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The other gamble

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The Sixers need a coach who can evolve

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Don’t fear the unknown

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The trouble with Jrue Holiday

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Andre Iguodala was concussed in Game 2 (or has really bad memory)

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Change we can believe in

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The Ex-ers

The other gambleThe Sixers need a coach who can evolveDon’t fear the unknownThe trouble with Jrue HolidayAndre Iguodala was concussed in Game 2 (or has really bad memory)Change we can believe inThe Ex-ers

May 18 2013

We have the technology…but we don’t want to spend a lot of money

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Three great reads to kick off the second Saturday of the Sam Hinkie era.

sixmilliondollarmanThe Hinkie effect is already being felt. Over at TrueHoop, Brad Stenger writes about a conversation he had with 76ers’ strength coach Jesse Wright at the NBA combine, during which Wright confessed that his new boss has increased his technology budget. Specifically, the increase was from “no technology budget” to “you now have a technology budget.” But how to spend it? Stenger went on to outline some of the most cutting-edge sports tech that’s at the combine trade show this year. 

Sam Hinkie is a one-of-a-kind. And there’s someone a lot like him working across the street. In a thoughtful column for Philly.com, Rick Hoffman draws some interesting parallels between Hinkie and new Eagles head coach Chip Kelly. Hoffman touches on some of the pushback they’ve gotten, and will likely get, from skeptical Philly sports fans for their science-based approaches to their respective games. Hoffman’s lead captures the tension:

There is nothing new here. The problem is age-old, and really pretty simple:

Too many of us are afraid of smart people.

Smart people are the absolute worst.

Unless the sports economists of tomorrow somehow devise an algorithm that demonstrates off-balance 18-footers by Spencer Hawes, owing to a broad constellation of hidden, and positive effects they had around the floor, were really among the most productive shots in basketball, history will not look kindly on the shot selection of the 2012-13 Philadelphia 76ers. History, it turns out, is already hard at work highlighting the 76ers self-defeating approach to offensive basketball. To wit: Friend of the blog Ian Levy, over at his excellent Hickory-High, crunched some numbers and determined that the 76ers had the worst shot selection in basketball this past season. As in: worse than every other team’s. Read it here. Then remind yourself: it’s over. It’s, finally, over.

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May 15 2013

Sam Hinkie’s Poker Mentality

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“I like smart risks. I’m not afraid to be aggressive if I see something that I think you can find an edge, and push your chips to the middle in a big way.” ~Sam Hinkie

If you’re looking for a two-line summary of the Sam Hinkie philosophy, there you have it. He has a poker player’s mentality.

Poker isn’t just a game of luck. It’s a game of math, and quick decision-making. Calculating complex odds on the fly. The goal, ultimately, is to get your money in when you have the best odds of winning.

You also have to rely on luck not to betray you, of course. Sometimes you’ll be more than a 90 percent favorite to win a hand, only to get three-outer’ed on the river. That’s part of the game.

When that happens, though, you can’t be upset with yourself. If you calculated the odds and followed the decision tree, you can only curse Lady Luck, nothing more.

Based on what was said yesterday during the introductory press conference – and what he’s done in the past – Hinkie is a subscriber to that school of thought.

“We talk a lot about process, not outcome,” he said, “and about trying to consistently take all the best information you can and make consistently good decisions.”

That’s strikingly similar to his quote from a 2009 New York Times article about Shane Battier, where he said, “I care a lot more about what ought to have happened than what actually happens.”

You play the odds correctly enough times, and you’ll end up a winner in the long run, essentially.

On Tuesday, owner Josh Harris acknowledged that there’s always “some element of risk” when going after superstar players like Andrew Bynum. “The name of the game is taking intelligent risks,” Harris said in affirmation of Hinkie’s way of thinking.

Transforming the Sixers won’t be an overnight process. Both Hinkie and Harris fully admit that. But as long as they keep playing the odds, they’ll eventually get the river card they need.

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May 15 2013

Nick Young sued for sexual assault

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An unnamed woman filed a lawsuit yesterday accusing Nick Young of date rape. According to the complaint, the incident occurred in August of 2011 in West Hollywood, Ca.

Young allegedly offered the woman champagne with Gamma-Hydroxbutyric acid (GBH), a date rape drug, before taking the woman back to his apartment and sexually assaulting her. The woman claims she does not remember what happened after drinking the glass of champagne.

Allegations against Nick Young include sexual battery, false imprisonment, intentional infliction, and emotional distress. She also filed suit against Crown Bar for negligence.

Via CBS LA:

Court papers also say that the woman alleges that she does not remember what happened after drinking the beverage, but she believes she was taken by Young to his apartment, where she alleges he had sex with her.

When the plaintiff woke up the next morning and asked Young why the two of them were naked in his apartment, he reportedly replied that the two began having sex the previous night, but that they had stopped when she passed out, according to the suit. Court papers also suggest that Young complied when the woman demanded that he take her home.

Ensuing tests later confirmed that the woman had been given GHB, according to the suit, which also says that she underwent exams at the UCLA Santa Monica Rape Treatment Center, which revealed anal and rectal bleeding.

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May 14 2013

Welcome to the 21st century, Sixers

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Mark it down. May 14, 2013. It’s not the day the Sixers committed to numbers. It’s the day they made a full commitment to reason.

We talk a lot about process — not outcome — and about trying to consistently take all the best information you can and make consistently good decisions. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. And you should reevaluate them all.” ~Sam Hinkie

A Wall Streeter, Josh Harris is at the top. A Stanford MBA grad, Sam Hinkie, is in charge of personnel decisions. An MIT grad, Aaron Barzilai, is leading the analytics department. This is Rockets-East. Or really, any-team-with-half-a-clue-East. They know numbers. They know basketball. And most importantly, they know what they don’t know.

There are going to be moves. Plenty of them. Not sure when or how they’ll happen, but when they do, you’ll have the comfort of knowing that the people making the decisions are using all the information they have. Thad Young for a lottery-protected first round pick? Okay. Evan Turner for a bucket of Chickie’s and Pete’s crab fries? Why the hell not. Hire Michael Curry as head coach? Whatever you say, Sixers front office. This blogger trusts you.

So welcome aboard, Sam Hinkie. And welcome to the 21st century, Sixers. Now go win a championship.

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May 13 2013

Sam Hinkie loves scouts

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Sam-Hinkie_headshot_rdStats guys don’t care about scouting, and don’t even watch games, and probably don’t even realize the game is played on a court with a round ball because facts like that–the kind of facts you can only learn with your guts and your eyeballs, and maybe a little thing called heart–don’t show up in fancy spreadsheets.

I take this as axiomatic. So I thought it was interesting that, when I stumbled across some obscure internet sports journal called “Grantland,” I found noted stat geek Sam Hinkie lauding the importance of scouting. What?

(Cue record screeching to a stop. Actually, first imagine that there was music of some kind playing. On a record machine.)

The context: In September of 2011, with the Moneyball movie on the cusp of release, Hinkie and Darryl Morey took to the pages of Grantland with a co-authored piece dispelling some of the more pernicious myths about the Stats vs. Scouting dichotomy they feared (correctly) the movie would inflame. Myth No. 1–the existence of the dichotomy itself:

Our scouting staff in Houston works incredibly hard scouring the globe for talent. Everyone is constantly on the lookout for differential information that might yield additional predictive power to our player evaluations. No doubt, predictive power is what we’re all after. And data helps. But information with real power comes in a variety of forms: both in the stereotypical form that the movie will surely play up of databases and spreadsheets and analysts and predictive models, but also in the form of expertise and experience acquired only via a lifetime of playing and coaching the game. The best organizations bring that all together.

The above point is an important one for the willfully stupid, mouth-breathing, largely Philly radio-based Hinkie bashers of the world to absorb: the philosophy of the 76ers new GM, and of the analytics “movement” writ large, is not predicated on some notion that scouting should be shelved in favor of naked math, consigned to the ash heap of basketball history. What it’s about is a real, scientific, adult dedication to finding the best way(s) to win basketball games. What it’s about is using every single, discrete bit of information available to figure out how to put a championship banner in whatever they’ll call the Wells Fargo Center next year–and then going full-bore in search of new information to add to the picture. It’s about–and this sounds over-serious, yeah, but that’s actually the point–pursuing a solution to the problem of winning basketball games with the same seriousness of purpose with which researchers pursue cures for diseases.

And the old methods of evaluation can help. There’s still insights to be gleaned from expert intuition and instinct, as Hinkie readily insists. So it’s not one or the other. There is no choice between stats and scouting: the only choice an organization has to make is how badly they want to succeed–and whether they’re willing to overturn every stone in their path to figure out how to do it.

I’ll let Hinkie, and Morey, take it from here.

In reality, the referendum on whether using objective analysis improves decision-making is long over. Industries can remain insulated for a time, but the advantage of augmenting decision-making with data is such that adoption becomes near ubiquitous over time…While the storytelling genius of Michael Lewis turned baseball’s adoption of analytics into a fascinating yarn, the phenomenon is actually just the mundane manifestation of the march of progress.

The Sixers have, finally, joined that march. 

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May 13 2013

5-on-5: Drinking the Hinkie Kool-Aid

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Karen Warren/Houston Chronicle

Karen Warren/Houston Chronicle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

True or false: Hiring Sam Hinkie is the best move the Sixers could have realistically made this offseason.

Eric Goldwein: True. If there was a draft of GMs and coaches, Hinkie would be the no. 1 overall pick. Or maybe a top three. He’s a valuable asset and they didn’t have to give away anything or take a salary cap hit to get him.

Tom Sunnergren: True. This is the best move the Sixers could have made in this or any offseason. It’s hard to overstate the significance of bringing Hinkie aboard to captain this sinking ship, but I’ll try: a superstar executive–which Morey’s now former right hand man most certainly is–is the second most valuable asset in the sport next to a superstar player. And I don’t think Chris Paul is coming to Philadelphia anytime soon.

Anthony Calabro: True. The Sixers are building from the ground up — from hiring Aaron Barzilai as director of basketball analytics, to using SportVu optical tracking, to  buying a D-League team in Delaware. The Sam Hinkie hire is another strong building block that should create long-term stability.

Bryan Toporek: True. Hinkie played a huge role in Houston’s analytic revolution. One can only assume that he’ll put an end to the never-ending barrage of long twos that haunted Sixers fans in 2012-13. The future looks a whole lot brighter with Hinkie at the helm.

Wesley Share: The best thing the Sixers could have possibly done this offseason was make a philosophical shift within the organization and begin the move towards the future. They’ve now accomplished that, as they embrace a 35-year-old general manager who relies on advanced statistics and analytics.

Will there be a major roster overhaul this summer?

Goldwein: No. It’ll look different and at some point in the near future this roster will be unrecognizable, but I think most of last year’s top-five minute leaders (Holiday-Thad Young-Turner-Hawes-Richardson) are there on opening night in 2013. Rome wasn’t destroyed in an offseason.

Sunnergren: Yes. There was a lot of dead weight on this team in 2012-13–I’m stealing glances here at the direction of Spencer Hawes, Kwame Brown, and Evan Turner–and it’s a safe bet that with a competent GM, many of these guys will be playing for new cities next season. 

Calabro: Yes. If the Sixers are going to become the Rockets East, they must overhaul the roster. Expect Philly to wheel and deal at the NBA Draft, similar to Daryl Morey did in Houston and Kevin Pritchard when he ran the Portland TrailBlazers. By the time October rolls around, there could be 8-10 new faces in the home whites.

Toporek: Yes. I doubt the Sixers bring back both Evan Turner and Andrew Bynum. Nick Young won’t be re-signed by a GM who places a premium on efficient shooting. Jrue Holiday and Thaddeus Young are the only two players who should feel somewhat confident about their chances of sticking around long term.

Share: Absolutely.  I expect the franchise to squeeze out the useless veterans on short-term contracts (see: Kwame Brown, Royal Ivey and Damien Wilkins) as well as trade some of their regressing pieces (see: Evan Turner and Spencer Hawes), while stockpiling some young assets.

True or false: The Sixers win more than 34 games next season.

Goldwein: True. If Jrue Holiday and Thad Young are back — and this is no guarantee — they will have a hard time losing 50 games in the Eastern Conference. Right now they have too much talent to tank, and not nearly enough to compete. There will be some tough calls for Hinkie, but I don’t think he cleans house right away. 

Sunnergren: False. There are two plausible possibilities for this team in 2013-14: a complete, foundation rebuild that will entail a healthy tank-job to land one of the gems of the deep 2014 draft class–basically, take the under–or something else entirely; immediate, continuous improvement. It just depends on how many inefficiencies Hinkie sees in the sport. Does the new GM think there are enough gains to be made by pursuing productive and undervalued players and tweaking offensive philosophy (more dunks and threes, fewer long twos), that the Sixers can improve significantly and immediately? I’m leaning towards no, but I’m not sure that’s Hinkie’s view. The Rockets, it’s worth pointing out, never tanked in his tenure.

Calabro: False. Roster overhauls generate losses…and lots of them. New ownership didn’t hire forward-thinking, asset-conscious front office guys to watch Damien Wilkins shoot contested mid-range jump shots. Ownership hired these guys to tear down the roster. It’s always darkest just before the dawn.

Toporek: True. No matter what happens with Bynum, the Sixers should have a solid gameplan heading into next season. If Hinkie brings Houston’s brand of basketball to Philadelphia (hooray layups and three-pointers, boo mid-range jumpers), they should be able to win 35+ games in a depleted Eastern Conference.

Share: False. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. I expect an experimental upcoming season, considering the new coach, imminent youth movement and star-studded 2014 NBA draft class.

In light of the Sam Hinkie hire, what grade would you give the new ownership group through 18 months?

Goldwein: A-. With Hinkie, Aaron Barzilai, the D-League team, and the 2014-15 cleared cap, they’ve put the team in position to compete down the road. It could take a little while.

Sunnergren: A-. Sticking with Collins last offseason was, at the time, not an unreasonable decision. Going after Bynum was the right move to make given the available information. Investing in a D-League team was smart, investing in the SportVU system was smarter, and hiring Aaron Barzilai was smarter still. Doing away with Collins and DiLeo after the debacle that was 2012-13 was absolutely the right thing to do, and then hiring Sam Hinkie was an absolute home run–a 440-foot, 2006 Ryan Howard moonshot. I really, really like these guys.

Calabro: C-. The Andrew Bynum trade was gutsy. Giving Doug Collins total control of the roster was weak. It seems ownership learned from their mistakes. Let the MIT guys do their thing for a while.

Toporek: A solid B+. The Hinkie hire was a home run. The rationale behind the Bynum trade still makes sense, even if the move completely blew up in their faces. Letting Doug Collins have free reign in 2012-13 was a mistake, though. Let’s not even bring up Kwame Brown.

Share: B+. Despite the Andrew Bynum trade not turning out the way Sixers fans may have wanted it to, the ownership appears committed to building a contender. The initiative they took when they acquired Bynum along with the Hinkie hire have been the highlights of their tenure. (Donwgraded to a B+ because of Adam Aron’s twitter account and some of their pathetic in-game entertainment).

In the next five seasons, will the Sixers win an Atlantic Division title?

Goldwein: Yes, but that’s more because of the weak and aging Atlantic Division and the randomness of sport, than the hiring of Hinkie. Regardless of who is in the front office, they’ll need a lucky break or two to get a Division Title-worthy roster on the floor.

Sunnergren: Yes. The Sixers will win the division within the next five years and will win a championship within 10. Write it down. (Then torture me with it later.)

Calabro: Yes. This was a definite no before the Hinkie hire. Now, I believe the Sixers will simply outmanuever their competition in the Atlantic Division. It may not happen until Year 5, but Philly will win the Division in the near-future.

Toporek: Last week, I said no. After a healthy dose of Hinkie Kool-Aid, I’d now say it’s 50-50. The Knicks and Nets should be the top dogs through 2014-15, but who knows after that? A few savvy draft picks and free agent signings could eventually swing things in the Sixers’ favor. 

Share: Yes. The Raptors haven’t shown signs of improving anytime soon, the Celtics are deteriorating, the Knicks only have a 3-5 year window considering their age and the contracts of Anthony and Chandler, and the Nets are going nowhere. Thing are looking up in Philadelphia.

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