Divide widens between Sam Hinkie and his critics

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That was really something. It was a lot to absorb. It still is. Maybe you’ve managed to digest the reality by now. Or maybe you feel like you woke up with your head sewn to the carpet.

At the trade deadline, Sam Hinkie did what he has done so often: make bold moves, without fear or compunction, and leave the rest of us to argue whether it was wise or foolish. Michael Carter-Williams was shipped to Milwaukee in a three-team deal that netted the Sixers a first-round pick from the Lakers (protected 1-5 in 2015, 1-3 in 2016 and 2017, and unprotected in 2018). K.J. McDaniels was hustled off to Houston in exchange for Isaiah Canaan and a second-round pick. The Sixers also acquired JaVale McGee and a first-rounder for, essentially, agreeing to pay McGee’s salary (something around $16 million in total through the end of next season). The McGee move was a no-brainer. The other two decisions were more complicated.

Hinkie tried to explain himself on Friday. He said they “rejected offer after offer” for MCW but “it’s very rare you get a chance to get your hands on what maybe can be a high lottery pick.” It all came in the service, he said, of trying to “get to the top” rather than occupy a place that is simply “slightly interesting or less painful.” He also rejected the notion that players are nothing but faceless trade pieces to be swapped like inanimate baseball cards.

“I have never in my life called one of our players an asset,” Hinkie insisted. “Never, never, never."

If you were already an advocate for Hinkie’s master blueprint, the trades were unlikely to change your mind. But if you never bought into what he was selling in the first place, Thursday’s transactions almost certainly made you more skeptical about the plan he’s peddling. The Sixers traded the reigning Rookie of the Year — a player, in counterpoint, with a big hole in his game — for a first-round pick that might not be conveyed this year. They also traded an athletic rookie wing with shot-blocking ability — a player, in counterpoint, who has had an up-and-down season and who signed a deal that will make him a restricted free agent this offseason — for yet another second-round pick and a replacement-level guard.

The Sixers looked better before the All-Star break. They looked like they were improving, and you could see how maybe the plan was starting to take shape. Ripping Carter-Williams and McDaniels off the roster will almost certainly create a tear in the Sixers’ progress that will require more time to stitch up. Put another way: The rebuild continues unabated.

(After those moves, Vegas dropped the Sixers’ odds to win the championship from 5,000/1 to 10,000/1. Save the dollar. You’re better off spending it on something else.)

It’s not surprising that these latest moves haven’t endeared Hinkie to his detractors, some of whom are also his peers. When asked what he made of the Sixers' trading MCW, one longtime league executive said Hinkie might have improved his assets but he has “no concept of putting a team together.” A league insider called the moves “ridiculous” and predicted that the Sixers were in for another two or three years of tanking. And another league source said he believes the Sixers are operating on “blind luck” and have “no plan.”

Those kinds of shots at Hinkie aren’t uncommon. You can hear them almost daily on the radio or read them regularly on social media. He and his plan have been divisive from the beginning. Part of that is owed to Hinkie’s secretive approach. Part of it is owed, perhaps, to jealousy over the freedom the current Sixers’ ownership affords their president and general manager. Implementing a plan like this — one that could go on for quite some time — requires the kind of unflinching support in the face of public backlash that is almost never extended in professional sports. Open-ended rebuilds of this magnitude aren’t just rare, they’re unprecedented. General managers, like players, have short shelf lives. They are usually tasked with winning right away or finding new employers if they don’t. What the Sixers and Hinkie are doing is entirely different, and it clearly aggravates some people.

That doesn’t mean those people are necessarily wrong about Hinkie’s plan. In the end, it might not work. Or the plan could get torn up one day and replaced with a new outline etched by a new architect if the owners eventually grow weary of the unyielding talent-punting season after season. But the final referendum won’t be today. Or tomorrow. In that way, nothing has really changed over the last day or so — except the intensity of the debate and the depth of the attendant divide.

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