http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/12318 ... de-winning
On draft day 2013, when Hinkie agreed to trade Jrue Holiday, a 23-year-old All-Star, for Nerlens Noel and a protected 2014 first-rounder, a rival Eastern Conference GM turned to his war room and declared: "They're crazy." Thaddeus Young, then a Sixers forward, tweeted one word: "OMG."
If the Sixers were trying to contend in the first year of Hinkie's tenure, these would be logical responses. But they weren't. And the fact that Noel had torn his left ACL four months earlier presented Philly with a two-pronged opportunity that no one else had the stomach to pursue. There was the price of the big man's talent, which was now discounted because of injury. (Noel had once been the projected top pick.) Then there was the injury timetable, which was now that much more palatable because, well, the Sixers had designs on the lottery in 2014 too. (Hinkie put Noel on what can only be called a "conservative" rehab program, sitting him all season as the team went 19-63.)
So when the 2014 draft came along and the Sixers had the No. 3 pick, perhaps it shouldn't have been surprising that Hinkie picked Joel Embiid, a would-be Hakeem Olajuwon, just as he had nabbed Noel. A 7-footer who might be the best prospect in the draft? Whose injury (a stress fracture in his right foot) dropped him across so many draft boards but not Hinkie's? Who wouldn't be asked to win as a rookie? Check, check and check.
But injured players aren't the only way to invest in the future and divest from the present. Consider that with the 2014 first-rounder that Hinkie got for Holiday, he picked Elfrid Payton, a point guard coveted by Orlando, at No. 10. Hinkie then flipped Payton to Orlando for pick No. 12, a 2015 second-rounder and a 2017 first-rounder. With that No. 12 pick, Hinkie nabbed 20-year-old Dario Saric, a 6-foot-10 Croatian who has already been named the FIBA Europe Young Player of the Year twice.
Another front office might have been afraid to select a player who might not come to the U.S. for two years. But here, as with injury, the cost of a young, foreign centerpiece not immediately playing for the Sixers is exceptionally discounted. Even better, an NBA team doesn't even pay an overseas pick who has yet to suit up for it, meaning that the rest of the planet can effectively serve as a free minor league system. Hinkie, who has modeled exchange rates for foreign-to-domestic stats, has four other prospects -- all second-rounders -- still ripening in Turkey, Germany, China and Australia. For free.
As Brown says, "We talk often about having a very, very long lens." Philadelphia doesn't need their help -- doesn't want their help -- just yet.
The CBA is an all-important, demoralizingly confusing document that the Sixers scrutinize like billionaires searching for a tax loophole. So when the team cleared the balance sheets -- the payroll is now a meager $42.5 million, lowest in the league by $11 million -- it did so knowing certain opportunities in the market would follow.
Today, Philadelphia is so unencumbered by the current salary cap ($63.1 million) and luxury tax ($76.8 million) that it sits below the cap floor ($56.8 million). But many franchises struggle to create financial flexibility on a regular basis. Enter Hinkie, who is more than happy to take on others' contractual waste -- and dump it himself -- all for a small, negligible fee: a future second-round pick.
Throughout league history, the second-rounder has been the penny stock of hoops, the spiritual brother of baseball's player to be named later. But they're not valued that way by these Sixers, who collect the things like bingeing hoarders, amassing them via salary dumps and throw-ins on other deals. In last year's draft, Hinkie acquired or traded five second-round picks, not including his own; this June he'll have the rights to four more from other teams. Hell, he's acquired one for 2016, two for 2018, two for 2019 and one for 2020 already. Nobody else in the NBA has an extra 2020 pick -- very possibly because said pick might presently be 12 years old.
But to Philly, any second-rounder is both an embryonic trade chip and a lottery ticket that jumps in value come draft day, when some team will inevitably take a shining to a specific prospect without having the picks to draft him. When that happens, the Bank of Hinkie will be there -- ready to flip the second-rounder for cash (and profit); or to package it for another asset (and profit); or to keep it himself, hoping to sign the next Chandler Parsons, the eventual $46 million forward whom the Rockets drafted 38th overall in 2011 (and profit).
Consider Jerami Grant, whom Philly took 39th out of Syracuse in June. Grant signed a four-year deal that guaranteed his first two seasons for $885,000 and $845,000, respectively, some $300,000 more annually than the league-minimum salary of many second-rounders. That financial security was catnip to him and no sweat to the Sixers, who certainly have cap space on their delayed production schedule. But the key twist -- just as it was with Parsons -- is that the forward's third and fourth years are neither guaranteed nor big raises. This template led guard K.J. McDaniels, the 32nd pick in June, to reject Hinkie's four-year offer in favor of a one-year, unguaranteed deal. And by those latter two seasons, when the Sixers do plan to spend, Grant will be something very different: either an underpriced keeper -- "He's one of those guys, for me, that makes me want to hug Sam," Brown recently gushed -- or someone you can cut loose at zero cost. In both cases, he will be a team-friendly asset and maybe one day, if Hinkie plays his cards right, a detail in a PowerPoint slide.
Show up to a January shootaround at Wells Fargo Center, 120 minutes before tip-off, and two things quickly become apparent. First: These Sixers are conspicuously long-limbed -- 10 of the 14 athletes boast a wingspan at least six inches longer than their height. Second: With the remarkable exception of forward Robert Covington -- an undrafted, sweet-shooting 24-year-old with a 7-2 wingspan -- approximately none of them can, you know, shoot.
This is no accident. It remains scientifically impossible to develop arm length, an underrated characteristic on defense. ("Sam is very studied in regards to that," Brown says.) But as Spurs wing Kawhi Leonard has verified, it is possible to grow a prospect's shooting ability over time. And Philly, forcing turnovers at a league-high 15.6 percent through the All-Star break but shooting a league-low 41 percent, is incentivized to wait on such a large-scale renovation. If the Sixers happen to have one of the worst offenses in history in the meantime, boosting their odds in the draft lottery? That's no accident either. The 2008-09 Thunder pulled off a version of this with Russell Westbrook, who led the league in turnovers as a rookie point guard as the team went 23-59. The next year, Oklahoma City took Harden at No. 3.
Hinkie, as part of his drive to measure everything, tracks each shot his players take, not just in games but also shootarounds and practices. "You can't hide," Richardson says. Some of the tallying is by hand; some of it is noted off video. Brown uses the data to see which players "are investing time into development," he says, and doles out playing time and in-game privileges accordingly. "It's crazy," Noel says. "They'll tell me what my free throw percentage is in practice. And I'm like, 'What?!'"
It is possible that no team takes the structure of its pregame shootarounds more seriously. The players arrive in scheduled 15-minute waves of two or three and promptly begin to sweat under the supervision of shooting coach Eugene Burroughs. On one recent night in Philadelphia, Hinkie observes from a sideline as a platoon of assistants, video coordinators and basketball-ops guys waits on the sidelines with MacBooks bearing video and spreadsheets. When each wave finishes its tailored drills -- in Brown's system, for instance, bigs focus exclusively on baseline jumpers and rolling to the basket -- the players sit down with a designated coach, who walks them through preselected clips from the last game. It's like jump shot triage. "They really hit us over the head with percentages," Thomas says, "and what type of shots they want us to take."
Like Houston, which shoots the most 3s in the league, Philadelphia fetishizes the importance of being lethal from behind the arc. Just as the title-winning Spurs fetishized it last season, and the playoff-bound Warriors, Hawks and Trail Blazers fetishize it now. But that trait can also be purchased and supplemented, Hinkie knows, when production is no longer delayed: Think of nomadic snipers like Ray Allen and Mike Miller; now think of what their spacing could do for a Nerlens Noel. Until then, the Sixers are second to last in 3-point percentage, at 31 percent, while still attempting more 3s than all but 10 teams.
Not coincidentally, Philly also plays at the sixth-highest pace in the league -- all the better to up its players' counting stats, however flawed, in case any buyers are vaguely paying attention. Carter-Williams might not be traded, but if he is, rest assured that his Rookie of the Year award -- which he won while hoisting 15.1 shots a game -- will factor into his new employer's calculus. Or take the aforementioned Thaddeus Young, of OMG fame. After Hinkie took over, the forward took a career-high 16.2 shots and 3.7 3s a game, producing a career-high 17.9 points despite shooting a career-low 45.4 percent overall. That summer Philly flipped Young to Minnesota for two players and a 2015 first-round pick. "The team I'm coaching now isn't the team I'll be coaching a few years from now," Brown admits. "Some people will make it. Some people won't."
Why all that junk any idiot would know?
