The 76ers' ‘Process’ gets a perfect ending

The No.1 pick and a shot at drafting Ben Simmons has given Sam Hinkie's 'Process' in Philadelphia the best ending.

Author:
Andrew Sharp
Publish date:
May 18, 2016

It's been said that Sam Hinkie has a "cult following" among Sixers fans, and I need you to know that this is true in the most literal sense. I spent last night at the Rights to Ricky Sanchez Lottery Party in Philadelphia. There were call-and-response chants about "Process," deafening boos any time Doug Collins popped up on TV, and a giveaway for a very expensive diamond-encrusted "Trust The Process" ring. All this was before the NBA draft lottery even started.

Some background: Rights to Ricky Sanchez is a Sixers podcast hosted by Spike Eskin and Mike Levin. I used to live with Mike and have come to know Spike over the past few years, and in that same time their podcast has helped turn Hinkie and "The Process" into its own movement. I won't try to explain it much further, except to say that between diamond rings and Doug Collins hate, all these people eventually became as much a part of "The Process" as losing games and Joel Embiid injury updates.

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Most of them would have been happy with the second pick last night. Everyone I talked to beforehand dreaded a worst case scenario—the Sixers fall out of the top three, lose the Lakers pick, and all this was for nothing. Or there was what felt like the most likely ending—Sixers fall to No. 3 for the third year in a row. Just high enough to make it hard to complain too much, but just low enough to miss out on a player who can change everything.

Next to all that, and after a year full of misery that ended with Hinkie's 13-page resignation later, everyone agreed that No. 2 would be more than enough. And then this happened:

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It was the best. It's perfect because it guarantees we'll be arguing about how much credit Hinkie deserves for at least the next five years, but it's also what Sixers fans deserved after the past few seasons. Because whether you agreed with Hinkie's philosophies or not—I didn't, I got booed last night—everyone can agree on two things: First, the Sixers are about to transition to something different under Bryan Colangelo. Second, for the people who looked at Hinkie's plan and found a way to care the past few years, the new era represents a shift away from this shared, barely sane odyssey that brought them all much closer together.

"This has been hard, man," Spike said afterward. "This has been hard. And we've been able to find the mini pieces of joy in this. Like, ooh Jerami Grant hit a corner three. Or ooh, Joel Embiid practiced today. It's all been finding those things to keep us going. To keep us going for a moment like this."

Beating the NBA Draft Lottery Odds

Orlando Magic

Since the NBA instituted a weighted lottery system before the 1990 draft, nine teams with a less than 10 percent chance of winning the drawing have been awarded the No. 1 pick. No team beat the odds quite like the 1993 Magic, who, after barely missing the playoffs at 41-41, made good on their 1.5 percent chance (1 Ping-Pong ball out of 66) to claim the top spot for the second consecutive season (they had snagged Shaquille O'Neal in '92). Orlando wound up selecting Chris Webber and trading him to Golden State for Penny Hardaway and three first-round picks. Two years later, Shaq and Penny led the Magic to the NBA Finals.

Golden State Warriors

After the Warriors delivered on their 9.4 percent chance, then-general manager Dave Twardzik said, ''Whoever you take, some people are going to say, 'How could pass on this [other] guy?' '' Twardzik experienced the second-guessing first-hand: The Warriors chose forward Joe Smith while the rest of the top five was Antonio McDyess, Jerry Stackhouse, Rasheed Wallace and Kevin Garnett.

New Jersey Nets

Pegged to draft seventh after a 31-51 season, the Nets instead cashed in on their 4.4 percent chance of winning the lottery. New Jersey picked forward Kenyon Martin, who proved to be a key part of back-to-back Finals teams in 2002-03 before being shipped to Denver as part of a sign-and-trade deal in 2004.

Houston Rockets

An 8.9 percent chance was enough for the Rockets to leapfrog four teams and win the Yao Ming sweepstakes. Yao was productive when healthy, but the healthy part didn't happen nearly as much as Houston would have hoped. The 7-6 center retired in July 2011 after nine seasons in which he averaged 19 points, 9.2 rebounds and 1.9 blocks.

Milwaukee Bucks

The Bucks, with a 6.3 percent chance, jumped from sixth to first and selected center Andrew Bogut ahead of point guards Chris Paul and Deron Williams. Bogut spent seven years with the Bucks before being traded to Golden State. He led the league with 2.6 blocks in 2010-11.

Toronto Raptors

General manager Bryan Colangelo entered his first draft in Toronto with the biggest prize after the Raptors vaulted to the top despite only an 8.8 percent likelihood. The Raptors used the choice to make Italy's Andrea Bargnani the NBA's first European No. 1 pick. Bargnani averaged a career-high 21.4 points in 2010-11 and followed that with 19.5 points in an injury-shortened 2011-12, but he's been criticized for his defense and rebounding.

Portland Trail Blazers

While the teams with the three worst records -- Memphis, Boston and Milwaukee -- got the fourth, fifth and six picks, Portland won the lottery with its 5.3 percent chance. The windfall didn't pay off, however, as the Trail Blazers passed on Kevin Durant in favor of Greg Oden, who has played only 82 regular-season games over five seasons because of persistent knee injuries. The Blazers waived Oden in March 2012.

Chicago Bulls

The Bulls turned their 1.7 percent chance into the first pick. They did just fine with it, too, selecting Chicago native Derrick Rose, who was the 2008-09 Rookie of the Year, an All-Star a year later and the league MVP in 2010-11.

Cleveland Cavaliers

The Cavaliers used the pick obtained in a trade with the Clippers to win the No. 1 pick despite just 2.8 percent odds. That put them in position to draft Duke point guard Kyrie Irving, who turned into the Rookie of the Year and the centerpiece of their post-LeBron rebuilding effort.

Along the way, they've missed out on Karl Towns and Andrew Wiggins, endured two years of false starts with Joel Embiid, watched Jahlil Okafor go off the rails within his first month in the NBA, and sat through 199 losses. But the process trusters kept the faith, at least enough to laugh at critics, lean into the cult jokes, and have fun with this. It all took on a life of its own. "I would have taken the fourth pick and the last three years would've been worth it," Eskin said through a grin.

There have been bus trips to Brooklyn for Sixers games, several versions of Hinkie T-shirts, meet-ups in Philly, a Hinkie billboard... I'm biased because I know them, but I'm pretty sure at some point the audacity of this Sixers cult became a more impressive story than the team.

The story will change now. The next month will be debates between Ben Simmons and Brandon Ingram, and the new era will begin with whoever the Colangelos take on draft night. The founding principle of the past few years was to be so bad that eventually the Sixers would be great, but now the goal is to be good.

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At this point, it's a healthy switch. Even if Hinkie were still in charge, this was always going to be the year that goals changed. The focus of Sixers and their fans will shift to building around the No.1 pick and praying that Qatari doctors fixed Joel Embiid's foot.

For now, all that matters is that last night was the perfect bookend for a Sixers era and Sixers fans that got so much crazier than anyone expected. These parties started five years ago, when Spike threw an "End of Lockout" party with 75 people at a bar in South Philly. On Tuesday, there were at least 2,000 people in attendance, watching an event that lasts about 10 minutes on ESPN.

Speaking of the lottery, there are people who would look at the event and call it an amazingly stupid way to decide the future of a multi-billion dollar sport. This is correct. There are people who would look at a euphoric lottery celebration, or a Sam Hinkie billboard, and call it all insane. This is also correct. I've spent the better part of three years yelling about this to Mike Levin, and laughing at just how unhinged the Sixers and this process had become.

But it's not as if caring about winning teams is that much smarter, right? None of sports is sane, and it ends badly 98% of the time. The best parts of sports are the friends you have to complain about them with, and the moments you occasionally get to celebrate way too much. That's what last night was in Philadelphia. That's been the past three years. People hated "The Process" because it wasn't what sports was supposed to be about, but for the people who bought in, it was everything that sports has always been about.

"Everyone here sat through all this," Eskin said at the end. "It's a good feeling. They don't think this was for nothing. You can say it over and over again, process, process, process, process, but the point of a process is for there to eventually be a result. This was a nice result."