The Sam Hinkie Dossier (part 4)

The fourth way a GM fills out his roster is through trades. Hinkie was a fairly active trader and though he spent most of his time trying to give away salary or accumulate salary from other teams, that doesn't preclude him from bringing in talent whether for the present or the future. So how good were Hinkie's trades?

I looked over the 24* trades in the Hinkie era and broke them down as positive. negative or negligible. I tried to judge them in the context of when the trade was made, as opposed to the long term outcome of the trade. I wanted to try to get a sense of what Hinkie was thinking at the time rather than judging them from a future vantage point. Did Hinkie make good moves? Did he get fleeced or did he do the fleecing?

To my eye there was only one trade that I listed as negative: On Feb 24, 2014, the Sixers traded Evan Turner and Levoy Allen to the Pacers for Danny Granger and a 2nd rd pick. Danny Granger was once a really good player in this league but he never quite recovered from his injuries in the previous years (and was usurped by Paul George in his absence), so the Sixers weren't picking up a guy that could play, there were just taking on salary because they could. Frankly this alone is worth more than a 2nd rd pick but the fact that Hinkie also included Turner (still a promising young player at the time) and Allen (a solid rotation guy) is just giving talent away. We can surmise that Hinkie had no interest in retaining Allen or Turner past their then-current deals, that's fine, but I think he could've gotten more than a dead contract and a 2nd rd pick. (Wacky twist: I think Evan Turner is one of the free agents the Sixers ought to pursue this summer; can't imagine he'd want to go back but I think the way he's played in Boston is the model for Ben Simmons' game: small forward who's a reliable ball handler and good passer that can shoot a little and drive just enough to be dangerous. I think Simmons can be better than that but I do think that's basically what he is and pairing him with Turner could make magic for both of them)

Another notable trade that may be considered a bust in the future but at the time seemed like a reasonable risk to me was trading Michael Carter-Williams (the reigning ROY at the time) for the top-3 protected 2016 Lakers 1st rd pick on Feb 19, 2015. The Lakers were able to retain the pick but I think Hinkie had already decided that MCW was not his PG of the future and gambling that the Lakers would have too much pride to completely bottom out in order to save a draft pick was worth it. The Lakers surely won't be that bad next year but aren't gonna challenge the Warriors new record single season win total, either, so the Sixers are guaranteed a decent 1st rounder for 2017. Not bad. MCW is a nice ball handler, terrific athlete but, man, that kid is allergic to scoring points; there's a place for him in the NBA but he needs to be surrounded by a collection of scorers and Hinkie probably saw that Philly was a ways away from being the kind of team that MCW needs to be on. Not a bad trade for anyone involved.

Just to be nitpicky, I can't help thinking that Hinkie could've gotten more for Spencer Hawes, another veteran Hinkie inherited that he got rid of as fast as he could. On Feb 20, 2014, Hinkie traded Hawes to the Cavs for Earl Clark, Henry Sims and two 2nd rd draft picks. Sims actually did play some minutes for the Sixers and Hinkie does love his 2nd rd pick collection, but there were no future stars in that deal and Hawes must've been attractive to more teams than just Cleveland. Not a terrible deal, I just feel like he might've done better.

On the positive side, I think trading Jrue Holiday for Nerlens Noel and a future 1st rounder (Elfrid Payton, to be exact) was a bold move and a good one right out of the gate for Hinkie. And his last major trade, which brought the Sixers Nik Stauskus, Carl Landry, a 1st rd pick (a Sacramento Kings 1st rd pick!) and the right to future pick swaps for...basically nothing (a 2nd rd pick and the rights to two foreign players), forms a solid bookend to Hinkie's wheeler-dealer phase as Sixers GM.

In between the two bookend trades Hinkie basically made three types of moves. He took cheap flyers on young players (Tony Wroten, Byron Mullins, Furkan Aldemir, Royce White, Jordan McRae) with minimal results. He accumulated a ton of draft picks (Six 1st rd picks and eleven 2nd rd picks, by my count)--nothing wrong with that and he's set up the Sixers with many extra picks over the next few years. And salary dumps from other teams (Granger, Keith Bogans, Marquis Teague, Hasheem Thabeet, Gerald Wallace, JaVale McGee, Andrei Kirilenko, Ronny Turiaf (though I truly think they expected Kirilenko and McGee to play)), so while other GMs complained about the Sixers tanking games, the Sixers served a community purpose in the form of absorbing a ton of crappy contracts around the league. Other teams may complain but when they needed some dirty work done they didn't hesitate to call on Sam Hinkie.

In the end, I think Hinkie made way more good trades than bad ones and has set the Sixers up to be active in trade and draft markets for years to come. I gotta give Sam Hinkie a big thumbs up on this side of his GM duties.


(* Technically there were 25 that I could find. But two of them--the first two trades Hinkie made actually--were basically bound up together and could just as easily be seen as a single 4-way trade, which is how I think the teams themselves would've viewed the deal at the time. I suppose there is technically some distance between the moves but I think all the various moving parts were in conjunction.)