Embiid Situation Changes Nothing for Hinkie

Sixers GM Must Build Now

By Joe Darrah

The recent bad news regarding Joel Embiid, that player we all know as the eventual presumed-to-be starting center for the Philadelphia 76ers, shouldn’t come as any surprise to anyone in Philadelphia — including Sixers general manager Sam Hinkie. Disappointment, of course, but not surprise. Except for those not paying attention or those who see no prolonged injury concerns with seven-foot basketball/volleyball players strutting around with bad backs and even worse feet.

More importantly, the news that Embiid will undergo more surgery to his right foot this summer and as a result miss the entire 2015-16 season, should not give anyone reason to think that Hinkie is owed more time to faithfully fulfill his ever loosey-goosey defined “plan” (aka “process,” aka “wait and see,” aka “who knows what this thing is”) that he’s overseeing. That’s because there is no true blueprint and there never was, since Embiid nor anyone else other than Andrew Wiggins was ever “destined” to land in Philadelphia, and because Hinkie has finally secured an immediately healthy first-round lottery player in which to build around. Whom he should immediately build around. The fans deserve nothing less and, quite frankly, same goes for Jahlil Okafor. The Sixers can’t afford for Hinkie to fail them here.

If we’re all being honest, he has already proven he flat-out failed at tanking. The Sixers have to date never finished with the worst record under his watch despite his attempts at creating that reality. Not only that, his “analytical maneuvering” at attempting to own up to three first-round selections during this summer’s recent draft fell through when protected picks remained protected and the Sixers were resigned to once again wait and see what other teams did with their picks before Hinkie was forced to make his own “decision” at No. 3 overall.

With the selection of the 6-10, 275-pound Duke freshman this summer, Hinkie (presumably) was once again forced to take what was given to him at the third spot when (speculated) target selection D’Angelo Russell went No. 2 to Los Angeles with the projected pick they kept away from the Sixers. That pick turns into top-three protected status for 2016 now, but Hinkie and the Sixers can’t stunt Okafor’s growth this year by writing off yet another total season as a tank job. And the Lakers shouldn’t be bad enough again to fall into protected status, so that pick likely means it will be in the middle of the first round. Not a bad consolation prize, but a consolation prize nonetheless. That Miami Heat pick the Sixers also had a chance at in the first round this year is protected all the way to No. 10 for 2016, so the Sixers will have no chance to be in a potential better position that they were in the past draft. That potential did not occur. Which means the tanking did not truly work.

That doesn’t mean Hinkie is a failure. It just means that he needs to seriously start moving forward.

Just as they had done one year ago when they selected Embiid third overall when they (again presumably) failed to move up to acquire (again speculated) desired draftee Wiggins, the Sixers and Hinkie, by reasonable analysis, made the right selection in the moment with Okafor. This is true even before his impressive Summer League Debut last week. Hinkie is owed the benefit of the doubt for at least that much. However, he is not owed the benefit of the doubt for a prolonged Embiid injury. Not when considering he in no way attempted to construct a “plan”/“process” that would allow for the Sixers to avoid a speculated setback stemming from what can reasonably be considered a presumed lengthy injury for Embiid. They took the risk of drafting inured players. As of today you have what appears to be a legitimate center/forward combo to move forward with in Okafor and Nerlens Noel. It would be nice to have a point guard in that mix as well, but that discussion is for another time.

Instead, at the time of this writing it’s fair to assume that Hinkie and the Sixers should still indeed be participants in the next free agency frenzy. If that’s when they need to get their point guard, so be it. An Embiid injury does not change the fact that the tanking experiment has expired. Hinkie got Okafor out of it. That needs to be enough. The Embiid injury also doesn’t change the fact that when Hinkie does truly make what are truly significant moves for the present time that those moves result in significant winning.

Hinkie has been getting some legitimate buzz following last Wednesday’s trade with the Sacramento Kings. For now, let’s place the emphasis here on the word “some” legitimate buzz. Nik Stauskas, the 21-year-old shooting guard who’s easily the centerpiece of the deal, at least from an NBA talent perspective (more on the true centerpiece of the deal soon), has as much potential to be a core part of the Sixers’ future as does any of the team’s recent draft picks currently playing in uniform, waiting in doctor’s offices or sailing the high seas of Turkey.

For now, let’s place the emphasis here on the word “potential.” Stauskas, the Kings’ first-round pick of the 2014 NBA Draft (No. 8 overall), did not have what anybody would reasonably consider an impressive rookie year by any legitimate standard. One who struggled to maintain steady minutes (from the bench) for a team that won only 29 games, Stauskas averaged just 4.4 points per game and (much more concerning) shot a scary .365 percent from the floor, an even scarier .322 from behind the arc and attempted just more than four (4.1) shots per game. All this from someone whose main contribution to an NBA roster was/is expected to be his pure shooting. This hardly writes off the one time Big Ten Conference Men’s Basketball Player of the Year and unanimous first-team All-Big Ten selection by both the coaches and the media voters as a bust. It could very easily be that Stauskas’ play was the result of something innocent enough as his making the rookie adjustment to professional basketball to something more complex, such as a toxic team/organizational environment in Sacramento or poor coaching — the Kings have now gone three consecutive years with one-and-done coaches as George Karl prepares to be the fourth coach for the team over the last four years when the 2015-16 season begins.

But even as the NBA approaches what will soon be a mass spending spree among teams the like of which we have never seen, the Sixers are still in salary slice-and-dice mode with Hinkie still making moves with the mindset of a dyslexic Robin Hood where he helps poor GMs around the league better their financial situations by robbing himself and his coaches of the opportunity to evaluate a roster of players he actually believe has the talent to win NBA games on a regular basis. Then again, it could just be a move made to help offset the Jrue Holiday trade fiasco. http://www.phillymag.com/news/2015/06/29/sixers-fined-trade/

The other guys you’re not hearing a lot about in this deal (Jason Thompson and Carl Landry) are two guys who certainly aren’t expected to be part of the “process”/“plan”. The power forward Landry, who will be 32 when his contract ends after the 2016-17 season (!) hasn’t averaged double digits in scoring in three years and owns just a 5.0 average of rebounds per game in his eight seasons. He’s due to make $6.5 million each of the next two seasons. Thompson, a once-promising, PF/center who’s career has not lived up to previously believed potential (again, possibly in part due to a sketchy organization) will make almost $14 million over the next two years — including money in trade kickers — without reason to believe that he’ll be any kind of impact player. A graduate of New Jersey’s Rider University who went to high school in nearby Lenape, Thompson could conceivably be rejuvenated in playing near family and friends to exceed expectations this coming season and beyond. But that’s not why he was brought in. Like just about every move made over the course of the last few seasons, this is another example of what will eventually benefit the Sixers only as projected salary cap relief for a future that could be as far away as the end of time and space.

But Philadelphians should not be accepting this unimaginable “deadline” anymore. No, if the evaluation of Hinkie’s work is truly to be on an even level he needs to start moving forward. He’s officially out of time for fiddling around with finances and should be thankful for the time he’s had. It was never possible for everything to gone according to his reputed analytics sorcery. The Stauskas deal is not significant in the present tense for any reasons beyond the financial. And if he turns out to be a legitimate NBA first-rounder, there’s been no indication that Hinkie would pay the money to keep him. Those indications need to become apparent as the salary cap goes up, and Hinkie needs to pull all the right triggers. That’s the corner he’s painted himself into.

Tanks, and good luck.