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Sixers GM got the job after giving a Power point on the Harden Trade

Discussion in 'Houston Rockets: Game Action & Roster Moves' started by DFWRocket, Feb 17, 2015.

  1. DFWRocket

    DFWRocket Member

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    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/nbas-most-interesting-gm-got-154006543.html

    Here's some Morey love from the Sixers GM



    AP Images It's hard to read ESPN's great new article about Philadelphia 76ers general manager Sam Hinkie without thinking he knows exactly what he's doing.
    The Sixers are using the most radical tanking strategy that the NBA has ever seen. Hinkie has put all his focus on the long-term, sacrificing any hope that the team can make the playoffs in the next year or two.

    Since he got hired in the spring of 2013 he has refused to sign free agents, traded his team's best players, drafted guys who are injured or overseas, and generally done everything possible to amass assets to build a championship team down the road instead of a good team right now.

    A lot of people hate the plan because it's flagrantly anticompetitive, but it makes total rational sense. In fact, Hinkie was involved in the best example of how this type of team-building strategy works — the 2012 Thunder-Rockets trade that brought James Harden to Houston.

    According to ESPN's Pablo Torre, the 76ers hired Hinkie after he made a presentation centered around the Harden trade at a dinner with ownership in 2013. From ESPN:

    And Hinkie, as if to underscore that divergence, walked into dinner carrying a laptop, complete with a massively detailed PowerPoint presentation that Sixers executives now recall as an "investment thesis." Its centerpiece was a diagram that illustrated, arrow by arrow, transaction by transaction, how Houston had amassed the assets — two first-rounders and a second-rounder, along with guards Kevin Martin and Jeremy Lamb — to acquire superstar guard James Harden from the Thunder in October.

    Before the Sixers hired him, Hinkie spent eight years as executive vice president of basketball operations for the Houston Rockets. Many of those years were spent conserving cap space and hoarding assets in order to either sign a big-name free agent or make a trade for a superstar.

    In the fall of 2012, that happened with the Harden trade.

    Today Houston is one of the best teams in the NBA, but before the Harden trade on the eve of the 2012 season, they were what many people would call "tanking."
    They spent the summer shipping off the players that made them a .500 team the year before — guys like Kyle Lowry, Goran Dragic, Chase Budinger, Courtney Lee, and Luis Scola — in exchange for future assets. Basketball Prospectus projected them to win 21 teams and finish last in the Western Conference.Â

    Days before the season started, they flipped a bunch of assets to Oklahoma City in exchange for Harden, and immediately signed him to a maximum contract extension.

    As Hinkie demonstrated in his PowerPoint, this trade wouldn't have been possible if the team hadn't dismantled their 2011-12 roster and amassed future assets. Here's what they gave up in the Harden trade, and how they acquired them in the first place:

    Jeremy Lamb (drafted in 2012, acquired from Milwaukee in exchange for Samuel Dalembert)
    Kevin Martin (acquired from Sacramento in a 2010 three-team trade)
    2013 1st-round pick (acquired from Toronto in exchange for Kyle Lowry)
    2014 1st-round pick (acquired from Dallas in a 2012 three-team trade in which Houston gave up Jordan Hill)
    2013 2nd-round pick (acquired from Boston in exchange for Courtney Lee)
    Houston ended up getting one of the best players in the NBA for a pile of assets that don't look all that appealing on paper. It was a brilliant trade, and a perfect example of how you parlay an assortment of assets into something that can win you games.

    Harden has since become an MVP candidate, Houston used its cap space to sign Dwight Howard the next summer, and now they're one of the handful of teams that can realistically win a title this year.
     
  2. MaxRider

    MaxRider Member

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    tanking? when is rockets have a winning record less than .500?
     
  3. Crashlanded19

    Crashlanded19 Member

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    The Sixers are gonna be good in the future. Building a team takes time. They will have 2 good big men next year and a good point guard. They could squeeze in the playoffs next year.
     
  4. CCorn

    CCorn Member

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    We had finally committed to tanking the season we got harden.
     
    1 person likes this.
  5. Hippieloser

    Hippieloser Contributing Member

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    Remember when some hack in Philly wrote that article about how Morey was a moron who would never get off the mediocrity treadmill with his bull**** "science," and that the Sixers were doing it the right way by ignoring analytics?

    Then, like exactly one year later, the pathetic Sixers suck hard and hire Boy Genius Daryl Morey's sidekick to clean up their piddle? That **** was funny, dog.

    EDIT: Found it! This came out right before the Harden trade: Inside the Sixers: 'Analytic' general manager wouldn't work with 76ers
     
    #5 Hippieloser, Feb 17, 2015
    Last edited: Feb 17, 2015
  6. vstexas09

    vstexas09 Contributing Member

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    damn...we were so committed to tanking, we threw 25 mil at lin to play here...

    in before lin fans raid this thread
     
  7. J Sizzle

    J Sizzle Member

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    [​IMG]

    Thank you Hinkie
     
    2 people like this.
  8. FTW Rockets FTW

    FTW Rockets FTW Contributing Member

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    Need to thank Hinks for Royce WHite and Furkahn Aldeman or whatever that scrub was.
     
  9. CCorn

    CCorn Member

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    I believe both Asik and Lin were brought in as gambles for possible valuable assets. 1 panned out, the other brought the organization a ton of money while he stunk it up.
     
  10. dc rock

    dc rock Contributing Member

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    Look at Marco stumbling away, slowly learning that life is okay.

    What he gets for trying to take on Harden.
     
  11. DreamShook

    DreamShook Member

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    This is how media shapes perception. Rockets were never tanking which should add to the genius of the James Harden trade. The year we got Harden, Rockets probably didn't have the talent to be above .500 but the previous years the Rockets didn't tank.
     
  12. Scolalist

    Scolalist Member

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    Morey, has and will never commit to tanking.
     
  13. Remix

    Remix Member

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    Yea....ok. While the Rockets were "tanking" their record never dropped below .500. :rolleyes:

    Morey saw an opportunity and striked. Some may just saw we got lucky but luck is when preparation meets opportunity.
     
  14. Hippieloser

    Hippieloser Contributing Member

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    It's hard to remember now, but in the months leading up to the out-of-nowhere Harden trade, the Rockets had just missed out on Dwight Howard and had blown up their roster. They let Dragic walk; they amnestied Scola. It did, indeed, look for all the world that Houston finally intended to tank a season. Jeremy Lin and Omer Asik weren't scaring anybody.

    Then we got Harden, and "tanking" went out the window.
     
  15. RedRedemption

    RedRedemption Contributing Member

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    I felt like we were on our way to another 14th pick, mediocre season.
     
  16. marky :)

    marky :) Member

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    We were projected to be below .500 in those seasons but the players we had, regardless if we hated them or loved them, played their butts off almost every game. So there is no doubt in my mind we weren't trying to "tank".
     
  17. hotballa

    hotballa Contributing Member

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    to Morey's credit, I don't think he ever was gonna go into full tank mode. Thats honestly a horrible way to run a team in a sport where the your best shot of getting the #1 pick is like 25%. To do it two years in a row is mind boggling, and that there are now full blown fluff pieces on yahoo.com and espn.com about the geniusness of Hinkie when there has been ZERO results yet is just...I don't even know.
     
  18. roslolian

    roslolian Member

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    Prior to the trade the Rox were finally all set to tank so technically the article is correct. If the Harden trade never happened the Rox would have no bench and their best players would be role players Kmart, Lin, Parsons and Asik so yeah, IMHO if the trade didn't happen the Rox would have tanked.

    Which honestly wouldn't have been so bad, we'd have two lottery picks to buildup for the future.
     
  19. BamBam

    BamBam Contributing Member

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    Darn it Maurice! What the bell were you thinking! Just jk...:grin:

    Seriously, I wish Lowry was still on our team! I would take him over Dragic every day of the week and twice on Sundays!
    .......
    .......
    .......
     
  20. jakedasnake

    jakedasnake Member

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    Agreed, our record wouldn't have been great but far from the worse in the league. I thought we were going to do a tank job while still being relevant with the Jeremy Lin signing and having fans think we weren't tanking. Somewhat the best of both worlds but we still probably wouldn't have been top 10 bad especially since we still had Kevin Martin, Lin and Asik in the fold. Horribly written article.
     

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