Philadelphia 76ers: Reminiscence Of Hinkie Regime To Be Booted

By George Kondoleon | Jul 27, 2016

Jun 24, 2016; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Philadelphia 76ers number one overall draft pick Ben Simmons (R) and President of Basketball Operations Bryan Colangelo (M) and number twenty-fourth overall draft pick Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot (L) during an introduction press conference at the Philadelphia College Of Osteopathic Medicine. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports /

The Philadelphia 76ers will be looking to clear out the the rest Hinkie’s “hand-picked management team”, per Zach Lowe.

The Philadelphia 76ers are continuing their busy offseason, as Zach Lowe reports that the team will clear out the rest of Hinkie’s analytics management team by the end of August. The report from league sources came during Lowe’s piece on the Orlando Magic’s rebuild without a solidified star.

The comparison was brought in as a way to reason on why “trusting the process” was a reasonable alternative to try to build the team with scraps. Sam Hinkie’s goal of acquiring a star through the draft has seemingly come post-resignation, as the team now reaps Ben Simmons as their cornerstone player. This was looked as vindication, but it was the culmination of a series of smart moves that led to a more evident success story.

The process will always be debated, but the results are seemingly turning positive. Churning through the scraps of the D-League, summer league, and the latter part of the draft have proved to be successful in finding value players. The Philadelphia 76ers successfully developed forwards Robert Covington and Jerami Grant, while also giving teams promising options in T.J. McConnell, Richaun Holmes, and formerly K.J. McDaniels and Christian Wood.

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All of these former bottom-feeders have seen some type of success in spurts, and it’s all thanks to precise scouting and the reliance of analytics. Now, to say it was all due to analytics is ignoring the importance of varying factors that went into each individual situation, but it was clear that there was a strong analytical push from Sam Hinkie and his regime to find these diamonds in the rough.

The same analytics team was involved with the draft, which is still up for debate as Joel Embiid is yet to step foot on the court and the selection Jahlil Okafor created a muddled front-court situation. The team that helped Sam Hinkie culminate this Philadelphia 76ers young core could be seeing their last days, as Lowe reports they could be out as early as the end of August.

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, as the Bryan Colangelo will try to create more of a winning base. Canning the old team doesn’t mean a total dissonance of analytics all together from the new regime, but could rather indicate Colangelo bringing in his own set of members.

There is often a notion amongst people that analytics may not have as much of an importance for a team geared more to winning than those to trying to find a star, but it may actually have much more meaning for a team competing for a championship. The Philadelphia 76ers are nearing a point where they will have to pay their young promising stars big money in the next 2-5 years, which could strap the team for cash in free agency.

Analytics comes into play to find teams cheap but productive contracts, much like the Philadelphia 76ers have done in recent years that led to one of their main guards in T.J. McConnell. The new management regime will try to emulate the “diamond in the rough” mission in the near future where their money is flooded towards their current prospects.

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This decision to rid the organization of the remaining Hinkie-era should not be surprising, but it is important. The staffers behind the closed doors are what make the wheels turn, and the Philadelphia 76ers will hope to find quality people doing the unrecognized work.