They kept using the same word. Josh Harris. Sam Hinkie. Jerry Colangelo. Other members of the organization who talked on background. They used the same word again and again, during the press conference that announced Colangelo was the new chairman of basketball operations and in separate media sessions thereafter. The same word was frequently employed: collaboration.
In politics, that’s called a talking point. Here’s another fashionable term in politics: optics. The optics weren’t good for the Sixers. Not on the court, where they got off to another dreadful start, and not off it, where their most recent first-round pick was captured in two videos that were hardly flattering for him or the organization. And so, after an accelerated negotiation that took a week and a half, Colangelo was brought in. People in the league like him. Agents. Owners. Players. Front office executives. It was a good move on the optics front.
Back to the talking point. Harris, who is a billionaire and lives in a far-off kingdom called New York City, said he’s always thrived in partnerships. He said that kind of approach to business in general and his NBA franchise in particular isn’t as easy to understand as a monarchy, but it’s always worked for him. Then he used the “c” word again.
On the surface, it makes sense to sell it that way. Respected as he is, Colangelo is also 76 years old. And he lives in a much-farther-off kingdom called Phoenix. The guy just got paid a whole lot to work from home. Good for him. Good gig. Even so, it’s hard to believe that Colangelo would have been courted by the organization if things were going well on the NBA court or in the court of public opinion. It’s even harder to believe that Colangelo is here to simply serve in a part-time capacity and add his name to the long list of Sixers collaborators.
Colangelo gave two staggering radio interviews this week. He told a station in Phoenix that Adam Silver and Josh Harris called him “pleading for some help.” The savior spin is pronounced right now. In the other interview, Angelo Cataldi and Colangelo had an interesting exchange.
Cataldi: “I don’t think at 76 you came back to get overruled by a bunch of people who have never won anything.”
Colangelo: “No, I would never do it. I would never do that.”
NBA
Make of that what you will. Maybe Hinkie still has final say. Maybe it’s Colangelo. But that response was striking.
Hinkie and Colangelo are both smart guys. They’re no doubt capable of working well together. But this feels a lot like Harris — and Adam Silver and the rest of the league, if various reports are to be believed — calling in an adult to help tidy up a perceived mess that the neighbors complain about all the time. The neighbors like Colangelo quite a bit. He’s one of them.
It’s not hard at all to call around the league and find people to rave about Colangelo (even though, it should be noted, the Hall of Famer has never presided over an NBA championship). It’s even easier to call around the league and find people to rant about Hinkie. Three different league executives were giddy about Colangelo when I talked to them this week. And you could almost hear those same people smirking over the phone about what it means for Hinkie. Schadenfreude is a powerful thing.
As I’ve written countless times in this space, Hinkie’s process makes sense to me. Always has. He detonated a cap-strapped team with too few draft picks and too many middling pieces. Evan Turner, Jrue Holiday, Andre Iguodala, Thad Young, Spencer Hawes and the rest were never winning anything worth winning. Hinkie put the Sixers in position to build something better. That rebuild is still in the nascent stages, no doubt. But the Sixers could have as many as four first-round picks next year, plus a ton of cap space, plus the possible addition of Dario Saric. (Yeah, yeah, some of you are skeptical about that last part.) That’s not nothing. In fact, even before Harris said he wants the Sixers to move to “the next phase,” it sure seemed like they were poised to do exactly that — and do it without Colangelo.
Colangelo is well-respected, and he’ll certainly help mend relationships with agents and general managers and players around the league if that’s what’s needed. And in so doing, he’ll continue to curry favor with the NBA community. If the Sixers move into this next phase, secure some good players with the picks Hinkie compiled and the cap space he hoarded, Colangelo will get a lot of credit for being the catalyst. People will look at the improvement and cross-check it with Colangelo’s hiring date and point to that as a major reason why the Sixers snapped out of their funk. And if the Sixers miss on some of those picks and they still can’t sign quality free agents — regardless of who actually has the final say — well, Colangelo’s peers won’t blame him at all. What could he do with that team? Poor guy. And so on. You can almost hear it now.
It’s a no-lose situation for Colangelo. For Hinkie it’s something else.