Dear Sam Hinkie,
As GM of the Philadelphia 76ers, you have all but held a press conference to declare that this season is a waste of time. You cheated all NBA fans by intentionally losing.
Let’s go all the way back to the 2013 NBA draft. The Sixers trade away All Star point guard Jrue Holiday—who was coming off a career year admittedly marked with a few low-efficiency blemishes—to the New Orleans Pelicans for Nerlens Noel and a 2014 first-round pick. This trade could not have worked out better for Philadelphia. Holiday gets injured, Michael Carter-Williams, the point guard they drafted with their eleventh pick, is arguably this year’s Rookie of the Year, and New Orleans has had a disappointing season, netting Philadelphia yet another lottery pick in what has been touted as the most talented draft class in years. So far so good.
And then, at the trade deadline of this year, Hinkie, in all of his unabashedly tanking glory, makes the following trades: Evan Turner and Lavoy Allen for Danny Granger and a second-round pick in 2015; Spencer Hawes for two 2014 second-round picks, and Earl Clark and Henry Sims (don’t feel bad if these names mean nothing to you). They promptly cut Granger, who is now playing for the Los Angeles Clippers.
Both Turner and Hawes are quality players. They may not be starters on a contender, but are they serviceable rotation players? Of course. That is why both Indiana and Cleveland traded for them. The point is that the chance of those second-round picks materializing into something better than Spencer Hawes and Evan Turner is highly unlikely. It was a blatant tanking move. The great joke in all this, however, is that the good-hearted and earnest Milwaukee Bucks are still three games behind the 76ers.
And what happens after these trades? They lose 26 games in a row. Twenty. Six. Straight.
There is a narrative happening here and this tragic Philadelphia season is just the climax. At the end of the 2012 season The Warriors traded Monta Ellis for an injured Andrew Bogut and shut down Stephen Curry for the remainder of the season. They went 5–22. Why? Because their first-round pick was “top-seven protected.” They got the seventh pick and drafted Harrison Barnes, who is now considered integral to what looks like a perennial playoff team.
This is a systemic flaw, and creative ways of fixing the tanking problem have already come to light. One such idea predetermines each team’s draft-day slot, so every team gets equal draft value throughout a 32-year cycle. Another, per Bill Simmons, would be to set up an inter-conference sweet-16 style finale at the end of the year. Both are better than what we currently have.
What do you say to your fans, Mr. Hinkie? “Sorry season ticket holders! Come back in 2016 when we’ll be good and the tickets will be more expensive!” What do you say to current players Thaddeus Young and MCW, who’ve had to suffer through such an embarrassing season? How can they reconcile that a whole season of their careers will be forever asterisked?
And moreover, what will you say to your 2014 draft picks? How do you claim you operate with anything besides brutal pragmatism?
I got an idea: “Welcome to Philadelphia—where the future matters more than the present. (P.S. Don’t get too comfortable.)”
Sincerely,
Claude Akins,
Vanguard Sports Desk