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How the lottery hasn't cleared up anything for Sixers

Above where Sam Hinkie stood on the ballroom floor of the Midtown Hilton on Tuesday night, the large screens that displayed the results of the draft lottery were showing the beginning of the Western Conference championship round between the Houston Rockets and Golden State Warriors.

76ers general manager Sam Hinkie. (Matt Slocum/AP)
76ers general manager Sam Hinkie. (Matt Slocum/AP)Read more

Above where Sam Hinkie stood on the ballroom floor of the Midtown Hilton on Tuesday night, the large screens that displayed the results of the draft lottery were showing the beginning of the Western Conference championship round between the Houston Rockets and Golden State Warriors.

All the team executives milling about and answering questions about their hopes for the future would have gladly traded the promise of tomorrow for the present tense being enjoyed by the two franchises up there on the screens. That included Hinkie, even though his steps toward that goal often seem so measured they seem likely to require years before adding up to a full stride.

"I'm so happy for Houston. There are so many people I care about there. I spent eight years there and aged in dog years because we went at it really hard," said Hinkie, who was an assistant to general manager Daryl Morey when hired away by 76ers owner Josh Harris. "It feels good to see them have that kind of success and to see hard work rewarded. It isn't always. It isn't fair always. We once sat there with a 25-year-old Tracy McGrady and a 25-year-old Yao Ming. Fast forward 18 months and it was all over."

Plans don't always pan out, and hard work isn't always fairly rewarded. The Sixers have a plan, but it doesn't come with a guarantee. At the moment, and for the last two years of moments, the plan has been to collect elite talent through the draft, and to identify role players among second-round picks and undervalued free agents. At some point, the next phase will involve adding high-value free agents to complete the picture, but that point may still be a ways off. Any expectation that the Sixers will contend for anything special in the next two seasons is probably overly optimistic.

"There are things you can look at on our roster and assume to be solidified. Our overall roster churn in terms of minutes was much less this year than last year. Maybe it will be less next year as opposed to this year. We're not really sure," Hinkie said.

In other words, if you think you know the identity of the team's core, maybe you do. But maybe you don't, either.

"Our fans ought to demand some change. They ought to demand that we be looking [around] and changing," Hinkie said. "I don't think the Warriors fans should demand a whole lot of change. I think people would be really upset if they changed the top set of those players. But I think we should always be looking.

"People tease us about the players who are here two weeks or a month, but then there's Robert Covington who's here all year . . . and is an NBA rotation player. If those players we bring in have a 25 percent chance of being a rotation player, you ought to expect it takes four of them to find one."

Even those among us without an analytic bent can do that math, but the troubling part is that Hinkie can give no indication when the churn will slow down. If there was less of it in 2014-15 than the previous season, as the GM suggested, I would like to see the analysis.

Twenty-three players saw time on the court in the new regime's first season, and 25 players did so last season. In both seasons, there were nine players who accumulated 900 minutes or more (only Tony Wroten and Hollis Thompson remain from that 2013-14 group), but more important there are still few anchors at the top of the roster. On the four teams still playing basketball, a total of 17 players racked up 2,000 minutes or more, an average of more than four solid cogs per team. On the Sixers, only Nerlens Noel had a 2,000-minute season.

It would make sense for Noel to be joined in the heavy rotation by Joel Embiid and whomever is taken with the third pick in the draft for the coming season, but there's no guarantee about that, either. The forward movement is measured and precise and sometimes it becomes intentionally lateral. Just ask Michael Carter-Williams.

Sam Hinkie isn't saying how things will work out. Part of that is because he doesn't like to say and part of it is because he doesn't know. That's the risk, and understandably so. After all, seeing the future is difficult. With that in mind, the Sixers will continue their patient approach of sneaking up on it quietly using small steps they hope might add up eventually to something worth showing on a large screen.

@bobfordsports