Sam Hinkie's 13 page meltdown

[PJR]

http://espn.go.com/pdf/2016/0406/nba_hinkie_redact.pdf


Didn't read lol

Your player evaulations, and entire team building strategy in general sucks ass. The end.

[Fudge]

:roll:

What...

A...

Meltdown.

[Hamtaro CP3KDKG]

Meltdown
Did this nikka have footnotes and endnotes in a resignation letter:roll: :roll:

Typical rich white businessman can't handle not being right and can't handle failure

[Trollsmasher]

dude probably posts on ISH:lol

[VengefulAngel]

Still reading but this guy lmao.


Ranges from talking about basketball to metacognition.


'It’s clear now that I won’t see the harvest of the seeds we planted. That’s OK. Life’s like that. Many
of my NBA friends cautioned me against the kind of seed sowing that felt appropriate given the
circumstances for exactly this reason. But this particular situation made it all the more necessary, though.
Part of the reason to reject fear and plow on was exactly because fear had been the dominant motivator of
the actions of too many for too long'

Man this stuff is gold.

[Lebronxrings]

TheMarkMadsen, is that you?

:lol :roll:

[Dr. Ice]

Is this a real thread? That letter was perfectly fine and did a fantastic job of explaining what exactly he was trying to accomplish. He comes off as smarter than I expected, too smart for his own good honestly.

Definitely not a meltdown.

[Fire Colangelo]

Did you guys even read it other than just looking at the page number?

I had no problems with it...

[PJR]

That letter was hot garbage. Bunch of nonsense.


How about explaining why after 4 straight years of sucking, the only players with any kind of upside on that roster are Jahlil Okafor and Robert Covington? lol.

Problem with guys like Hinkie is that they neglect culture of a locker room. They neglect people.

He's not a basketball guy. Not even close. And he'll never call the shots again.

[L8krH8tr]

homeboy needs a bottle of whiskey and a sock up to the face.

[VengefulAngel]

Did you guys even read it other than just looking at the page number?

I had no problems with it...

You clearly haven't read it, I've read it and the it's a bunch of non-sensical rhetoric although I must admit you can tell that he's very passionate about basketball.

[Fire Colangelo]

That letter was hot garbage. Bunch of nonsense.


How about explaining why after 4 straight years of sucking, the only players with any kind of upside on that roster are Jahlil Okafor and Robert Covington? lol.

Problem with guys like Hinkie is that they the neglect culture of a locker room. They neglect people.

He's not a basketball guy. Not even close. And he'll never call the shots again.

Are you serious?

You think it's all the GM's fault that they sucked for the past 4 years? Ownership obviously agreed with his plan, and he was given the green light to go for it? Was there anything that he could've done ever since blowing the team up in 2013?

Here you have a guy that made all the right draft decisions.. but just didn't have luck on his side.

Of course, it's all good when you have a guy like Presti that gets Durant, Harden and Westbrook in two years, and gets phrased as a genius when it works out. But Hinkie, who did the exact same thing gets criticized because the players themselves get injured/suck.

What good is culture if you don't have talent? You go for talent before culture every single time. There are obviously problems with the organization, but Hinkie was basically became the scapegoat once the ownership changed their minds about tanking.


You clearly haven't read it, I've read it and the it's a bunch of non-sensical rhetoric although I must admit you can tell that he's very passionate about basketball.

I guess we just have a different points of view.

I don't think Hinkie was a bad GM, or do I think he's a good GM. He was just put in a shitty situation IMO.

This letter is far from a "melt down".

[PJR]

What your failing to acknowledge is that Hinkie's draft evaulations sucked. When you're banking on a "tank for all" strategy, and whiff hard on your drafts, you deserved to be slammed. Especially after trying to operate as the smartest guy in the room.

Guys like Sam Presti and Bob Meyers derserve praise because they ultimately made great picks, and builded up great balanced cores of talent in the same time span that Hinkie had.


Meanwhile Hinkie is whiffing left and right. It was he HE whom drafted Michael Carter Williams. He drafted broken Joel Embiid who was red flagged medically beforehand, right after drafting another center in Nerlens Noel, following that up with drafting another center in Okafor lol.

He also drafted Dario Saric, a bigman prospect, who has yet to come over, and may not ever come over from his overseas career.

Where is the balance within the roster? Where is the direction?


That roster is in complete shambles, and it's because of his horrific strategy. Dude sucked ass.

[90sgoat]

This letter basically proves the haters, including me, right.

It reads exactly like the kind of opulent, pseudo-academic, self-boosting drivel of any 'new management' conman.

Hinkie namedrops Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Warren Buffet in the first 2 pages, yeah sure, we are to see that he is just like those guys, that he just like those guys is a true 'disrupter'.

Wow, talk about having a grand opinion of yourself.

Fact is Hinkie failed spectacularly, those other guys did not.

Hinkie didn't positively 'disrupt' anything, he just bulldozed in like a bull in a chinashop completely disregarding decades of 'best practice' for his grand intellectual scheme.

To stay with a metaphor that Hinkie might have used, this is when Long Term Capital decided they no longer needed analysts and traders because they had their 'quant' autistic math kids who could put everything on formula. It failed spectacularly just as Hinkie failed spectacularly and Morey has failed spectacularly.

That's the simple truth here. A bunch of semi autists who thought they were smarter than they were, forgot to factor in the human part of the equation, were personalities most match, were losing breeds losing, were you can't just plug and play player a for player b.

Let this be a lesson for the rest of the NBA to not fall for this sort of demagogery.

[Fire Colangelo]

What your failing to acknowledge is that Hinkie's draft evaulations sucked. When you're banking on a "tank for all" strategy, and whiff hard on your drafts, you deserved to be slammed. Especially after trying to operate as the smartest guy in the room.

Guys like Sam Presti and Bob Meyers derserve praise because they ultimately made great picks, and builded up great balanced cores of talent in the same time span that Hinkie had.


Meanwhile Hinkie is whiffing left and right. It was he HE whom drafted Michael Carter Williams. He drafted broken Joel Embiid who was red flagged medically beforehand, right after drafting another center in Nerlens Noel, following that up with drafting another center in Okafor lol.

He also drafted Dario Saric, a bigman prospect, who has yet to come over, and may not ever come over from his overseas career.

Where is the balance within the roster? Where is the direction?


That roster is in complete shambles, and it's because of his horrific strategy. Dude sucked ass.

Lets talk about the players that he could've drafted which could've made the 76ers better:





well?

[Vancouver-Grizz]

I did read through the entire essay and he does put up some valid points regarding the current state of Philly which ain't THAT bad. Draft pick are valuable and they are on a stockpile of them. Player's losing mentality will change when they finally use the available salary cap at the right time. I mean, this team is primed for a fresh start with ample room to play with and plenty of asset to build around. I think the Knicks would trade places instantly.. They don't really have a bad contract on the books which is a huge bonus.

Did he achieve this in the most pleasing way? no. But this was the plan he built and followed and it may not look good or please fans but he did accomplish something to a degree.

You need one outstanding Pick or one star free agent to start turning this ship around.

[Styles p]

so can you hinkie haters name one trade he lost on? go ahead i'm waiting.

[bdreason]

4 years and all he managed to do was draft 3 PF/C's who can't play together in the modern NBA.

[oh the horror]

4 years and all he managed to do was draft 3 PF/C's who can't play together in the modern NBA.



And yet you still have assholes here defending the guy. Wtf are we even discussing? His tenure has been a complete failure. Even if they get a good player in this next draft how many more years of being bad are ahead? They're suddenly going to land quality free agents after years of stinking badly?


There were even murmurs of trading Okafor and going forward with Embiid if healthy....huhhhhhhhhh??

[DoctorP]

Meltdown confirmed. Incompetence affirmed.

[tmacattack33]

That letter was hot garbage. Bunch of nonsense.


How about explaining why after 4 straight years of sucking, the only players with any kind of upside on that roster are Jahlil Okafor and Robert Covington? lol.

Problem with guys like Hinkie is that they neglect culture of a locker room. They neglect people.

He's not a basketball guy. Not even close. And he'll never call the shots again.

Noel and Saric.

Also, in two months, at the NBA Lottery, the Sixers have a 50/50 chance of getting two top five picks. I don't know if that anyone has ever had two top five picks. And there's some good talent at the very top of the draft this year.

[midatlantic09]

Noel and Saric.

Also, in two months, at the NBA Lottery, the Sixers have a 50/50 chance of getting two top five picks. I don't know if that anyone has ever had two top five picks. And there's some good talent at the very top of the draft this year.

-Noel is simply an energy guy/rim protector and nothing more. Aside from protecting the rim, the guy has no other basketball skills. His on the ball defense is lousy and the guy has virtually no offensive skills whatsoever.

-Saric has never played in an NBA game. Therefore, no one knows if he'll be a good NBA player or not...everything with Saric, at this point, is pure speculation.

[PJR]

Lets talk about the players that he could've drafted which could've made the 76ers better:





well?

In the 2013 draft, after Michael Carter Williams (bust) was selected:

Greek Freak, Dennis Schroder, and Rudy Gobert were all selected afterwards.

Zach Lavine could've helped the Sixers more
than Dario Saric certainly has the last couple years.

I know you'll likely think and say well hindsight is 20/20, but that's the job of a GM. To have hindsight and foresight in evaluations.

[stalkerforlife]

Tanking year after year as a strategy ruins the integrity of competition.

[Rockets(T-mac)]

This guy put more work into that meltdown than he did in the sixers...

[Nick Young]

Meltdown of the year.

Didn't read LOL

[SwishSquared]

In the 2013 draft, after Michael Carter Williams (bust) was selected:

Greek Freak, Dennis Schroder, and Rudy Gobert were all selected afterwards.

Zach Lavine could've helped the Sixers more
than Dario Saric certainly has the last couple years.

I know you'll likely think and say well hindsight is 20/20, but that's the job of a GM. To have hindsight and foresight in evaluations.He really missed on Greek Freak (I had him pegged to slide no further than Philly or Boston that year). Nobody would have taken Gobert @ 11 when he went like 27th. Schroder is definitely an interesting player and is surely better than MCW. I've said that missing on Giannis was actually his biggest misstep as a GM. If he had him, that would have bought him an extra year of owner patience imo.

Regarding Lavine- they drafted Payton and flipped him to Orlando once the Magic had already selected Saric (plus Orlando's 2015 second rounder and Philly's 2017 first rounder). So they still won that trade imo simply for getting their own pick back in a supposedly loaded class. That move also enabled them to have a pick swap with Sacramento next year.

[tamaraw08]

I am blown away by Sam's elloquence, his vast knowledge on things.
If only he can find guys like Manu Ginobli late in the 2nd round.
Or flip expensive guys like Divac and trade him for a kid like...Kobe.
Or how about finding a coach like Phil, or a broadcast guy like Riley, heck even a college coach like Brad Stevens.
It's amazing the Riley didn't have a high pick and yet found Whiteside from the D League.
It's unbelievable that the Spurs didnt also have high draft picks after Duncan and yet manage to construct a great supporting cast by thorough scouting.
Did the Warriors need 4-5 very high draft picks to win a ring?
Im betting Jerry West or Riley is not as bookish smart as Hinkie but It just seems to me, they just had that knowledge how to find not just talent but guys who are willing to work hard and at the same time NOT ASK THE LEAGUE FOR handouts and abuse the system like a bum asking for food stamps all the time.

[Meticode]

Apparently he sent the letter out to 13 front office members of the 76ers and Hinkie believes Jeff Colangelo leaked it. It was in the media's hands without a couple hours.

[SwishSquared]

Apparently he sent the letter out to 13 front office members of the 76ers and Hinkie believes Jeff Colangelo leaked it. It was in the media's hands without a couple hours.Yeah he sent it to the 12 owners and Colangelo. ESPN had it within like 2 hours. And by the end of the night his son was announced the new GM. Like, the owners letting that happen is a Vivek move.

[Clifton]

What good is culture if you don't have talent? You go for talent before culture every single time.
Nope. This is what fools do who stay losing. Take a look at the Houston Rockets last 4 seasons.

You establish a culture that cultivates good players and a good team. You make a team that people would want to join. Then you get talent.

50% of that talent is acquired through the draft. 50% through good trades and free agency. You can't get good players to come to your team if you have only a bad work environment to offer. See, New York Knicks.

But culture: see Boston Celtics, Golden State Warriors, San Antonio Spurs.

Exceptions are organizations like the Lakers (historically, not now) and Heat (now, not historically), which because of their clout and their location can pull a lot of strings. But if you don't have that, you have to do it the old fashioned way like SAS and GSW did.

You might say: The heck with culture, there is no GSW without drafting Curry (and signing him for $10m a year on a fluke), and there is no SAS without drafting Duncan. You're half right: they're not dynasties without that stroke of luck. But if they were poor organizations, no amount of luck would have done the trick.

You might also say: What about the Lakers in the 2000s? Weren't they a dysfunctional organization that was loaded with talent? Again you're half right. Their stars were dysfunctional. But they had great role players and they had Phil Jackson the years they won; they underachieved the rest of the time.

[Darius]

Some thoughtful replies in here but mostly
ISH ignorance. What a suprise.

It was interesting letter. I agree with him on a lot of points... but it is also clear he didn't factor in some critical variables as far as culture and player development.

At the end of the day, luck was never able to break his way. Just because you get bad results didn't mean you necessarily had a bad process. But we'll never know and history only remembers the winners. As he said, "it's a make or miss league" and many GMs have become heros off shots that only had a sub 10% chance to go in...

[STATUTORY]

:roll: dude started talking about ALPHAGO

:roll: MELTDOWN

[Sarcastic]

How long ago do you think he started writing that? No way he did it in a day or so.

[tmacattack33]

-Noel is simply an energy guy/rim protector and nothing more. Aside from protecting the rim, the guy has no other basketball skills. His on the ball defense is lousy and the guy has virtually no offensive skills whatsoever.

-Saric has never played in an NBA game. Therefore, no one knows if he'll be a good NBA player or not...everything with Saric, at this point, is pure speculation.

Yes, and to Hinkie, Saric just represents another lottery ticket.

He looks at everything as numbers, as seen from the paper.

He says he likes what San Antonio did. They had many foreign players' rights. They were just lottery tickets, and the best thing about them was that they didn't take up any roster spots. One of them hit and turned into Ginobli.


Pretty decent approach to me.


And Philly may end up with BOTH Ingram and Hield in June this year. How you can hate on that is beyond me.

[west_tip]

This letter basically proves the haters, including me, right.

It reads exactly like the kind of opulent, pseudo-academic, self-boosting drivel of any 'new management' conman.

Hinkie namedrops Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Warren Buffet in the first 2 pages, yeah sure, we are to see that he is just like those guys, that he just like those guys is a true 'disrupter'.

Wow, talk about having a grand opinion of yourself.

Fact is Hinkie failed spectacularly, those other guys did not.

Hinkie didn't positively 'disrupt' anything, he just bulldozed in like a bull in a chinashop completely disregarding decades of 'best practice' for his grand intellectual scheme.

To stay with a metaphor that Hinkie might have used, this is when Long Term Capital decided they no longer needed analysts and traders because they had their 'quant' autistic math kids who could put everything on formula. It failed spectacularly just as Hinkie failed spectacularly and Morey has failed spectacularly.

That's the simple truth here. A bunch of semi autists who thought they were smarter than they were, forgot to factor in the human part of the equation, were personalities most match, were losing breeds losing, were you can't just plug and play player a for player b.

Let this be a lesson for the rest of the NBA to not fall for this sort of demagogery.

Excellent post.

I've been critical of Hinkie's strategy all along and stated as such on here multiple times.

You can't perma-tank without creating a dysfunctional, losing culture which is toxic and unattractive to free agents, player agents etc. Winning begets winning and losing begets losing. Perma-tanking undermines the integrity of the franchise but also of the league itself so does not endear you to other owners and GM's. The end result is that you end up a pariah in league circles.

It's that sabermetric/fantasy sports culture of thinking about things solely in numbers which completely overlooks the human element, relationships, trust and such that is so integral in the success of any organization, sporting or otherwise. Human beings are social creatures not robots.

[Terahite]

Hinkie gets an A for accuracy :sleeping

[stalkerforlife]

This letter basically proves the haters, including me, right.

It reads exactly like the kind of opulent, pseudo-academic, self-boosting drivel of any 'new management' conman.

Hinkie namedrops Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Warren Buffet in the first 2 pages, yeah sure, we are to see that he is just like those guys, that he just like those guys is a true 'disrupter'.

Wow, talk about having a grand opinion of yourself.

Fact is Hinkie failed spectacularly, those other guys did not.

Hinkie didn't positively 'disrupt' anything, he just bulldozed in like a bull in a chinashop completely disregarding decades of 'best practice' for his grand intellectual scheme.

To stay with a metaphor that Hinkie might have used, this is when Long Term Capital decided they no longer needed analysts and traders because they had their 'quant' autistic math kids who could put everything on formula. It failed spectacularly just as Hinkie failed spectacularly and Morey has failed spectacularly.

That's the simple truth here. A bunch of semi autists who thought they were smarter than they were, forgot to factor in the human part of the equation, were personalities most match, were losing breeds losing, were you can't just plug and play player a for player b.

Let this be a lesson for the rest of the NBA to not fall for this sort of demagogery.

Ether. :applause:

[Real Men Wear Green]

I may read the letter later to comment on that. But without reading the letter I know what his biggest problem was: losing. When you lose you get fired and the way he ran the Sixers, spending high draft picks on guys that couldn't even play for the first season(s) of their careers and not bringing in any good players through trades or free agency he had the team locked into losing. Unless ownership told him he had seven years to produce a good team he needed to do something to produce short term results. It's like in Tropic Thunder when Robert Downey Jrs' character tells Ben Stiller's Tugg Speedman "you don't go full retard." The two times that Ainge has torn down and rebuilt the Celtics he's made deals that led to immediate improvement and not just long-term improvement. If he had not the team would get sick of the losing and after a few consecutive lousy seasons Ainge gets fired. Like Hinkie.