We may not have seen the last of Sam Hinkie in an NBA front office.
The former Philadelphia 76ers president/general manager/author of The Process has become something of a cult hero for his extremist approach to rebuilding the team he has since left behind. Whether or not you agree with him, you know him.
And after you read Chris Ballard’s fantastic profile of him, post-The Process, for Sports Illustrated, you will understand him a little more.
You will also see that it seems like he’s leaning toward a return to the NBA at some point:
To date, Hinkie says he’s been approached by a couple of teams, informally, but he won’t know the market until the end of the season, when his noncompete is up. That is, if he goes back to basketball. When I first saw him in October, he seemed unsure. He needed to evaluate. Find a focus. “I’m working 30 hours or so a week, and if I’m being honest I’d rather it was 50,” he said.
As time went by, though, he began to circle back. By early November he seemed more certain. “I think the world probably assumes that I’m recharging and unplugging, and there’s a little of that,” he said one evening. “This will get me in trouble if I say it, but I think I’m mostly sharpening the sword to come back.”
Hinkie guarantees nothing, but it’s hard to see him not wanting to return. He has to have a sense of unfinished business after his Process was prematurely discarded for the sake of immediacy. And while he won’t necessarily need to re-do the Process somewhere else, since every rebuilding situation is unique, he seems like a guy who will want to prove his mettle after the way things in Philly ended.
And given what Joel Embiid is, in addition to what we all think Ben Simmons is, it’s hard to imagine him not getting another shot elsewhere.
