SIXERS: A -25.0% chance at being good again (R.I.P. HINK)

[JFLNYC]

Does anyone have a good source for the theory that Hinkie was forced by ownership to draft Okafor?

[azrider]

the reason okafor and Porzingis were not interested in coming to philly had absolutely nothing to do with embiid, Noel or saric. Granted the status of two of them were in doubt, but suddenly there is a log jam that would cut into playing time and putting up the numbers to justify a hefty contract afterward.

[nycphils]

Hope Bazemore becomes our Lowry.

because every team has cap space and getting a FA is going to be near impossible. there's no way we attract a FA in the next 2 years. so i have no clue how Colangelo can course correct Hinkies path.

Unfortunately the answer to this is almost certainly to over pay mid level FA and those that are good but not franchise types will be paid as max players. As I alluded to earlier, hope you are all excited to win 38-43 games a year in perpetuity!

[threecount]

If they have to trade either Okafor or Nerlens, I pray it is Nerlens.

I think it would be a huge mistake to trade Okafor after only three quarters or so of a rookie season in which the guy shows he can score.

[azrider]

Does anyone have a good source for the theory that Hinkie was forced by ownership to draft Okafor?

I think it was hinkie's decision. It was a tough pill to swallow, but hinkie even said it and it's true, there's going to be misses regardless of how good of an evaluator you are. There were unknowns regarding all the bigs in some form and specifically Porzingis was high risk, high reward. He felt he couldn't come away empty handed. I wanted Porzingis because at that time I wasn't really as high on saric as I am now and thought he would flip with NY. Didn't happen, but he put the sixers in phenomenal shape.

[JFLNYC]

the reason okafor and Porzingis were not interested in coming to philly had absolutely nothing to do with embiid, Noel or saric. Granted the status of two of them were in doubt, but suddenly there is a log jam that would cut into playing time and putting up the numbers to justify a hefty contract afterward.

Forgive me for pointing out the obvious but that logjam was created by Hinkie.

[jamiethekiller]

Does anyone have a good source for the theory that Hinkie was forced by ownership to draft Okafor?

i don't have a good source for it. I just think that Okafor is anti-everything Hinkie believes in when developing a team. You can convince me that he drafted him to trade him but it would take a lot. I'd think the Hinkie would understand markets and supply/demand when trying to deal a player than most of the league wouldn't/couldn't make fit on a roster.

I'd say its backed up by the fact at the end of pg 8 and into pg 9(i think these are the pages) he extols the new NBA game and how pace and space are such key ingredients to winning. Everything about Okafor is anti new NBA. The whole section of that felt like a jab to the owners because it doesn't fit into the context of his manifesto.

[Wheels Tupay]

Take it for what it's worth but I have a friend that has dealt with Nerlens in a professional capacity a couple times and he basically HATES Noel

It's Calvin Isn't it?

[Ace Rothstein]

Take it for what it's worth but I have a friend that has dealt with Nerlens in a professional capacity a couple times and he basically HATES Noel

It's Calvin Isn't it?

He said friend

[Ace Rothstein]

Take it for what it's worth but I have a friend that has dealt with Nerlens in a professional capacity a couple times and he basically HATES Noel

It's Calvin Isn't it?

He said friend

[Philly the Kid]

DISCLAIMER: this is a marathon missive from P-t-K - you've been warned!


Look, I don't follow the Sixer's nearly as closely as many of you. AND -- I don't get to see them on TV all that often not being local. So I don't have as good feel for Hinkie and Harris as others. But I read his 13-pager (as a verbose person who writes a lot myself - I appreciated his effort. and his tone -- it was part ego and I'm older and wiser than Hinkie and would have played my hand a bit differently. I'm also a good verbal in-person communicator and would have a good rapport with fans and media - that said - Hinkie is a forward thinking man). He's smart. He was someone with a strategic view. The re-treads and musical-chairs of mediocrity - this nebulous phrase "basketball man" - sounds very much like the Phils being late to Black players, late to Sabr metrics and late to bringing in outside leadership and talent.

I can't unpack from my perch what Harris is really interested in? I know Lurie for all his short-comings - desperately wants to win a SB. I know Ed Snider also wants another Stanley Cup before he departs or is too senile to know. The Phils, have progressed. Middleton having more of a role has been a start, and while Macphail represents their ties to 'tried and true', Klentak is more modern and not a "from-with-in". The success of 08-09, etc. bought them some cred, showed them how fun it is to be a winner, and the loyalty contracts to JRol, Utley and Howard -- they are learning. They are trying to do it better.

Sixer's have had so many bone-heads making decisions.

When you look at Basketball franchises with long long long stretches of bottom 5 in the league, you see also a lot of high draft picks that did not all coalesce or pan out.

The year before the Sixer's took AI, they took Jerry Stackhouse at #3 overall. He was an ok player here and there and stuck around the league for a minute - got a shoe deal early on, but in the end, he was not a key piece let alone an anchor component of a champion. How many top 3 picks did the Clippers have over 2 decades? The T-Wolves now?

Hinkie can't control the ping pong balls. And few of us know right away if a 19 year old or 20 year old will be a star? AI, Garnett, Moses Malone , Lebron you can count on your fingers and toes the amount of guys that came in to the NBA out of high-school or after 1 season of college ball that you knew after 1 season they were star-bound. And if you look at first seasons for a guy like Kobe, not as impressive at AI.

Most here wanted Wiggins and he's starting to flash. We never expected to get Embiid and we got him because of fluke injury.

There's this refrain I've been hearing the last two days - "well, he was good at collecting assets and maneuvering the cap but how do we know he knew how to build anything? -- to put it all together and construct a champion roster?" - well guess what. No one that came before did? Billy King? Doug Collins? Even Larry Brown, great coach that is and was, picked Larry Hughes when Dirk Nowitski was one pick after us!!!

Why not just give Hinkie the shot to work it for a couple years? Truth is, until you get Chris Paul, or KD, or Lebron or Blake Griffin or Derek Rose, every year is a crapshoot. MCW on a crap team and winning ROY faked a lot of people out. Hinkie knew something about talent there in not being afraid to move a young player.

To me the entire Jerry Colangelo from his Arizona rocking-chair has been a very VERY bad situation. Whether Silver is behind it? Whether Harris doesn't care about an NBA title but wants to vastly increase value of franchise for a future flip? No idea.

The Sixer's are actually a really good situation for a coach, GM, owner - they have the most cap room, high picks, some young talent and set up with more picks coming.

Bringing in the Collangelo's to make decisions is pure idiocy. Hinkie might have not gotten it right? What if we got #2 pick not #1 ? What if a lot of things.

Right now - we don't know how good Nerlen Noel can be? We also don't know how good Okafor can be, but he's got an NBA body and he has to be a legit player in the NBA for the next 6-8 years. Saric is real and likely will try his hand at NBA. Embiid is probably not going to pan out. We see the Olajuwon upside, but he's probably always going to battle injuries but picking 3rd that year, there was no other move to make.

People say "I was on board for the tank but this had to be the last year". Guess what, you may suck for anther couple years tank or not. And getting Simmons or whomever - may or may not pan out. Hinkie and I were aligned in one significant way -- we both know that winning an NBA title, means you have to have super-stars and all-stars and you need those top picks to find 1-2. We have yet to draft an apparent Barkley or Moses or AI or Doc. No one think Noel is a future HOFer, and Okafor has not risen yet to show us a complete game. Nor health. Nor smarts off the court. Maybe Simmons will be all that?

Look at champions and teams that compete multiple times -- they have a good culture, coach, stars and role guys. Do the Warriors beat the Cavs last year without Iggy? But Iggy was pointless on the Sixer's because we didn't have a team where he didn't have to be THE star. Imagine different timing - and AI is in his prime and we have an inside guy like Moses in his prime and then Iggy is on that Sixer's team. Well now we have our guy to guard Lebron and play D.

NBA champions play D. But they also have scorers.

The 82-83 Sixers had Doc and Toney and Moses for scoring, and had Moses and Bobby Jones and Cheeks for D.

The 01 Sixer's had AI for scoring and Mutumbo and some journeyment to play D, but they couldn't offset Shaq AND Kobe.

Hinkie understands that you can go 10-15 years and never sniff the finals without a Wade or Lebron or Duncan or Kobe or Shaq. He was doing the only thing one can do in trying to get out of the cycle of being a 3-8 seed -- take as many shots as you can to get your "Shaq" or "Jordan" or whomever.

As good as OKC is with KD and Westbrook, two of the absolute best and most exciting players in the game - they have not punched through to a finals? Because EVEN with stars and scoring you need a bench and some inside presence and some balance some way to work it as a team of 12, not 2-3 gus.

How good were Stockton and Malone for Utah but could not win a finals? Payton and Kemp? Marjle KJ and Barkley - but could not win a titie? All got close.

What San Antonio has done is remarkable and they ridden a close to 20 year career of Duncan. Re-loaded as needed. They are the NE Patriots of Basketball and Poppovich is Belichick. They went from Robinson and Elliot to Parker and Ginobli and now Leonard and Aldridge --

Hinkie was not working to be good in 2017. He was working to finally get us to the place where we could become the next Warriors - a team of this era that could make it to finals more than once. Brett Brown was brought in as Poppovich disciple - so they may have jumped the gun getting the right coach too soon. Fans can complain all day long, but 1976-1983 era is long gone. Most don't remember WIlt and '67 and many only remember AI vs Kobe N Shaq now 15 years in the rear-view mirror. We haven't ever been a real contender since AI.

So many mistakes with this franchise historically, and my only consolation was the Celtics sucking and then they pulled of trades and maneuvers to get back in it for a minute.

So there is no assurance that Hinkie could have seen it to the end, and he would have required luck anyway. One of these picks was going to have become the Steph Curry or the Tim Duncan or something -- but at least he understood the problem. What did Carmelo do for the Knicks? How many playoff games did he lead them to win? Why did Lebron leave his home town for Miami? Because these days - players see how it works. Jordan as good as he was, would not have 6 rings without PIppen and without Phil Jackson. He needed Harper and Rodman and the Grant bros.

Curry and Clay need a Draymond and Iggy and 5 other guys.

I don't think they'd tank forever - but the concept was clear and correct. You either steal stars from another team and need the cap room to do it and need to get the right guys. And you pick as high as you can with as many picks as you can in hopes of snagging a true star. AND -- you can't judget 19-20-21 year olds to say how good they will be at 26-28?!

When the Warriors first got Curry, they had Monta Ellis who was scoring 24-26pts a game. People didn't understand how it would work. They Curry had ankle issues. He was slight of build. People saw flashes - but it was not a consensus out here in his favor with media and fans. But he got is 3-4-5 years to develop.

And Hinkie was trying to find talent that could get it's 2-3-4 years to develop.

It may be true that Hinkie resigned, but it's true he was driven to do so. Colangelo's role was clearly the beinning of the end. The nepotism for a mediocre at best son GM, is such a step backwards, is such an ole boys thing. He may well luck out with the draft picks and the cap space and get us to something exciting. Chances are he will not because he doesn't have the innovation and long term vision that Hinkie possessed. Hinkie would just keep adapting if the guys he got didn't pan out for whatever reason.

We all know Embiid could be a stud - that Duncan Shaq Olajuwon factor that you being to build around. AND - in today's NBA where centers are not the rule it would have been hard to beat the team with the best center in NBA by a lot. But Embiid is damaged goods and unlikely to make it. If he had fully recovered after the one off-season - and was back with vengeance flashing the future. Then, you could begin to build around it. Find the SF or PF that compliments him best, the PG and SG - and start to have a core 4-5. But they can't do that yet because they don't have the anchor guy.

The owner and new regime for however long they may stick around -- will not have the patience to see the long term. We will go back to where we were before. A middling franchise that can be anywhere from 30-47 wins, 3-8 seed, win a first round of playoffs one year. An Iggy drafted guy (Okafor) or a FA (Durant or lesser) - fill some seats. Debate moves to make. Draft #8-17.

Years ago I demonstrated that you could fairly argue that not a single draft pick in the 50 year history of the Sixer's except Mo Cheeks, ever mattered after top 9 in a draft. You can throw Jrue or Thad but I mean players that became anchors. You just don't find them after the first few picks AND worse than that - is that the Sixer's have picked #2 and #3 overall many times and have little to show for it?

The 3 picks I would not change by the Sixers in the last 30 years are AI, Barkley and Iggy. An overall #1, and the other two were top 10. In that time we spent a #3 overall on Okafor, Embiid (still hopeful for both), Stackhouse, Charles Smith and a #2 overall for Bradley, Kieth Van Horn and Evan Turner. That's 7 top 3 picks that 5 of which were totally pointless, 2 we're waiting on now.

#1 picks include Doug Collins in the early 70's and AI in the mid 90's. Charles Barkley was a #5 Andrew Toney a #8 -- you see any picks above 10 here? Even Weatherspoon was #9 and the infamous Sharone Wright taken as a #6 overall.

My point, is that picking high is a long shot, and picking above 10 is a near impossibility. All you can do is hope just as happened in 95 and 96 that you go from Stackhouse at #3 to Iverson at #1. Have people forgotten how bad we were then? I don't remember anyone calling it "tank' back then?

Hinkie was not a typical sports exec - but he was a highly intelligent out-of-the-box thinker who was strategic. And that was exciting. Because a lot of the rest of it is luck anyway. Our best hope now is that luck is on our side. Charley Manuel and Rueben were not visionaries, but there was enough young talent and a few solid vets to catapult the franchise in to being interesting. Don't forget Rolen and Abreu and the 3 years of Thome. All part of that process.

So all I can hope is that these bonehead Colangulas are lucky. Lucky the way Amaro and Montgomery got lucky. That's best case scenario here.

As far as FA, if KD and Westbrook want to stay together (why didn't they keep Hardin too?), maybe that's how we do it? We sign both - Embiid emerges and Noel for some shot blocking an D, and fill out the roster and voila, we get that ring or two with true studs and those guys get the glory in a major market on their way to HOF ? Maybe Okafor is enough and Embiid isn't required for that scenario. I believe Hinkie could have engineered that more than B Col

[azrider]

the reason okafor and Porzingis were not interested in coming to philly had absolutely nothing to do with embiid, Noel or saric. Granted the status of two of them were in doubt, but suddenly there is a log jam that would cut into playing time and putting up the numbers to justify a hefty contract afterward.

Forgive me for pointing out the obvious but that logjam was created by Hinkie.

My apologies, I thought you were referring more towards "culture" than the roster predicament he created.

[rolex]

the reason okafor and Porzingis were not interested in coming to philly had absolutely nothing to do with embiid, Noel or saric. Granted the status of two of them were in doubt, but suddenly there is a log jam that would cut into playing time and putting up the numbers to justify a hefty contract afterward.

Forgive me for pointing out the obvious but that logjam was created by Hinkie.

Do you think that Hinkie saw this as a log jam? IMO, he was just amassing tradeable assets. Which other team wanted Okafor or Noel could have him for what Hinkie needed to round out his roster (PG?) We saw with MCW, when a guy didn't work out and could be shopped for the right return, Hinkie dropped the axe on them.

[JFLNYC]

No, I don't think Hinkie saw it as a logjam and, yes, I agree he probably saw them as tradable assets.

My point was simply that an unintended consequence of his thinking and actions was that others (e.g., the agents for Porzi and Okafor) may have seen it as a logjam and were, therefore, reluctant to have their clients added to what seemed to them a sub-optimal place for their clients to grow and prosper.

A pitch to the agents which is, in effect: "Hey, I'm thinking about drafting your guy. He'd make a great tradable asset even if we can't work him into our system effectively," is not the strongest sales pitch.