Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey thinks former Philadelphia 76ers general manager Sam Hinkie got a raw deal before resigning from his post in April.
Here’s what Morey said of the situation during an appearance of “The Vertical Podcast with Woj,” via Jonathan Tannenwald of Philly.com:
I wanted to take hits for him.
The reality is, when he took over Philly, he took the approach that was best for the franchise at that time in his judgment, which was that the best way for them to get to be a title contender, given the roster where they were at, was to take a pretty strong dip into the top five of the draft. That has more of a history of success in terms of building a championship contender.
Unfortunately, because of that, they took themselves out of free agency. That’s going to make a lot of agents upset. They took themselves out of trades that were upgrading the franchise. That’s going to upset people who feel like they’re just sort of taking advantage of the rules of the league that you get high picks if you’re terrible.
And the lottery sort of encourages you to get even worse than anyone needs to, which is why Commissioner [Adam] Silver was looking at reform or wanted reform to pass.
[Hinkie is] very good at what he does. Because of the path they took, I think it ends up being the case where he ended up upsetting a lot of folks – agents, important people around the league. And you know, unfortunately, I think that’s what got him.
As someone with no real rooting interest in Hinkie’s Process, I tend to agree with Morey. The cult following Hinkie has in Philly is, perhaps, underserved. But the universal flack he receives for turning the Sixers into a laughingstock is bizarre, in that most of the vitriol tends to ignore the fact that Hinkie, as far as we know, was up front and forthcoming with Sixers brass when interviewed, and then hired, for the job.
The Sixers knew they were going to be bad for a while. Or they at least should have. Whether Hinkie’s rebuilding approach would have eventually worked is almost irrelevant; he wasn’t given the full freedom to make it work by his exit.
It became abundantly obvious that the Sixers just outgrew the stomach for his tactics once they brought in Jerry Colangelo as a senior advisor. They thought they could withstand the rigors and criticism and implications of this Process. But they couldn’t.
In the end, maybe Hinkie’s approach was flawed. There is something to be said about fit, and about how you cannot indefinitely chase the most talented players if they don’t fill a need. Perhaps Hinkie, and the Sixers, would have fallen flat on their face.
The upshot of all this?
We’ll never know.
