Ford: Without Hinkie, will Sixers be lucky in Tuesday's NBA lottery?
Now that the 76ers have reached the jumping-off point that general manager Sam Hinkie constructed slowly and carefully for most of three NBA seasons, the biggest mystery that remains is not why owner Josh Harris bought into the analytical poison pill he swallowed in 2013 but why he spit it out just as the medicine was about to take effect one way or the other.
Now that the 76ers have reached the jumping-off point that general manager Sam Hinkie constructed slowly and carefully for most of three NBA seasons, the biggest mystery that remains is not why owner Josh Harris bought into the analytical poison pill he swallowed in 2013 but why he spit it out just as the medicine was about to take effect one way or the other.
Sure, there's something comforting about hiring a passel of Colangelos to tidy up the team's tattered image within the league, but Tuesday's draft lottery is not really theirs to claim. It represents a distillation of everything good and bad about Hinkie's tenure, a calculated staredown with the laws of probability that could lead to great things or something much less.
That was always the deal with Hinkie. No middle ground. No padding the corners. Joel Embiid was a bargain because he will either be a huge contributor or a huge bust, and no one knows which. Jahlil Okafor and Nerlens Noel will either develop complete games, or they will be unserviceable on good teams. Dario Saric will show up sooner or later, and he will be either Nowitzki or Nitwitski. Take your pick.
If the risk is off the chart, then so is the potential reward, and the Sixers could be on the brink of that if the lottery balls favor them in New York with the top spot in the draft and another high pick courtesy of the Lakers. It could go the other way, of course, and leave them with just one selection that fails to land either player in what is regarded as a two-man draft.
Regardless, it won't be the builder of the car who gets to finally punch the accelerator. Bryan Colangelo, the new general manager, and Jerry Colangelo, the super consultant who said he had nothing to do with his son's hiring, have both indicated that the draft and the entire offseason will be dedicated to hitting the gas and putting a competitive team on the floor right away.
It is possible Hinkie had the same intention, but Harris was worried that the long game might lengthen yet again. He was tired of being embarrassed among his NBA peers and, when the organization went mum rather than deal in an adult fashion with Okafor's off-court high jinks, that tore things. It was time for some grown-ups in the room.
Hinkie couldn't live with such a rebuke of his methods, so he quit, leaving behind a remarkable 13-page resignation letter to ownership that was not burdened by excessive editing. He eventually got around to saying that the moment to strike had just about arrived, although Sam's idea of immediacy was always open to interpretation.
But he did get us this far, and it is a little sad he didn't get to finish the job with either roaring success or abject failure. Nothing in between. It would have been fascinating to see what he would have done with, say, the first, fourth, 24th, and 26th picks in the draft; with Embiid finally healthy and Saric exceeding expectations; and a ton of salary cap room for potential free agents. I don't want to go out on a limb, but even Sam Hinkie might have tried to win with that combination.
We'll never know. The standard play is to package one or two of the picks for some veteran stability on the roster, and the Colangelos are good bets to stick to accepted standards. That wasn't really Sam's game.
The most fitting outcome for Hinkie's legacy on Tuesday night would be if the Sixers are unlucky with their own chances, but the Sacramento Kings - tied with two other teams for fifth-worst position - somehow hit the lottery. There are 19 ball combinations out of the 1,000 in play that could give the Kings the top pick. And guess what? The Sixers would have the right to take it from them in exchange for their own.
Hinkie extracted that small concession as a throw-in to last year's trade that brought Carl Landry, Nik Stauskas, Jason Thompson, and a 2018 first-round pick in exchange for two second-round players you never heard of. It was a classic Hinkie deal, trading cap space (the Kings got $16 million in relief) for players of questionable value and future draft assets that might turn into something. If the long shot hits on Tuesday night - Sacramento has less than a 2 percent chance of getting the No. 1 selection - obtaining the right to swap picks could be the difference between drafting Ben Simmons and Kris Dunn.
Maybe that wouldn't forgive all the sins committed in the name of tanking during the last three seasons, but it would be nice to see one of those maddening flyspecks that Hinkie loved so much turn into an actual work of art.
It's a lot to ask for, but the possibility is there, however slight. Hinkie dealt in that world of endless possibilities until ultimately the owner wanted certainties instead. So, Sam didn't make it to Tuesday night in New York. Whether the Sixers are lucky or unlucky in the lottery, he will still be the one who shaped the evening, pointing the team skyward with no way to know if there was fuel enough to reach it. It's still a very pretty sky, though.
@bobfordsports