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So far, Hinkie has built a team for 1985

The Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers recently concluded an NBA championship series that was a model of the leaguewide trend toward pace-and-space basketball, in which running the floor, slashing to the paint, and kicking out for three-point shots is the new coin of the realm.

76ers general manager Sam Hinkie. (C.F. Sanchez/Staff file photo)
76ers general manager Sam Hinkie. (C.F. Sanchez/Staff file photo)Read more

The Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers recently concluded an NBA championship series that was a model of the leaguewide trend toward pace-and-space basketball, in which running the floor, slashing to the paint, and kicking out for three-point shots is the new coin of the realm.

Just like back in Hickory, the rim is still 10 feet from the floor, but the modern game doesn't have the same requirement for players who can stand there and touch it on tippy-toes. In the six-game series, including two games that went to overtime, players taller than 6-foot-8 combined for just 180 minutes for the Warriors and 173 minutes for the Cavaliers. To look at it from the other side, 2,627 of the 2,980 man-minutes available were given to those 6-8 and shorter.

Every pendulum swings back eventually, and all trends can be bucked by stronger forces, but the game has changed. Analytics have shown that teams are smart to live by the three-point shot, but never by the two-pointer. The mathematical payoff just isn't there. So, the ball has to move quickly, and it should always be no more than a crisp pass away from the three-point line.

All of which brings us to the 76ers as they transition between the second and third seasons in the tenure of general manager Sam Hinkie. After the Sixers selected center Jahlil Okafor with the third pick in last week's draft - the consensus best talent on the board - Hinkie finds himself in the ironic position of having used tomorrow's methods but ending up with yesterday's team.

The Sixers have three elite assets on the roster - assuming good health, which is far from guaranteed - and all three are listed by the team at 6-11 or taller. The building blocks of Nerlens Noel, Joel Embiid, and Okafor not only overshadow the rest of the roster with their height, but they also far outstrip the talent level of the other role players. The irony is that Hinkie, considered the most cutting-edge employer of advanced analysis, set out to construct a team of the future, and he is, instead, building the 1985 Houston Rockets.

"He's definitely a throwback in a real way," Hinkie said last week of Okafor, whose skill set is that of a traditional, back-to-the-basket, low-post scorer. "That causes some discussion in today's NBA - what's that look like, how does he fit there? You might hear people say you don't throw it into the post the way we did in an earlier era. [But] you don't see a player like Jah in this era. They don't come along in a way where you're looking to feed them over and over and over. That was a style that was once common and is now less common. The question is, if someone comes back and enters our league [who] does that again, what happens?"

One answer is that the opponent would say, "Thank you very much," particularly when the low-post player shoots 51 percent from the free-throw line, as Okafor did with Duke. Playing low repeatedly and, therefore, limiting yourself to two-point shots, or contested threes as the defense recovers to follow the long pass back to the perimeter, is fine when it works, but it's not the direction of the NBA.

In the 2000-01 season, three-point shots accounted for 13.7 percent of the league's field-goal attempts. Last season, it was 22.4 percent. Either blame or praise analytics, but the value of that extra point per basket has increasingly pushed the game away from the paint. Shooting 35 percent on three-pointers translates to the same value as shooting 52.5 percent on two-pointers. So teams spread the floor, populate the perimeter with marksmen, and let it fly. (Speaking of 1985, by the way, three-point shots were 3.1 percent of the average team's attempts, with the league average of 257 per season accounting for a little more than what today's teams take in any given 10-game span.)

The Sixers are currently long on post players and short on marksmen and talented slashers. Hinkie talked about the possibilities of Okafor and Noel playing together, with Okafor a stay-at-home defender and Noel acting as a free safety in the basket area. On the other end of the floor, well, it could get crowded down there, and that's not even taking into account Embiid, if he's able to get on the floor any time soon.

"Bigs are an important part of winning as well," Hinkie said, after acknowledging the growing importance of perimeter play. "What's been clear over time, over history, is that having the best players wherever you can find them - whether shooting guard, at center, at the point guard - that's the most critical thing."

True enough, and, on talent alone, Okafor was probably the right selection. His addition, however, means the process of putting together a roster that makes sense, with pieces that fit into something resembling a modern starting lineup, is no further advanced than it was before the draft. Hinkie downplayed the possibility the team would be able to significantly improve at those needy positions in the free-agency period.

Does that mean another year must fall from the calendar before the Sixers can identify and acquire elite players at other spots and begin to mold the whole unit? It probably does. Drafting Okafor did put them a little closer to the basket perhaps, but it also put them a little closer to 1985 and a little farther from 2015.

@bobfordsports