Would Sam Hinkie approve of 76ers trading up?
"The Process" was a wonky think-piece-turned-basketball philosophy. By the end of Sam Hinkie's tenure with the Philadelphia 76ers, many around the NBA world exhaled from sheer exhaustion of it. Second-round draft picks flew around like paper planes in an elementary classroom. Good corporeal players were traded for potentially good theoretical assets, and injured was a de facto status for the team's best talents.
Hinkie once traded an (injured, to a degree that was hidden) All-Star point guard for a draft pick. He traded down two spots in the middle of the first round to steal an extra pick. Three of Hinkie's first four first-round draft picks missed their entire rookie years. That's why, as reports swirl about the 76ers' trade talks with the Boston Celtics to move up in the NBA Draft, this joke lands so hard:
But Markelle Fultz isn't injured. The Sixers - led by president of basketball operations Brian Colangelo - are bringing the 2017 NBA Draft's best prospect in Saturday to work him out and test those medicals before they complete the trade, as Paste BN Sports' Sam Amick reported Saturday:
The Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers are in serious trade discussions that would yield the Sixers the No. 1 overall pick from Boston for the No. 3 overall pick and future picks, a person familiar with the negotiations told Paste BN Sports. The person requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly until a deal is official.
Point guard Markelle Fultz is planning a trip to Philadelphia for a workout with Sixers executives and will likely be the top pick - if the Sixers keep it.
Hinkie was known to ignore team need - he used three top-10 picks in four years on centers - and to plot for the future rather than trying to win in the present. Making a move - and giving up multiple future draft picks in the process - for Fultz is a clear attempt to fill a major void. The Sixers' backcourt may have been the worst in the NBA, and he should step in as an immediate starter if selected.
But it's also a move to get the widely regarded best player available, and it's a move to build up a rotation that should shine in the long term. Does this move fit "The Process" that was abandoned in name when Hinkie resigned after the 2015-16 season? There are three important questions to answer first.
1. What will they give up?
Photo: Mark D. Smith/Paste BN Sports
Right now, the Celtics' demands are unclear, other than that they don't appear to want to take on additional salary (so no players) and that the No. 3 overall pick would be included. It's likely that the Los Angeles Lakers' unprotected 2018 first-round pick and/or the Sacramento Kings' unprotected 2019 first-round pick would be a key part of the package. The Sixers also have rights to all of their own future picks. Both of those teams are bad enough right now that those picks hold great potential value.
On the surface, a Hinkie-style approach to this trade would have been to include center Jahlil Okafor (pictured), who was a top Celtics trade target before he had a rough 2016-17 season, and one of those future first-rounders with some sort of protection on it, so that they didn't end up giving up a No. 1 pick in a future draft. He would happily offer to take back salary to increase the protections, but the Celtics don't really have any filler on their roster.
Look for the protections on the future draft picks as a key sign on whether this trade feels like a "Process" production. The Vertical reported that the discussed framework includes "complicated protections," which would be very Hinkie-esque. Another tell-tale sign would be if the Celtics ship a few of their plentiful second-rounders over nonchalantly. They don't really need them, and the Sixers do need to continue to stock their rotation.
2. Could this move take them to a title?
Photo: Joe Nicholson/Paste BN Sports
Sixers fans loved Hinkie. They loved him because Philadelphia sports fans would rather burn down everything than settle for second. After the Allen Iverson-led trip to the 2001 NBA Finals, the Sixers spent 12 years making the postseason most of the time but losing in the first round nearly as often. Hinkie promised something different: He would tear down the mid-level roster in search of a potential championship team.
Joel Embiid earned the nickname "The Process" because he exemplifies that ethos. He's played 31 games in his three-year career, yet those 31 games last season were so electrifying that he appears to be a true championship-level building block if healthy. Ben Simmons, who missed his whole first season last year, has the same feel to many Sixers fans. And that's where Fultz (pictured) comes in.
If Fultz - whom Embiid and Dario Saric greeted in Philadelphia - is the scoring guard who can play on or off the ball and complement Simmons and run pick-and-rolls with Embiid and fit the modern game, then he's the exact type of piece who could grow into another legitimate championship-level piece. He certainly has the most superstar potential in this draft. But does he have more superstar potential than a high 2018 first-rounder? Next year's draft appears even better at the top, but there's no guarantee the Lakers or 76ers will be all the way at the bottom again. That becomes even more true with later picks. That's the bet they're making here.
3. Is the roster ready to make this move?
That's the ultimate question. We're pretty sure Hinkie was not planning to run his delay game forever. He was waiting for a point when he felt confident enough in the young players that it made sense to start building up a winner. Fultz isn't going to be great on Day One, but this move indicates that the Sixers feel they can hope to be good in the next year or two.
The next step, then, would be to start assembling veterans to help teach these young players. That was one of the missteps of the Hinkie era; several players who have since left Philadelphia and several other young players who knew Sixers players have said in the past that they felt like they were unmoored without veteran guidance in the locker room.
But if Embiid and Simmons get healthy, if Fultz pans out, if Dario Saric and Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot fulfill the promise they showed in the season's final months … we might be seeing start of something. Many will call it the end result of "The Process." But winning games was always just a step, not an end point.