The Sixer Sense
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Philadelphia 76ers: The Sam Hinkie Manifesto

By Bret Stuter

Dec 7, 2015; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Philadelphia 76ers general manager Sam Hinkie speaks to the media during a press conference to introduce Jerry Colangelo (not pictured) as special advisor before a game against the San Antonio Spurs at Wells Fargo Center. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports
Dec 7, 2015; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Philadelphia 76ers general manager Sam Hinkie speaks to the media during a press conference to introduce Jerry Colangelo (not pictured) as special advisor before a game against the San Antonio Spurs at Wells Fargo Center. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports /
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page 7

A reverence for disruption

So often a new management regime looks at an organization and decides that the primary goal is to professionalize the operation. For you, I hope that doesn’t happen next. As I described to you in our first ever board meeting, we were fundamentally aiming for something different—disruption. We should concentrate our efforts in a few key areas in ways others had proven unwilling. We should attempt to gain a competitive advantage that had a chance to be lasting, hopefully one unforeseen enough by our competition to leapfrog them from a seemingly disadvantaged position. A goal that lofty is anything but certain. And it sure doesn’t come from those that are content to color within the lines. This is true everywhere, as the balance in any market or any ecosystem ebbs and flows until something mostly unexpected lurches ahead. We see it in spades—past, present, and future.

  • • New Zealand’s flightless bird the moa (measuring in at 10 ft, 400 lbs.) had the life tramping around the South Island for a great long run; then the first Māori explorers washed ashore in canoes, and that was that.
  • • I still miss Blackberry’s keyboard, but the 2007 iPhone debut rendered it nearly obsolete to all but a few of us curmudgeons.
  • • Watch what’s happening with the collaboration between IBM’s Watson and M.D. Anderson or Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo. It won’t be just an ancient board game that’s disrupted. It’s also anything but a game to Lee Sedol.

Nobel Prize winning physicist Max Planck got right to it: “A new scientific truth does not triumph
by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die.”  That sounds harsh, more harsh than anything I would ever say. But think about it in your context as an equity partner in the Sixers. Every April you will watch 16 of the 30 teams—the last time that exact configuration of players and coaches will ever be together—“die” as their season ends. Within a few weeks, another seven go fishing. By early June, 29 of the 30 opponents are forced to see the light of the competition’s greatness as only one raises the Larry O’Brien trophy.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

I can imagine that some of these sound contradictory: contrarian thinking, but respect for tradition, while looking to disrupt. That yin and yang is part of it—keep looking. Questioning.

Investment objectives

Starting position

In May of 2013 when I spoke with several of you—and even when we first met in the summer of
2012—the situation was clear. Your crops had been eaten. A team that clawed its way to a disappointing 34 wins in 2012-13 had a few handfuls of those wins walking out the door (Dorell Wright, Nick Young, Damien Wilkins, Royal Ivey) and a player that drove a bit more who had just undergone a surgery and was expected to be out for the season (Jason Richardson). That left the club with expected wins in the low 20s before replacing anyone. The young players on rookie-scale deals numbered two: Evan Turner & Arnett Moultrie. Two future first round picks were gone as was the recent youth pipeline of Nik Vučević & Moe Harkless. Gulp.