It probably seems a little strange to say after two seasons with a combined 37 wins, but for probably the first time since Our Dark Lord Sam Hinkie took over as GM and general conductor of the Philadelphia 76ers before the 2013 draft, things are looking bad. Hinkie is learning the hard way that asset collection and team building are not one and the same, and that in fact, a whole lot can get lost in translation from one to the other. And Sixers fans are learning the even harder way that sometimes, all patience leads to is the need for further patience.
The 2014-'15 season ended on a bum note, as the three conditional 2015 first-round picks the Sixers had acquired while shedding players and renting cap space all ended up just missing transmuting over — in their optimal positions, no less — to Hinkie's clutches for the '15 draft. Then big man Joel Embiid, top pick from the Sixers' 2014 haul, was the subject of the most quietly foreboding press release in NBA history, and we're not sure how much we can count on him being around next year. Earlier this week, the Sixers' other prize acquisition from '14, Croatian forward Dario Saric, was confirmed to be staying in Turkey for at least one more season, and possibly longer if he feels like circumventing the NBA's contractual rookie scale. And just hours after that, reports surfaced that the NBPA would be looking into the Sixers for some mysterious, unspecified violation of the CBA.
And so we have it that after two years of largely purposeful losing, with unprecedented book-clearing, draft-pick hoarding, and youth-building, as of now, we're only going into next season with two assets we can really count on helping: Nerlens Noel and whoever we end up getting with our first-round pick this year. It's been as trying a stretch as Hinkie's acolytes have had to endure — one that makes you question whether the process really can be trusted, whether all our smart bets are gonna end up losers just the same, whether our third year of rebuilding is gonna end up feeling any different than the first two. It's the first real crisis of confidence many of us have had in the Sixers' grand plan.
But tonight could turn it all around. For tonight, dear friends, is draft night.
Draft night has always been Hinkie's time to shine. In 2013, he announced his presence to the world with the staggering Jrue Holiday trade, dealing away the Sixers' best player to New Orleans for the draft's best talent — Noel, having fallen to #6 due to an ACL injury that kept him out the entire next season — and an additional top pick in 2015. And with the 11th pick in a historically lousy class, he took Michael Carter-Williams, the point guard who would win Rookie of the Year, and eventually net Hinkie a pick that nearly turned into the #6 selection in this year's draft (and still may land close to that next year). 2014's haul was much less immediately satisfying, but arguably even more stunning in its clarity of vision, as Hinkie selected Embiid — another injured big with arguably the draft's highest upside — and dealt down with the NO pick from #10 to #12, to take the years-away Saric and return another future Sixers first-rounder to the flock in the process, not helping the team at all for the following season but (hopefully) setting them up to be as talent-flush as any young NBA squad for the next half-decade.
You could quibble with some of the individual moves Hinkie made over the course of the two draft nights — and we haven't even gotten to the innumerous picks and trades the team used to maneuver in and out of the second round — but the cohesion behind his orchestration was brilliant and undeniable. 2013 was the announcement of the Sixers' teardown, the renouncement of the Doug Collins era and the attempt to stabilize a new team core in time for the start of the '14-'15 season. And 2014 was the admission that due to circumstance — the Sixers' pick only landing at #3, Embiid getting injured pre-draft and rejiggering the projected order at the top — the team would first have to double down on the rebuilding process, stashing ceilingless talents for the future and being bad another season to land at least one more elite prospect.
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The question for me, then, isn't so much who the Sixers will take with the #3 pick tonight — if indeed, they end up picking there at all — but what the story of Philly's 2015 draft will be. Will we remember this as the draft where Our Dark Lord decided that This (Finally, Actually) Starts Now, takes a healthy top pick who can help us next year, maybe even deals a future asset or two to get us there? Will it be the one where he diversifies, trading down from #3 to pick up some other players who can help flesh out our young core? Or will it be Hinkie deciding that the third time's the charm, once again taking the least-immediately-helpful plausible selection to stay bad for another season, in the hopes of landing Ben Simmons or some other game-changing prospect in 2016?
And perhaps the most important question of all is this: Can Sam Hinkie give us reason to believe again? His plan has been compromised and our faith has been tested, but it's still far too early to give up on the Hink's grand design, and most right-thinking Sixers fans know this to be true. But even the most devout of us could really use some kind of sign tonight — some evidence that he's still the one in control of the team's destiny, that powerful and cruel and tempestuous as the basketball gods can be, they don't stand a chance against Our Dark Lord. Whatever players we leave the Barclays Center with tonight, all we really want is the renewed sense that despite all that's gone wrong for the Sixers in the past few months, Hinkie's still got this.
Guessing how he's going to go about doing this is the ultimate in folly: If our franchise GM has proven one thing to us over his 25 months in office, it's that we'll know the design of his plan immediately as it unfolds, and not a second before. Nonetheless, I'll attempt to parse out the broad scenarios I feel to be the most likely, knowing full well that Sixers blogger makes predictions and Hinkie laughs. Here goes nothing.
(Brief note: The Sixers also have five second-round picks — #35, #37, #47, #58, and #60 — and I am not going to pretend to know what they will do with any of them.)
Broad Prediction #1: Hinkie moves down from #3.
I've mentioned this here before on multiple occasions, but I just don't know if I see the Sixers getting max value for their money at #3 — at least not compared to some other team, who's invariably going to see the answer to all their worldly problems in Ohio State point guard D'Angelo Russell, Latvian big man Kristaps Porzingis, or maybe even Duke center Jahlil Okafor. Hinkie's draft history has always been about snuffing out the thirst of more desperate teams — New Orleans' desire for a proven point guard, Orlando's lust for Elfrid Payton — and exploiting them for assets of greater value to the Liberty Ballers. The Sixers may want Russell, but do they want him as much as the Kings do? The Sixers could certainly use Porzingis, but is his fit as hand-in-glove perfect as it is with the Magic? I don't think so, and I think Hink will use that disparity to perform a good, old-fashioned draft-night shakedown.
Obviously, the team's trade partner will depend on who's left on the board at #3 — we're all mostly operating under the assumption that Kentucky big man Karl-Anthony Towns and Okafor will go 1-2 to Minnesota and Los Angeles, but Okafor himself has made some noise about possibly going lower — but I think both the Kings (#6) and Magic (#5) are plausible trade partners, as are the Knicks (#4) if they can somehow scare up some assets to tempt the Sixers. Wherever they end up and whoever's still on the board where they are, I think the Sixers will still be happy, whether it be with ex-pat point guard Emmanuel Mudiay or Croatian gunner Mario Hezonja or Duke wing Justice Winslow — the grouping of talent and positional fit is so close in that range that I don't really see the Sixers losing with any of them.
More specific prediction: Sixers deal #3 to Sacramento for #6, Ben McLemore, and a top-five protected 2018 first-rounder, take Justice Winslow at #6
Broad Prediction #2: The Sixers find an easy-ish way into the mid-late first round.
Typical Sixers fan, thinking Hinkie can find a way to materialize post-lottery first-rounders out of thin air. But the Sixers have enough assets — early second-rounders, future firsts, cheap young guys, whatever pieces they pick up if they actually do move down from #3 — that if they see someone they like dropping to the late teens or early 20s, they can probably find a team low enough on development patience, rotation room and cap space to sneak in there and grab him. (The Blazers have been rumored to be one of those teams, with Alex Kennedy of Basketball Insiders reporting discussions of Philly's top two second-rounders for Portland's #23 overall.)
Hinkie hasn't left a first round without multiple picks yet, and given both the number of intriguing players in the creamy middle of this draft class the need next year's squad should have for high-upside talent, I doubt this'll be the first time.
More specific prediction: Sixers trade #35, #47 and Hollis Thompson to Dallas for #21, take Jerian Grant at #21
Broad Prediction #3: The Sixers deal a major asset for something totally unpredictable.
I have no idea what this will or could be, but I think there's another major move to be made here. The Sixers just have too much waiting in the wings for them — up to four first-rounders next year, along with Dario Saric and maybe Joel Embiid — without enough on-court talent to integrate and slowly start to build with. We've been coniditioned by Hinkie's first two years to expect nothing but eternal patience from the Sixers' front office, but at a certain point, it just becomes poor asset management to have all your best futures gathering mothballs in storage while your active portfolio is as weak as ours has been. A big move is on its way — maybe at next season's trade deadline, maybe at the 2016 draft, but maybe tonight — and Our Dark Lord has demonstrated time and time again that when it comes to dealing with Philly, nothing is off the table.
I don't know what to expect here. My dad hopes we can package a couple of our future firsts into a deal for a second top-ten pick this year, though I wonder if we'll be able to do that without giving up more than it's worth. The first-round pick we acquired from the Lakers in the MCW deal will be in play, though, as will our own top pick next year, and perhaps even Saric, Embiid, or even Noel if the price is right. I can't imagine who or what the target will be just yet, but I think some reverse version of the Jrue Holiday trade is highly possible — though hopefully, one whose balance is tipped a little bit more closely in our favor than it was for the then-Pelicans back in 2013.
Broad Prediction #4: Hinkie swings momentum back in the Sixers' favor
I could be totally wrong, but I don't think Hinkie goes for the hat trick here with procrastination drafts. I don't think he does anything that could be read as a panic move — if staying the course ends up being his smartest and safest option, that's what he'll do — but I think this is the draft where he starts looking for trades that build the team back up rather than continuing to strip them down. I don't think he quite hits a home run with any of his acquisitions — I don't see any plausible draft scenario that ends with us drafting Karl-Anthony Towns, for instance, and I think DeMarcus Cousins is probably too tricky a trade target — but I think we still end the night with a potential star, some intriguing new pieces, a sense of excitement going into Summer League, and a renewed confidence that Hinkie is under control.
Of course, this is still just one scenario of many. Maybe we just take D'Angelo Russell or Kristaps Porzingis with #3, pick conservatively with four-year players and drafts-and-stashes in the second round, and mostly stay out of the trading fray. If so, I'm sure at the end of the night I'll be able to keep the faith that Our Dark Lord did what was best for our dirty souls. But for the moment, I'm feeling optimistic that it's time for the Sixers to be a little more proactive in pushing this thing forward. In any event, it's Hinkie's night, and it should be a joy to stand back and watch the Man with the Plan take center stage for the third time.