Sixers Sense of Sam Hinkie

Sixers article from ESPN magazine found here.

It’s a long article written by Pablo Torre that has good insight and is informative if you can get the entire way through it.

 

The first tidbit I take away is that Sam Hinkie is a secretive strategist who shares as little info as possible with the media.  Pablo’s 1st part of his article can be summed up in these 3 concepts that are part of Hinkie’s strategy:

1) Find injured prospects and foreign players,

2) Utilize a collective-bargaining-agreement-driven, pre-apocalyptic stockpile of second-round picks

3) Players who have long wingspans and are subpar shooters

 

My Take On Hinkie’s Strategy

1) Injured players can indeed provide value if they stay on the court.  It’s like drafting Arian Foster in fantasy football.  You know he’s great except he will only give you 12 games if you’re lucky.  Difference here is that his players are not even proven.   Foreign,  injured players, are even riskier.  It must be noted that Joel Embiid recently hit 48/60 from 3 in a shoot around so that’s promising.  Grade: C

2)  2nd round picks are also incredibly risky and flop more often than not.  To give you an idea of the top ranked active 2nd round picks:

1) Manu Ginobli (HOF)
2) Marc Gasol (Top 5 Center)
3) Paul Millsap (All-Star)
4) Monta Ellis (Scorer)
5) Lance Stephenson (Meh)

Fine players but none were ever top 10 in the league.  Grade: C

3) This specific body type is somewhat mind boggling. What these players produce has both negatives and positives.  “Philly is forcing turnovers at a league-high 15.6 percent through the All-Star break but shooting a league-low 41 percent, is incentivized to wait on such a large-scale renovation.”  Grade – C

 

 

A final thought on what produces championships:
FiveThirtyEight found that of the past 40 teams to make the Finals, their No. 1 player, on average, ranked in the 96th percentile in statistical plus/minus. The No. 2 player was 90th percentile; the No. 3, 79th.

Now correct me if i’m wrong but is the Sixers best player even in the top 79th percentile?  They have no superstar.  No leader.  No experience.  This team might be good in 2020 if all works out.  What kind of a strategy is that?  I’m not arguing what they were doing before was working but to automatically think that Sam Hinkie knows what he’s doing here is crazy.