July 14, 2015
There's a reason -- actually a few -- Sam Hinkie has escaped the kind of scrutiny Ruben Amaro has endured since his arrival in Philadelphia.
It's called hope. And it's what Hinkie traffics in better than any other general manager in this city. Hope, and its brother in arms, expectation, have a greater impact on our evaluation of the Sixers GM than any move(s) he's made in his two-plus seasons here.
Hinkie inherited a franchise that has a proud tradition despite its last title coming in 1983. And in the 31 seasons since, the closest the 76ers have come to a title can be boiled down to one singular moment.
Since, the fans endured (read: suffered through) a decade of NBA limbo — one that at times felt worse than where the Sixers currently reside, on the border Dante’s 7th circle. They weren’t good enough to actually contend for anything, but not quite terrible enough to secure a lottery pick. It was awful.
Once they realized this was the basketball equivalent of furiously spinning their tires* in mud, fans became desperate for any way out, even if it meant descending into darkest depths.
Enter Sam Hinkie.
He presented fans with a longterm plan — more of an ideology really — that could lead them out of limbo. He offered a hope that there was something more than Andre Iguodala, Evan Turner and an unrealistic chance at contention (see: 2011-12 season). Most importantly, he offered an alternative.
All Hinkie asked in return was that they be patient and trust the process.
Over the weekend, that process hit its biggest speed bump yet when Keith Pompey of The Inquirer broke the news that 2014 first-round pick Joel Embiid needs another surgery on his injured right foot and will likely be sidelined for the second straight season.
Still, in the face of what now seems like yet another losing season, a large percentage of Sixers supporters believe that Hinkie's way is the right way, at least for this team.
Why is that? What is it about the collection of assets the Sixers have acquired -- picks, players, cash -- that keeps him more or less free of the excoriation Amaro is hit with on a daily basis?
For one, there were the drastically different expectations placed on each when they stepped into their current roles. Amaro was taking over a Phillies team fresh off a World Series win, one that many expected to dominate the NL East for the next decade. Hinkie, on the other hand, was inheriting a team that many had already given up on -- much like the one Amaro's replacement will be handed when the GM is finally run out of town.
But perhaps more consequential is the 25-year gulf between each franchise's most recent parade down Broad Street. For it is in those 25 years that lies the genesis of Hinkie's greatest asset: hope.
It's the same reason millions of fans care about the scouting combine, read every mock draft possible, live and die by the bounce of a few ping-pong balls, sweat over their team's draft picks, and pay to watch meaningless scrimmages.
They hope.
Next year will be better.
This new guy is going change the future of our franchise.
Look at his upside, his potential, his ceiling.
He might be the next [insert hall-of-fame player here].
And the more desperate they become -- or rather, the longer it's been since they've had a taste of winning -- the more willing fans are to cling on to any sliver of hope. It's not unlike a man lost at sea believing the tiny ship crawling across the horizon will come to his rescue.
Prison philosopher Ellis Boyd Redding once said that hope was a dangerous thing, that it would drive a man insane.
And while that's true, it all depends on what you're hoping for as the end result. Sometimes, the insanity that hope drives you toward is the one thing strong enough to push you to do what is necessary.
And if the rest of the basketball world thinks that fans are insane for so blindly trusting Hinkie, they must remember that insanity is simply a matter of perspective. To some, it would seem equally insane* to settle for an eight-seed with no real chance to improve year after year.
You see, Red was wrong about a hope. All he needed was someone to show him the power of hope, someone to tell him that "hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things."
For Sixers fans, the hope is not for an NBA title. Not yet at least. For now, all they hope is that the man in charge has a plan that will put them on a path toward a title.
It's why Sam Hinkie has been able to work fans into a frenzy over moves like the acquisition of Nik Stauskas while avoiding the blame for drafting an injured player third overall because of an upside and potential that may never be realized on the NBA level; if you were of the mind that Embiid was the right, albeit risky, pick, odds are this latest setback hasn't changed your mind about whether or not he was the best option for the Sixers.
It's why the fans buy into the wait-until-next-year approach before the team's even played a game. And it's why the team hasn't yet put a timeline on Hinkie's grand plan. Once the Sixers do that, expectations (remember them?) will suddenly begin to change.
But hope is a finite entity; we only have so much we are willing to give. At some point, those expectations will need to change, regardless of whether or not Hinkie's plan is ready to be unleashed on the world.
In the meantime, fans will continue to hope, one pocketful of rocks at a time.
