therealozzykhan wrote:WarriorsEFC wrote:
To be honest... the last 3 years have been a waste too.
You've got one guy that gets into fights at nightclubs.
Another one that spent his entire first year injured on twitter trying to get a date with a popstar and acting like a 12 year old... and then getting fat.
And then you've got another guy that destroys rental properties and lives in the house like he is still in the slums.
If that's a future for you... god help the 76ers. You deserve to pull 16th in the lottery.
This confuses the outcome with the plan. Had the ping pong balls bounced Philly's way (the most likely outcome), they have KAT and we are all thinking about the assets they have to build around him. Keep in mind Philly wanted Russell and really liked KP, but KP wouldn't work out for them, so it was pretty hard for Hinkie to take two flyers in a row--he went with Okafur because he was the same pick and was somewhat pressured to do so. The Lakers are not trying to be terrible (though Byron Scott made sure that is moot) and decided it made sense to put your star player with the biggest idiot in the league and play videographer. Sure Philly could have babysat Okafur more but hindsight is 20-20. The Lakers have Kobe and like him or love him, they love him and didn't think that he should be babysitting Russell (or couldn't convince him to).
There is something to "success begets success", but being an 8th seed is not success. Star FA want to go to contenders, not 8th seeds.
If there is one flyer you could have argued for Philly it would have been to take Giannis, but 14 other teams didn't do that either. Noel might not be a star (and probably won't be), but he was a better pick than all of those guys. Other than Oladipo and Giannis the class was very weak, and it's not certain that those guys are going to be stars anyway.
Cleveland literally made one of the worst--if not the the worst--number one pick in history in 2003, yet its ineptitude turned into Wiggins, which turned into LeBron. It may sound counterfactual but sometimes doing the smart thing doesn't lead to the best outcome, but I'd rather have someone like Hinkie, who is following a legitimate plan, than a bunch of idiots trying to jack up gate revenues with two extra home games. Hinkie was transparent with his owners and they all agreed on the plan--they just threw him under the bus because of outside pressure.
Mitch Kupchak insisted on overpaying Kobe, which doomed the Lakers to the cellar. Kobe is great, people love to see him, but he hasn't been able to help a team get better for years because of wear-and-tear (and lost a pick that may very well go to Philly). Over the long run what matters is the number of rings and, outside of the Miami Heat, pretty much all of it starts with a crappy team lucking out in the draft (and even Miami lucked out with Wade 2004). The NBA, in order to try and stop this from happening again made it harder to build a team purely from FA so for most teams the only way to get a star is to draft one and hope he brings in some others along with him. Maybe it doesn't work out for Philly, but as stated before there was almost a 0% chance of that happening when they were on the fringe of the playoffs, but now they have assets that make that possible.
Look at the best teams in the league like GS, SA, OKC, CLE. At best a FA signing was icing on the cake (LeBron/Aldridge), but doesn't happen without some solid draft picks like Steph, Klay, Draymond, Kawhi, Westbrook, KD, etc. Also, second round picks are generally not valuable but once in a while they really pan out like Draymond or Manu.
While Hinkie might have been rough around the edges and needed to learn a bit more on the job it's absurd to say he didn't have a solid plan. Everyone keeps confusing a solid plan that still depends on luck with a bulletproof one where there is zero element of chance.
