where we are now, which is nowhere near as bad. Hinkie looked like a school kid compared to those execs of a bygone era. Malcolm Gladwell has documented most of this.

Yes, they’ve tried it before. Before Adam Silver ever supported Hinkie, David Stern changed the lottery format several times to prohibit tanking. If you go back and look at 1984-1985, 1989-1990, and 1992-1993 in terms of drafting mechanisms you will notice an evolution to penalize teams with uncertainty, when it was perceived that they were vying for the top player.

Even if history goes unrecorded and under appreciated, it does not mean it did not happen. They’ve tried it before. Back in the mid-90’s, GM Mike Dunleavy, according to league sources, not only tanked the season, but tanked the draft, to get out of Milwaukee after being treated as a “lame duck” by owner Herbert Kohl.

Also back in the day GM Ernie Grunfeld and Dave Checketts, according to league sources, “wanted Pat Riley to squirm,” while they tried to lure Alonzo Mourning to the Knicks. The other words being tossed around over the affair were, “hell bent” and “venting of anger and frustration.”

The point here is twofold: One that, Twitter would blow this up in 2016, but was not around in 1995. Secondly, this is nothing compared to what is being alleged as the bad blood applied to Hinkie’s approach.