Hardwood Paroxysm Presents: NBA Midseason Super-Overreactionizer
Sam Hinkie Needs to Up His Tank Game
By Bryan Toporek (@btoporek) — Mid-Level Exceptional
The Philadelphia 76ers went into the season openly jousting for the league’s worst record. They assembled a roster barely fit for a D-League team, much less an NBA squad, and stumbled their way to an 0-17 start. All was well in Sam Hinkie Land.
Even when the Sixers picked up a few wins in early December, it wasn’t time to panic. They entered 2015 with a league-worst 4-26 record, setting them up for another top-five draft pick this June. Their offense was pitiful, and though their defense had begun showing signs of life, it wasn’t helping them shake free of the losing culture that so clearly permeated every facet of the organization.
Since the first of the year, however, the Sixers players have begun staging a revolt. They’ve actually started… wait for it… winning games. They’re 8-15 over their past 23, including shocking wins over the Cleveland Cavaliers, New Orleans Pelicans, and a 20-point blowout of the Detroit Pistons. Their offense still sucks, but they’ve touted a top-eight defense in that span, which helped them shoot past the New York Knicks and Minnesota Timberwolves in the standings. For a team that’s supposed to be “shitting on games,” as Grantland’s Bill Simmons wrote last March, they’re even managing to screw that up.
How should Hinkie rectify his team’s rebellion? Bob Ford of The Philadelphia Inquirer weighed in Sunday:
"[Hinkie] might consider his team’s 12-41 record as a bit more of an overachievement than he desired in Year 2 of the lottery tankathon. If so, that means he will try to remove some of those offending overachievers from the equation [by the trade deadline]."
Ford goes on to say that the “core of the roster”—namely, Michael Carter-Williams, Joel Embiid and Nerlens Noel—won’t be going anywhere, citing sources who spoke with the Inquirer‘s Keith Pompey. Everyone else, on the other hand, could be available to the highest bidder. Get those second-round picks ready, opposing GMs!
Excising productive rotation players like Robert Covington, K.J. McDaniels and Jerami Grant won’t help Hinkie get to the root of his team’s overachieving problem, however. If he really wants to ensure the Sixers out-suck the Knicks, T’Wolves and Los Angeles Lakers, there’s just one option: kick MCW, Noel and Embiid to the curb.
Last month, Pompey broke the news that Embiid had swelled up to 300 pounds and had team officials questioning his work ethic. In other words, the Kansas product is well on his way to becoming the next Andrew Bynum. And how did that work out for the Sixers? Exactly. He should be the first out the door, no questions asked.
Noel, meanwhile, has already emerged as one of the league’s best rim-protecting big men, which means he must go, too. No Sixers player can lead all rookies in rebounds, steals and blocks per game if the team is going to tank its way to the No. 1 pick, after all. And let’s be real: Iman Shumpert puts his flattop to shame. What’s the point of having the NBA’s second-best flattop? There isn’t one. Adios, Nerlens.
And though MCW is not-so-secretly aiding the tank by shooting 38.0 percent on his 14.9 field-goal attempts per game, he’s still finding too many other ways to help the team win games, much to Hinkie’s dismay. If the Sixers really want the best lottery odds, they’ll need to flip MCW for, say, Andrea Bargnani, then trot out guys on 10-day contracts, such as Larry Drew II and Tim Frazier, as their starting point guard. That’ll teach those pesky Knicks, Wolves and Lakers who they’re messing with.
If Hinkie stands pat at the trade deadline and doesn’t trade away all three of the Sixers’ marquee players, it’ll be his biggest affront to the game of basketball yet. He’ll be tanking his effort to tank.
Next: Doctors amputate Blake Griffin’s right arm, and everyone loses their collective minds