Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
With 76ers desperate for help, Hinkie still thinking of future
PHILADELPHIA>> Brett Brown had spent a month flashing the signals, occasionally letting out a muffled plea, regularly sharing the logic.
The Sixers, he said, were improving. They were young. They were attentive. But they had eight wins, eight of ‘em, in the middle of February. The Phillies could expect more than that from their No. 3 starter. Help? Anybody? “We understand,” Brown would allow, before breaking for the AllStar Game, and then the trade deadline, “that we need a bit better balance in regards to age and experience.”
They’ve needed that for years, three of them to be precise, all three of which were met by indifference by Sam Hinkie, who has taken a plan and has made it a lifestyle. And by Friday, after fitting Brown with no more than a fresh second-round draft choice and an expiring contract of a veteran unlikely ever to play a shift, Hinkie built himself a new professional fort.
With Jerry Colangelo having gained control of the operation, Hinkie was kind enough to appoint himself as the curator of the Sixers’ future, their long-term future, their long, long-term future. Not that he wasn’t in charge of acquiring injured players, European promises, projects, draft choices, cap room and other things unable to swish a clutch free throw, but Friday, he all but had those responsibilities engraved on his desktop nameplate.
In a mini-rant that slid toward intellectual comedy, Hinkie accepted his own challenge to be the one-man franchise security force, to be that individual unworried about winning games or fitting his youthful teamwith a veteran star, not now, and not necessarily later, either.
“I don’t think you’ll see a big change in our mindset about what really matters,” Hinkie said, at a PCOM press conference. “The draft, free agency is littered with mistakes of short-sighted thinking. And if we try to rail against anything, it’s that.
“I often say this in our meetings: I say, ‘If I’m not thinking about the future, who is? Who is? Like, whose job is that to think about what happens in 12 months or 36 months or, God forbid, 60 months? And if it is notme, tell me who that person is around here to do it, and fine, I’m happy to listen to them.’ But I think that’s the goal. I think that’s the goal of the whole operation. It’s, ‘How do you put all the building blocks in place so that someday you can have a parade on Broad Street?’”
He’s the general manager, at least in title. He’s supposed to care about the future. But he’s required to consider the present, too. He is obligated to support his young players with the occasional in-season boost, particularly when the head coach is convinced that it is time. And that doesn’t just mean Elton Brand or Ish Smith.
Hinkie said he was encouraged that there was some deadline interest in Robert Covington and T.J. McConnell, in Jerami Grant and Richaun Holmes, and, naturally, in Jahlil Okafor and Nerlens Noel. They are good players. But that growing realization should have left Hinkie with one of two options: Keep them all and add talent … or trade them for value. Keeping them just so they could continue to lose 45 out of every 53 games was not on that list.
But the deadline arrived and Hinkie would settle for a 2017 secondround pick from Denver through Houston and for veteran center Joel Anthony from Detroit, who is likely to be waived. That cost him the rights to Chukwudiebere Maduabum and left JaKarr Sampson on waivers. Yet it did allow the Sixers to set the world record for collecting big men named Joel unlikely to play a game for a team in an entire season. So, hey, where’s Adam Aaron’s confetti machine when it’s needed?
At this point, Hinkie could have added Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in his prime and it wouldn’t have pushed the Sixers out of the lottery. But there was talk about Blake Griffin and Jeff Teague, and the Sixers seemed to have enough assets, including the kind who actually play, to have done something to advance the program at the deadline. Yet when Brown’s phone didn’t ring, it was Hinkie calling.
So … maybe next trade deadline? Or the next? And, yes, the man did throw the phrase “60 months” out there, even if it was with a shudder.
“One of the things we tried hard to do is give ourselves a wide swath of options at every moment,” Hinkie said. “The trade deadline is a moment when transactions happen. The summer is another moment when transactions happen, and we will have another wide set of options in the summer, from free agency to trades to the draft to all that in whatever way we choose to sort of combine it. So we do think it will be good.”
By ignoring any plea from Brown for help, implied or otherwise, the Sixers probably ensured themselves the best odds in the next lottery. Hinkie, though, refuses to rule out the idea of using the draft not for immediate help, but for the accumulation of more projects, either home-grown or foreign-bred.
“I’d like to think we’d still take long views,” Hinkie said. “We’re all impatient. I think we’d all like to play deep in May and get into June. I think we’d all like to make the playoffs. My view is super critical and about what our goals are and how best to achieve them. It’s far too early to know.”
Hinkie was the general manager at the 2014 deadline, and at the 2015 deadline, and at the 2016 deadline, and he has built a team with eight victories. But he is still taking long views. By Friday, he made it clear why. Around there, he’s in charge of the future. And he plans to keep it that way.
To contact Jack McCaffery, email him at jmccaffery@21stcenturymedia.com; follow him on Twitter @ JackMcCaffery