The Inevitable Martyrdom Of Sam Hinkie

Lazarus

But Sam Hinkie arrived and changed everything.  He immediately “bit the bullet” and worked to immediately distance the team from the disastrous Moultrie and Bynum trades.  And he did.

Sam Hinkie acknowledged that the team had nothing coming through the pipeline in terms of young talent to develop.  Now the Philadelphia 76ers sit on three to four first round draft picks and rights to swap draft picks.  The team could have lottery picks for the next several years going forward as well.   But most of all, the team has one of the biggest NBA salary cap room to deal for free agents.

From buried and gone to young and vibrant – in just three years.  So what’s the problem?

The problem falls back to the politics.  In the reign of Sam Hinkie, the Philadelphia 76ers only managed to win 19, 18 and 10 games respectively.  That left the team, and the league, open to criticism.  What people failed to consider is that success on the basketball court is dependent upon the personnel decisions of several years prior.  Unless you are the Cleveland Cavaliers and get three of four of the first picks in the NBA draft, and then have an NBA elite player by the name of LeBron James elect to sign with your team in free agency, you truly are not changing the course of your team much in an NBA draft to the following year.

So the team that Hinkie inherited was never in play for a playoff appearance anytime soon, despite the rantings of virtually every hot take videos out there.  What  the question became what was the goal of the rebuild?  Painful losing was inevitable.   The GM could sink for two years and bob back to the .500 surface, only to submerge once more, or stay down longer and set the team up for a long duration deep runs into the NBA playoffs.  Hinkie saw the long term goal as the priority, and began to restructure the entire team to meet that goal.

Next: Future is ... almost now