Trust The Process: Revisiting The NBA’s Most Controversial Rebuild

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PerSources Contributor
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Trust The Process

Trust The Process.

A couple of days ago, someone asked me to explain “The Process” to them. My response was that I simply could not explain what “Trust The Process” meant to me, to every Sixers fan, and to the rest of the NBA in such a short amount of time.

Luckily (or rather ironically), I have this Boston-based outlet where I can explain, question, reflect upon, thank, and defend The Process. So, here we go.

Sam Hinkie

Where else would I start with The Process other than one Sam Hinkie, former Philadelphia 76ers GM from 2013 all the way until April 6, 2016, when he resigned (against his will) and handed the reins of the Sixers to the mess of a man that is Bryan Colangelo. The Process is not a tangible event or action that can be pinpointed by a series of events (some argue that The Process has not ended) but rather a movement or intellectual revolution upon basketball fans – such as The Enlightenment or The Renaissance. It unquestionably can be traced back to Hinkie.

Perhaps the origins of The Process can best be explained by describing Hinkie himself. Those who’ve interviewed the High School valedictorian with a degree from Stanford, have referred to him as THE smartest person they’ve ever talked to. Many take note of his inquisitive nature, and how he intricately crafts his sentences as though they are pieces to a puzzle. Those of you that have met geniuses such as Sam have seen how these types of people tackle problems. They attempt to find the most efficient way to yield the optimal results, making everything else an afterthought. While Hinkie implemented The Process, he faced scrutiny from all over (we’ll get into this later). Instead of following the standard set by previous GMs, Hinkie sought to improve the way his franchise was handled.

So, that’s just what Hinkie did. When he was named GM in 2013, he undoubtedly saw the direction in which the league was headed. Whether anybody liked it or not, LeBron James’ decision to join forces with Chris Bosh and D-Wade set the precedent that it became almost imperative to have multiple Hall-of-Fame talents in their prime on a team to win a championship (with the exception of the 2011 Mavericks). And as an NBA GM, you’re tasked with a multitude of things, but all of these things can be summed up as building a team that has the ability to seriously contend for a championship for a prolonged period of time.

When Hinkie became the GM, the Sixers had a couple of nice pieces and could be a fringe playoff team if they grew the pieces, but they had no real shot of ever being an elite team. He realized that being mediocre and sneaking into the playoffs also made it nearly impossible to obtain elite talents through the draft or free agency by virtue of where the team would be picking and lack of appeal to free agents.

The Implementation

Sam Hinkie (May 14, 2013): “We talk a lot about process—not outcome—and trying to consistently take all the best information you can and consistently make good decisions. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t, but you reevaluate them all.”

Most people that slander The Process simply write it off as “tanking,” ignorantly scoffing at the fact that they feel as if any team could have accomplished what the Sixers have. Here is a simple exercise to disprove that theory.

Think of how many teams were bad for nearly as long as the Sixers (three-to-four seasons) and still have no foreseeable route to a championship in the next decade. I won’t even include middle of the road teams such as Charlotte, Detroit, or Memphis. Phoenix, New York, Brooklyn, Sacramento, and Orlando have been simply tanking the way that most people want them to (considering they haven’t been bashed by media like the Sixers have), yet they are miles behind Philly in both their current rosters and the potential future of it.

So, what made The Process different than a traditional tank-job? First, The Process era in Philly was centered around a wholehearted devotion to losing games. Despite most of the national media (and some local media, I’m looking at you Howard Eskin) referring to the Sixers as a scam of a franchise that hates their fans, Hinkie and his crew quietly went about their business with a single goal: obtaining multiple young, elite, franchise-level talents.

Hinkie realized that spending one or two years on accomplishing this would simply be impossible. This was the main fault of the aforementioned teams that are struggling to win playoff series (or even make it to the postseason), as these teams may have lost for a few years, obtained a couple solid players through the draft (but no franchise-altering ones), and don’t have the foundations of a championship team.

No, Sam was too smart for that. As many pioneers do, he took the road less traveled. He realized that half-assing a tank job for one or two seasons would 1. not land you a top-three pick necessary to have the best chance of obtaining an elite talent, and 2. not give you enough chances to obtain that talent. Drafting elite talent is an imperfect science that few teams, if any, have perfected (and yes, the Hinkie-Colangelo era did have its fair share of bad picks).

But there’s more.

During this era, the Sixers franchise was so devoted to The Process that they began playing many undrafted youngsters, second-round picks, and G-league players in starting roles partially to save cap space, but mostly to see if the franchise could find any diamonds in the rough. While most of these players were as advertised and not really NBA players, the Sixers found two guys to keep while they prepared to contend (no disrespect to Mr. 40% Hollis-Thompson): Robert Covington and T.J. McConnell. Covington is considered the league’s best undrafted player and has earned himself a lucrative contract while playing First Team All-NBA defense this past season, and McConnell was arguably the Sixers’ most vital bench piece last season and is regarded as one of the best backup PGs in the league.

So, yes, it’s fair to say that The Process revolved around a sense of hope – a sense of believing for the sole sense of trusting something. There was something truly magical about watching professional basketball players literally playing for their lives.

Here are the most important trades in The Process era that sufficiently encapsulate the movement:

Jrue Holliday

Occurring on Hinkie’s first draft night as a GM, this 2013 blockbuster kicked off The Process era for the Sixers, as they traded all-star Jrue Holliday to the Pelicans for Nerlens Noel and what became Dario Saric. In theory, this was Hinkie’s biggest masterpiece, as he turned the Sixers’ only valuable asset into two top-10 picks (and that’s what Hinkie was all about, right? It was about the process of going about things – not necessarily the results), even though Nerlens didn’t pan out.

But boy, did Dario Saric justify this trade. Once the Croatian finally came over, he immediately proved his value, earning First-Team All-Rookie honors. In addition, he’s widely considered one of the 15 best young players in the league by many and is a remarkably efficient stretch-four, shooting 39.3% from deep.

MCW

The 2013-2014 Rookie of the Year had many fooled thinking that he was a valuable NBA player. Sam wasn’t. Recognizing that Michael Carter-Williams’ stats were inflated during his rookie season due to having a high usage rate on a bad team, Hinkie traded him in 2015 for what eventually became the 10th overall pick in this past year’s draft. In hindsight, this move may actually be smarter than many thought at the time, as MCW is now a third-string guard in the league.

Pick Swap: 

The picks freaking swapped. In the most Hinkie trade ever, the Sixers essentially obtained Nik Stauskas and his expensive contract for the right to swap picks with the Sacramento Kings in 2016 and 2017. Well, in 2017 the Sixers’ had the rights to swap their fifth-overall pick with the Kings’ third pick, and it was proven again that Hinkie’s intricate plan outlasted his tenure in Philly.

Oh, and for anyone that needs proof on how beloved Hinkie’s deals were, here’s the reaction when the picks swapped at the 2017 Lottery Party hosted by The Rights to Ricky Sanchez Podcast:

Defending The Process

I’m going to be extremely focused here. I’m not going to get into any Celtics vs. Sixers arguments, anything about how the Celtics’ rebuild was better, or how the Warriors obtained elite talents without tanking like the Sixers. All I’ll say is that when evaluating The Process, it’s not about what other franchises did. You have to evaluate the Sixers’ rebuild in a vacuum. Sure, the Golden State Warriors had perhaps the best stretch of mid-first-round-picks in NBA history when they selected Steph, Klay, and Draymond. Kudos to them. Congratulations to the Celtics for avoiding a rebuild essentially due to the mastery of Danny Ainge and the incompetence of Brooklyn’s front office.

What matters is that the Sixers recognized the rules of the league and understood that the best way to become one of the league’s premier clubs again was to do exactly what they did. Of course, it had numerous flaws, but in this most unusual way, it was also the safest way of going about a rebuild – maximizing every asset you have and putting everything towards this single goal of drafting a Ben Simmons and a Joel Embiid. While people across the league are jealous of what the Sixers now have and have participated in revisionist history (that was for you, Mike and Spike), making up the number of years the Sixers have tanked for, here is what matters:

The Sixers have a player who’s widely considered the best center in the NBA and the second-best player under 25 in Embiid, a 6’10” rookie of the year point guard that has one of the highest ceilings in the league in Ben Simmons, a First-Team All-Defender in Robert Covington, one of the best young stretch-fours in Dario Saric, a former first pick in Markelle Fultz that is said to have his shot back, and plenty of future cap space. None of that comes without The Process. Ask any team if they’d do what the Sixers did to turn a team with one fringe All-Star into all of that, and every single GM would say yes.

The Process’ Impact on Philly

A common misconception is that people in Philly hated the Sixers during the losing years. This couldn’t be further from the truth. While the fans didn’t necessarily focus on wins and losses (actually scratch that – they wanted losses),

the seasons were interesting nonetheless. Whether it was watching the development of a particular Process player (Hollis Thompson will always have a special place in my heart), looking towards the deadline for any Hinkie blockbusters, or gearing up for the draft lottery and (hoping for) the franchise’s next star.

The Process cultivated this sort of cult mentality, coinciding with the “Philly vs. Everybody” mindset. The leaders of this cult? None other than Mike Levin and Spike Eskin, hosts of The Rights to Ricky Sanchez Podcast. Mike and Spike helped us find solace in the little things during the dark years, and they host one of the largest parties in Philly every year during the NBA draft lottery. The gang, who credit themselves with popularizing the phrase “Trust The Process,” also coined the phrase “Imagine enjoying a sport in Philadelphia.”

As Process Trusters, we had each other, even though there was no one else riding with us.

The best part about it is that we get to prove everyone wrong one milestone at a time.

Sure, it was a long three seasons, but I’d do it all over again for moments like these:

Twitter: @dave_persources 

Instagram: @david_persources 

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