Another method for a GM to accumulate players is through waivers. If a GM's job is to find underrated players that other teams are missing out on, well, that what's the waiver wire is. So did Hinkie sneak overlooked talent away from the rest of the league?
Hinkie made 5 waiver claims: 2014 (Chris Johnson), 2015 (Thomas Robinson, Glen Robinson Jr, Ish Smith), 2016 (Sonny Weems). All 5 were released. All 5 are still in the NBA (though Weems is rumored to be on his way to Israel) and Smith last year even returned to the Sixers (though only after Bryan Colangelo was brought in as an 'adviser').
I think Ish Smith can be a solid backup PG for a good team in the NBA but I don't see him as the Sixers' PG of the future and apparently Hinkie never did either. Hinkie let Ish leave after the 2014-15 season, only to trade two 2nd round picks to bring him back after it was clear Tony Wroten wasn't going to work out. If we acknowledge that Ish is underappreciated and was a nice pickup for the Sixers, then we'd also have to acknowledge that Hinkie didn't keep him even though he was very affordable, choosing to rely on Wroten instead. Or we could go conspiracy theory Hinkie here: Ish was too good for the Sixers and Hinkie wanted one more shot at the #1 pick. I dunno, which version do you prefer? Was Hinkie an idiot for letting Ish go or was he a mad genius for letting him go? In the end, he got both: Ish came back and the Sixers still got the #1 pick.
I personally still believe Thomas Robinson can be a decent low price contributor but Hinkie let him go too. But Johnson, Robinson Jr and Weems are just practice players, bottom of the roster guys who will snag minutes in garbage time or in case of injuries but aren't meaningful contributors for any team.
Hinkie didn't show any great proficiency at the waiver wire portion of the GM position or at least he doesn't have any great successes to trumpet. Now this isn't a terribly damning of his performance, the sheer amount of talent available on the NBA waiver wire isn't going to be enormous and, off the top of my head, I can't recall any brilliant waiver wire moves over the last few years. But there are, one hopes, diamonds in the rough out there and the waiver wire is the place to find them. I like that he took a chance on Ish Smith and on Thomas Robinson and while Smith played pretty good for the Sixers, you can't say that Hinkie got the better of his peers in this area. Not much of a minus but not a real plus either.
Showing posts with label hinkie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hinkie. Show all posts
Sunday, June 19, 2016
The Sam Hinkie Dossier (part 3)
Another method for accumulating players is through free agency. As Sixers GM Sam Hinkie signed 26 free agents: Adonis Thomas, Brandon Davies, Casper Ware, Christian Wood, Daniel Orton, Darius Johnson-Odom, Dwayne Dedmon, Drew Gordon, Eliot Williams, Elton Brand, Gani Lawal, JaKarr Sampson, James Anderson, James Nunnaly, Jarvis Varnado, Jordan Railey, Larry Drew, Lorenzo Brown, Malcolm Lee, Nayal Koshwal, Phil Pressey, Pierre Jackson, Ronald Roberts, Solomon Alabi, Tim Frazier, Tim Ohlbrecht.
Only 2 (Brand, Wood) were still on the roster at the end of the 2015-16 season. (I can see Brand coming back for another year as 'veteran presence'. Given how many bigs the Sixers have, Wood seems like someone else's Summer League fodder)
9 others finished 2015-16 on NBA rosters (Williams, Anderson, Dedmon, Davies, Sampson*, Frazier, Brown, Pressey). (Dedmon, Brown, and Sampson seem likely to stick in the league for at least a little while, not sure about the rest)
I think 5 others (Ware, Gordon, Johnson-Odom, Lawal, Varnado) are playing in Europe. (Hey, good for them!)
Near as I can tell 8 (Thomas, Orton, Nunnaly, Railey, Lee, Roberts, Alabi, Olbrecht) are completely out of basketball. I have no idea whatever happened to Larry Drew or Nayal Koshwal but I'm certain they're no longer in the NBA.
I think Pierre Jackson has signed on to the Knicks Summer League squad, so the former D League stand out looks to get at least one more shot at some NBA time.
So out of the 26 signings, none came anywhere near an All-Star Game. Only 7 (Anderson, Brand, Davies, Williams, Wood, Sampson, Pressey) played noteworthy minutes for the Sixers. And I would suggest only 1 (Brand) might be back in the post-Hinkie era. Not a lot of good cards in that hand, absolutely nothing for Hinkie to hang his hat on. He certainly did not produce wins on the court and didn't leave much behind for future development. In his defense (though this is a pretty sorry defense): Hinkie wasn't trying to win games in his three years in Philly. I'm sure he would've been more than happy to sign great young players but given his desire for draft picks and to save money, these three years were not a time of pulling out all the stops to sign big names. He signed under-the-radar players on the cheap hoping they would develop. I can't say any of them did.
I would suggest that this, more than anything, is why Brian Colangelo was brought in to replace Hinkie: if you can't recruit big time free agents, your ceiling for NBA success will probably always remain low. That said, I would suggest that Summer 2016 was always the time that Hinkie was aiming toward in terms of making major moves, whether signings or trades, but was robbed of the chance to be there when the time came.
His free agency record is not strong but it wasn't meant to be, was it? He wasn't concerned with winning or spending money, so though this crop of signings isn't superlative, circumstances prevented him from putting his best foot forward. We can heap the blame on Hinkie, though I'd rather acknowledge that this strategy was well known to his bosses and benefactors...and they hired him anyway. Hinkie was doing what he said he was going to do. While I can't give him any high marks, I don't feel like I can admonish his record too much either.
* (Funny JaKarr Sampson story: Remember the Rockets-Pistons trade that was to send Motiejunas and Marcus Thornton to Detroit for a #1 pick that got voided? That was actually a 3-team deal in which Philly was to get a salary dump for a draft pick (Joel Anthony if I'm not mistaken). In order for the deal to work Philly had to release Sampson, apparently with the understanding that after Anthony was also released, the Sixers would bring Sampson back. Instead, the Pistons backed out of the trade and Sampson signed a multi-year deal with the Nuggets. Oh well.)
Only 2 (Brand, Wood) were still on the roster at the end of the 2015-16 season. (I can see Brand coming back for another year as 'veteran presence'. Given how many bigs the Sixers have, Wood seems like someone else's Summer League fodder)
9 others finished 2015-16 on NBA rosters (Williams, Anderson, Dedmon, Davies, Sampson*, Frazier, Brown, Pressey). (Dedmon, Brown, and Sampson seem likely to stick in the league for at least a little while, not sure about the rest)
I think 5 others (Ware, Gordon, Johnson-Odom, Lawal, Varnado) are playing in Europe. (Hey, good for them!)
Near as I can tell 8 (Thomas, Orton, Nunnaly, Railey, Lee, Roberts, Alabi, Olbrecht) are completely out of basketball. I have no idea whatever happened to Larry Drew or Nayal Koshwal but I'm certain they're no longer in the NBA.
I think Pierre Jackson has signed on to the Knicks Summer League squad, so the former D League stand out looks to get at least one more shot at some NBA time.
So out of the 26 signings, none came anywhere near an All-Star Game. Only 7 (Anderson, Brand, Davies, Williams, Wood, Sampson, Pressey) played noteworthy minutes for the Sixers. And I would suggest only 1 (Brand) might be back in the post-Hinkie era. Not a lot of good cards in that hand, absolutely nothing for Hinkie to hang his hat on. He certainly did not produce wins on the court and didn't leave much behind for future development. In his defense (though this is a pretty sorry defense): Hinkie wasn't trying to win games in his three years in Philly. I'm sure he would've been more than happy to sign great young players but given his desire for draft picks and to save money, these three years were not a time of pulling out all the stops to sign big names. He signed under-the-radar players on the cheap hoping they would develop. I can't say any of them did.
I would suggest that this, more than anything, is why Brian Colangelo was brought in to replace Hinkie: if you can't recruit big time free agents, your ceiling for NBA success will probably always remain low. That said, I would suggest that Summer 2016 was always the time that Hinkie was aiming toward in terms of making major moves, whether signings or trades, but was robbed of the chance to be there when the time came.
His free agency record is not strong but it wasn't meant to be, was it? He wasn't concerned with winning or spending money, so though this crop of signings isn't superlative, circumstances prevented him from putting his best foot forward. We can heap the blame on Hinkie, though I'd rather acknowledge that this strategy was well known to his bosses and benefactors...and they hired him anyway. Hinkie was doing what he said he was going to do. While I can't give him any high marks, I don't feel like I can admonish his record too much either.
* (Funny JaKarr Sampson story: Remember the Rockets-Pistons trade that was to send Motiejunas and Marcus Thornton to Detroit for a #1 pick that got voided? That was actually a 3-team deal in which Philly was to get a salary dump for a draft pick (Joel Anthony if I'm not mistaken). In order for the deal to work Philly had to release Sampson, apparently with the understanding that after Anthony was also released, the Sixers would bring Sampson back. Instead, the Pistons backed out of the trade and Sampson signed a multi-year deal with the Nuggets. Oh well.)
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.)
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.)
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