Just after the Seattle saga ended and Vivek was officially named owner I started a thread about possible coaching and GM candidates. For GMs Hinkie was at the top of my list and I haven't seen anything from him that has changed my mind.
The Sixers have a great trade chip in Okafor, a great defender in Noel, the rights to a guy widely regarded as one of the best European players, a guy who could still just as easily become an all-star big man as the next Greg Oden in Embiid, he drafted the ROY in the late lottery in Carter-Williams and then got a nice haul for him before people realized he just isn't a starter quality PG.
And of course he's stockpiled a ridiculous number of picks including a pretty decent possibility of having two top 4 picks this year.
The Sixers are a punchline right now but in a year or two when they are in the same place as the T'Wolves as a team with a great collection of young talent and a bright future will Hinkie get the credit he deserves?
Sam Hinkie is bright, shrewd and patient. If he'd been hired instead of D'Alessandro I have no doubt the Kings would be in a much better position going forward.
it seems to me that a team that initiates a more traditional rebuild strategy is just as likely to to luck into that "great collection of young talent and a bright future," because a more traditional rebuild doesn't undermine the development of that young talent through the toxicity that an intentionally-constructed losing culture creates...
and as far as i can tell, the sixers' really haven't turned the draft picks they've already acquired into the transformational talent that sam hinkie was seeking when he first began this "process." that is the luck of the draft, after all. i mean, how great of a trade chip is jahlil okafor, really? he's on a rookie-scale contract, which can be difficult to trade for a player of equal talent precisely because of it's value as a low-cost investment. how many players of consequence get traded before their second year even begins? usually a team will grow that talent for two to three seasons before leveraging it into a future trade. the sixers have also mortgaged a lot of their leverage in potential okafor trade talks because of their well-known need to unclutter their frontcourt. beyond that, everybody around the league is constantly talking about the athletic big man of the future who can hit from range and guard multiple positions. okafor is quite excellent on the low block, but he's decidedly out of vogue with contemporary nba trends, and i can't envision a single team trading philly a player of equal value to a top-3 pick...
as for nerlens noel, he's certainly a great defender, but does he even project out to be a better overall player in the future than willie cauley-stein? noel is an attractive piece for the sixers future, but he's hardly what i would call a building block. then there's dario saric, and while he's been exceptional in overseas competition, nobody has any idea what he's going to be as an [eventual] nba player. now, it's entirely possible that joel embiid may very well become a transformative two-way big someday, but he's also a 7-footer who has yet to play a single nba game because of serious back and foot injuries he suffered before the ripe old age of 21, the kind of injuries that are often difficult to recover from and can prematurely kill the careers of big men. names like bill walton and yao ming come to mind. he's young, of course, so perhaps he heals and succeeds in becoming that heir-to-olajuwan that so many scouts believed he could be, but history says it's pretty likely that embiid misses significant time from season-to-season because of recurring injury problems...
it's true enough that the sixers are currently still sitting on a valuable stockpile of draft picks, and they could very well parlay that stockpile into a future contending team. there is definitely talent to be had in the upcoming draft. but does that talent get grown in philadelphia if hinkie had remained in charge? does it ever amount to more than just a valuation on a spreadsheet? do the players ever get over their resentment of a franchise culture that actually prizes losing? can the team retain that talent? can they attract new talent via free agency? and how many fans will have vacated the building in "the process"? it's one thing to sandbag a bit in a few games down the stretch of a lost season, and another thing entirely to build an entire franchise's future around that strategy. it's hard to imagine a team creating an environment more repelling than the one the kings have created for themselves across the last decade, yet the sixers managed to do it in just a few seasons...
so, rather than engineering the mother of all tanking strategies that damages the franchise's reputation and their team-wide culture and their potential ability to retain their own talent or attract new talent, might it be just as wise--if not moreso--to simply scout and draft well within the context of a traditional rebuild, which usually nets a few valuable first round selections for most teams that engage in such a rebuild? sure, the chances of hitting on a superstar are much higher when you 1) have more draft picks, and 2) consistently pick higher than most other teams, but given the toxic conditions that such a strategy can ultimately create, there's still a high probability of failure, and that failure comes at the very high cost of fan interest and ticket sales...
