Ben Simmons and James Harden had the same number of points in the 2nd half tonight
Almost took the same number of shots, too.
very impressed with the end results of The Process as the 76ers have gone from a team that checks notes annually gets bounced in the second round to a team that… annually gets bounced in the second round.
The Process ended when Hinkie was fired 3 years into it after their owner caved to pressure from Silver and brought in old man Colangelo. Nothing since then has been the process.
It is true the Sixers keep getting bounced in the 2nd round but they are winning more and are more relevant since the mid 80s. 3 of last 5 seasons of 50+ wins. Would have been 4 of 5 and possibly all 5 if not for shortened seasons. The best news for the Sixers is they've got Embiid signed long-term and he seems happy there and Maxey looks like he could become the 2nd young star that they wanted Simmons to be.
Yeah never understood why the league forced Hinkie out, which led to Colangelo who was an absolute disaster lol.
But man, PHI was LUCKY to get Embiid and that Embiid panned out despite the injury history, because otherwise their Draft picks over the last 7-8 years really haven't been great. A ton of misses and a few brutal ones (Simmons, Fultz, etc.)
Like literally imagine where PHI would even be if Embiid didn't work out and everything else panned the way it did. Would PHI be tanking again for a bit? 
This was one of my main points I was raising. The draft picks were pretty brutal (and to be fair a lot of the ones from hinkie ranged from franchise altering bust (okafor) to mild disappointment (noel) to meh (saric). Before it got derailed on a bunch of inaccurate stuff on woods, ish smith and holmes, that’s really the biggest problem. The draft picks both under hinkie and after were quite poor.
I mean the whole point of "The Process" is so you get multiple rolls of the die
They got 2 legit stars, Simmons and Embiid. I would have liked to see what the next step in Hinkie's plan was (maybe there wasn't any next step).
I’m sorry simmons is, checks notes, a “legit star?” Is that why it costs two rotation players, two first round picks and simmons for a washed up harden? I wouldn’t trade Marcus smart for simmons at this point. He is probably the third worst number one pick of the last 15 years ahead of only bennett and ironically fultz. You could argue wiggins but given he was an all star this year and it is unclear if simmons even wants to play basketball right now that is very debatable
For all his faults, Simmons was a 2 time all star on the rise.
That's why I would have liked to see where Hinkie's plan went. Does he keep coddling Ben Simmons?
I think Jimmy Butler was brought in after Hinkie - and he's famously a tough dude to be around, having pitted the Bulls players against each other.
They had Brett Brown who wasn't great but he coached a 6ers team led by Embiid/Simmons to a couple decent playoff runs. Then Doc comes in and Simmons is sent into a spiral, flip flopping about his lack of a jump shot (initially saying it's ok he doesn't have one, and later saying he's got to hit some free throws). Then proceeds to throw him under the bus after that Hawks game.
I kind of blame Doc for this. History keeps repeating itself with Doc - he had CP3/Blake for so many years and they seem to hit this wall (and seemingly a mental one at that). Hit a wall with Kawhii too.
I hate that I'm talking like Stephen A Smith, speculating heavily on many things, but I guess that's just what the NBA is sometimes. A bunch of 6'10 men being melodramatic.
I would argue that simmons probably shouldn’t have made two all star games and was pushed over the edge as a fringe candidate cause of his draft status and hype. At this point not having playing in over a year and having back surgery after not playing all year, it’s pretty hard to call him a star (and I don’t think the nets are counting on that either).
Simmons is clearly better than Jaren Jackson who you labeled a homerun.
I completely disagree at this point in their careers. What an utterly bizarre thing to say as Jarren Jackson is currently destroying the warriors and simmons is in a hospital somewhere. You realize Jackson is averaging 24 or something in the conference semifinals right now with elite defense? He is 22 years old! Memphis wouldn’t trade Jackson for simmons and two first round picks. Please take it back tazz I want to respect your basketball knowledge some.
Maybe tazz meant he was when he was healthy. I have no horse in that race. But I still contend they botched Simmons (whether you think he's more of a lower tier all star or a 2 time all star, he was talented).
I recall Simmons is kind of like Derrick White right now. Advanced stats defensively were pretty elite.
When you have a guy who can push the hell out of the ball at 6'10 and defend the hell out of the ball, and Joel Embiid, just surround them with shooters and athletes to space the floor for them, man.
Instead they got Jimmy Butler (if I'm not mistaken that's after Hinkie right), and Brand got Al Horford!? Two non-shooters.
I'm happy they pulled these stupid moves though. Watching Embiid, who's been playing out of his mind, fail to try to pull a limp 6ers roster is great as a fan of their rivals.
I agree 76ers botched simmons. But he was a fringe all star at his best and I do think he got nudged into those games by being a number one pick. He never improved after his rookie seasons (the 76ers coaching staff who saw him every day in practice said as much). Jarren Jackson had worked hard on his game despite a very severe injury and I think he has a very legitimate chance at making both an all star game and all defensive next year. That is why is he a home run pick and why Ben simmons required two first round picks and two rotation players just for a rapidly aging star due a huge pay raise. The 76ers were offered players like Malcolm brodgon and McCollum for him. You put Jackson on the table you are talking players like brown, Ingram, etc. people also just seem to lose their mind when discussing the 76ers even at this stage of their franchise. I don’t hear people ever being like after his rookie season it appeared tyreke Evans would have a much better career than jaylen brown. After one year in the league it seemed like okafor would maybe better than smart. Like literally what is the point of saying that? Simmons is currently having additional back surgery. He is soft. He doesn’t improve. He doesn’t care about basketball. He is a joke.
This takes me back to when CelticsStrong/Blog was arguing about Rondo (except Rondo is way more indefensible because even advanced stats hate him).
But back to the initial topic. Was Hinkie a failure?
He basically got a generational talent in Embiid, and at minimum a top 40 player (if you see Ben Simmons as a fringe all star) to pair with Embiid.
It's like getting a Giannis (in Embiid) and giving him a Jrue (in Simmons).
I'd say Hinkie's next move (which he never got to make) would have been the one to judge The Process on. Could he have gotten a Middleton, could he have gotten even more? (jury's still out on the Bucks too, if they just end up with one championship with the best player in the world...)
It’s pretty clearly a question we will never have an answer for. So the best you can do is look at the guys he drafted (or obviously would have drafted in the case of simmons let’s not start that nonsense again). Okafor flames out worse than even his worst detractors would have predicted (I was one of them but thought he could at least be an offensive minded javale McGee backup type). Noel never developed on his early promise and is a perennially injured backup). Saric has had the nba move away from players with slow foot speed and prior to his injury was an ok bench guy. Simmons, who did attitude and interest in basketball questions at LSU, did turn out to be a very flawed player that had no interest in improving. That’s all we can really look at. Without doing some strange mental gymnastics about guys he waived or traded being good later on in their careers, his tenure comes down to those draft picks. I think ainge clearly out drafted him. And his draft picks were below league average. Don’t really understand the people that view him as some legend all these years laters and I think it is fairly telling no team has offered him a job since. I’m not sure he has even been offered an interview. And he can claim cause he is not interested, but as a guy that wrote like a 20 page manifesto when he was forced out, it’s hard to believe he has zero interest proving how smart he actually was to the rest of the nba.
Is Hinkie awful at drafting really? Ainge's draft picks are absolutely nuts. Basically batted perfect in high picks (even top 3 picks are like a flip of a coin in terms of whether you can get a game changer vs. just another dude/worse). Jaylen Brown was like the feast/famine prospect of that draft and he nailed that - people wanted to concede for Buddy Hield, man.
Yea you're right we can only really argue about what actually happened. Hinkie's plan seems to be - have an average (below average if you'd like) drafter, draft a bunch of guys - and we never got to see the second half. I would have loved to see the flip side of this, that Hinkie doesn't actually have a plan beyond Embiid and is just a raving lunatic maniac given the keys.
Look at the list of his transactions above. I think he was a very poor talent evaluator. It was honestly a bit worse than I remembered. He had a few solid picks in the second round out of like 50 (Jerami grant and holmes). But also had players like woods and Dwayne Dedmond he just waived or didn’t sign for no reason. Even when he a solid pick for the second like hermangomez he just dumped him for Tyler bey and some guy named filip petrsuv. He was trying to do what Miami has been doing the last few years, but just wasn’t good enough at it.
I kind of knew this would happen when I originally asked the question, but even I was surprised by the stubbornness and inaccuracies of a few responses. I mean it is pretty insane that out of 3 top 6 picks and top 12 pick only one (Embid who is obviously great) was a starter in 2021-2022 season? Noel, saric and okafor are not old now. They were just average to awful.
I think the average team/exec is just kind of bad at drafting/evaluating, so to speak (or maybe drafting/evaluating is just difficult). (In a way, this kind of harkens back to why Ainge is good despite picks like Romeo Langford, drafting is just really difficult).
There's been loads of analysis on drafts. Here's one that might be interesting (
https://towardsdatascience.com/which-nba-teams-are-best-at-drafting-20070ccd1702) - they even have an interactive data tool (
https://braydengerrard.shinyapps.io/Draft_Scores/).
On the tool, Hinkie just kind of scores average (you can filter by executive). Philly from 2013-2016 was slightly below average. Interestingly in that span the Clips and the Grizz were the worst (makes sense, since I think this is where they failed to build around their cores of CP3/Blake and grit and grind Grizzlies). Then you have SAC, CLE, CHO, who are all awful. On the flip side, you have TOR, DEN and LAL, who I think randomly got some outlier players in the late first and 2nd (just off the top of my head). HOU, SAS, MIL, BOS, POR and OKC were also above average, which makes sense.
I also kind of like to view everything as one package, it’s a system that these GM’s run and you gotta look at it in sum. Like with Ainge he sort of went for the home runs, trusts his own talent evaluation as he should. He swings for Tatum. He'd go for Jaylen Brown. And he picks guys like Yabusele was to conserve cap space because he’s a master at making noise - like he did with the KG era. He hoarded first round picks to try and get something even bigger. Ended with some spectacular teams (come on, Kyrie and Hayward with the Jays and Morris/Rozier off the bench!?), but just absolutely dreadful luck there.
For the Bucks there was a period of time they just drafted really long dudes (I think Snell and Thon Maker were some of them?). Now they have this huge team that we’re struggling with.
On the other hand, Hinkie plays averages. He won't gamble on the outlier picks like with Tatum and goes for the safer Fultz and Ben Simmons in his higher picks. Given the choice to draft other guys, he went with Jahlil Okafor who has the "pedigree". I think he also notoriously hoarded 2nd rounders - which are terrible picks and will often bust - leading to the list you mentioned above. That generated 1 Joel Embiid and Simmons, and a Covington, that's the whole point of the Process. It also makes sense he ended up with an average draft score in the link above, he just goes with the most conventional picks.
Relatedly I also love what Jeff Van Gundy said in one of his stints on Zach Lowe's podcast. He said it's ok if you can't evaluate talent on other teams. But you have to be able to evaluate players on your own team. The 6ers didn't f--- up with Embiid, not like OKC did with Harden, and that's basically all they care about from a Process standpoint.
I wouldn't say Hinkie’s an amazing talent evaluator, nor do I feel strongly about that. But the Process is just so fascinating to me and I'm bummed it's got such a bad rap. Hinkie by no means a strong talent evaluator and that’s the point. But love how Joe Schmoe games the system here, it just got cut short (would have loved to watch the Celtics beat them with their rebuild).
