In 1993, the 41-41 Orlando Magic entered lottery night with the 11th best chance of winning the draft’s No. 1 overall pick. They made history. Despite impossibly long odds, the Magic secured the right to the top selection; a pick they ultimately used on Chris Webber, who they flipped to Golden State on draft day for Penny Hardway.

Led by Hardway and Shaq–the No. 1 overall pick from the previous year’s draft–Orlando won nearly 70 percent of its games over the next three seasons, a run that crested with an appearance in the 1995 NBA Finals.

On Tuesday, the Sixers also entered lottery night with the 11th best chance of procuring the right to the top pick. The Sixers didn’t make history.

While it seems unlikely Philadelphia will land an immediate contributor with their selection on June 27–certainly less likely than if they were choosing, say, first–history tells us that it’s not impossible. The 11 pick in the draft has been a surprisingly consistent source of productive players.

Productive might actually be understating it. While in recent seasons the pick has produced talents like Klay Thompson and JJ Redick, the list of players selected in that spot between 1979 and 1993 (courtesy of Hoopsworld) is remarkable not only for the top line players on it, but for the regularity with which they were found.

To wit:

• 1993: Allan Houston, Detroit Pistons
• 1992: Robert Horry, Houston Rockets
• 1991: Terrell Brandon, Cleveland Cavaliers
• 1990: Tyrone Hill, Golden State Warriors
• 1989: Nick Anderson, Orlando Magic
• 1988: Will Perdue, Chicago Bulls
• 1987: Reggie Miller, Indiana Pacers
• 1986: John Salley, Detroit Pistons
• 1984: Kevin Willis, Atlanta Hawks
• 1983: Derek Harper, Dallas Maverick
• 1980: Kiki Vandeweghe, Dallas Maverick
• 1979: Cliff Robinson, New Jersey Nets

Those 15 selections between 1979 and 1993 produced 12 above-average NBA starters, a handful of All-Stars, and a Hall of Famer. What does this mean? Probably nothing, especially considering the relative dearth of talent that has been found at 11 since the Allan Houston pick. (If Bonzi Wells is at the top of a list, suffice it to say it’s not much of a list.)

But there’s also this: NBA talent evaluators are imperfect. They miss things. In the draft, productive players often go overlooked. For being too short, too skinny, or simply not scoring enough points, very good basketball players routinely slip out of the top 10.

Could the Sixers get one this year? Maybe. It will depend on their ability, as an organization, to evaluate players with clear eyes–unburdened by conventional wisdom and old biases–and see value where no one else does. Sound like anyone you know?

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But with 21 to play, the 76ers rallied. Galvanized by pride, and the never-say-die attitude of their fiery coach, the team won 11 of its final 20 games. Collins tightened his rotations, barked instructions from the bench, contorted his face into a panoply of expressive grimaces: he coached to win. And they won.

“We never quit, we played hard until the bitter end,” Doug Collins probably said to someone at some point, wiping tears from the corners of his stupid wrinkled eyes, thinking about Damien Wilkins and god knows what else. “I’m so goddamned proud of these guys.”

And now the bill has come due.

If the Sixers had continued the course they appeared to be on in early March, and, say, caught the Cavs for that No. 3 seed, they would have a 15.6 percent chance of landing the draft’s No. 1 pick on Tuesday night, a 47 percent chance of choosing in the top 3, a 96 percent chance of selecting in the top 5, and a guarantee of a top 6 pick. As it stands now, they have a 0.8 percent chance of winning the rights to the draft’s top pick and their likelihood of getting a top 6 selection has plummeted from 100 percent to 2.8.

This, Doug Collins, is your legacy. This is what you left the team.

Thanks.

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Ostensibly, the biggest question facing Sam Hinkie at the moment is whether the Sixers should tank in 2013-14. By Hinkie’s own admission though, this isn’t precisely the right question. The right question is this: how do the Sixers land a superstar?

“Superstar” is a well-worn buzzword these days, used to the point of cliche. (The same can be said of “buzzword” actually. Cliche too. Sorry. Like most people who watch a lot of television, my vocabulary is limited.) You need a superstar to compete. You can’t win without a superstar, and probably need a few. The NBA is a superstar’s league. While we’re skeptical of conventional wisdom in these parts, in this case it holds up. It might be possible to win without a superstar in the NBA, but no one has done it recently. 

(“What about the 2004 Pistons?” you say. Two words: Ben Wallace.)

Now, historically the draft has been the surest way to land such a player. But if we take a glance at the present NBA landscape, we see the most productive players aren’t playing for the teams that drafted them, but for squads that acquired them via trade or free agency. Of the five top players in the NBA by measure of Wins Produced (Durant, LeBron, Paul, Harden, and Tyson Chandler) only Kevin Durant is still playing for his original team. Win Shares and PER tell similar stories.  

Granted, right now the Sixers are in no position to convince a player like this to join them, as the team doesn’t enjoy the advantages of most successful superstar poachers. The grass is always greener on the other side, unless that side is Philadelphia. The city isn’t warm, the team doesn’t have another superstar in place (and with it, the promise of immediate success), nor does it have a recent history of even modest accomplishment. Despite the best efforts of the 76ers PR staff to remind the public of the team’s rich history, the 76ers have had just a single 50 win season in the past 23 years.

(And while the hiring of Sam Hinkie considerably improves the franchise’s outlook in the eyes of most educated fans and analysts, and rightly so, it seems unlikely it will do much to rehabilitate the impression of the team that prevails among NBA players.)

These hurdles shouldn’t stop the 76ers from trying though. Sam Hinkie will look into Dwight Howard, because that’s his job and, well, stranger things have happened. (The wishful–okay, pollyanaish–thinking on Howard goes roughly like this: with his apparent interest in Brooklyn, the center has demonstrated that he’s enamored of the idea of headlining a team in a big market, which Philly is, and isn’t averse to playing in the northeast. So…maybe?) Hinkie will kick the tires on Chris Paul for the same reason, but it’s extraordinarily unlikely either of the two UFA headliners will end up in the City of Brotherly Love.

But just because the Sixers will (probably) be unable to bring in a superstar this summer doesn’t necessarily suggest a complete, foundational rebuild is forthcoming–or should be. As he did in Houston along with Darryl Morey, Hinkie might eschew tanking in favor of a steady accumulation of assets, all with an eye on eventually flipping them for a real difference maker when the opportunity presents itself.

(It’s not clear, however, if the Rockets’ Hinkie/Morey braintrust chose this course, or were forced into it by ownership that was unwilling to suffer lost seasons–and gate revenue–while the team was rebuilt. I emailed Rahat Huq, proprietor of the excellent Rockets blog Red94, to get his thoughts on it and he told me this: “Sam himself never tipped his hat to me on his true thoughts. In my mind, it made little sense that a finance/analytics braintrust would continue reveling in mediocrity. At the same time, Morey himself has made some comments in the past about the odds of rebuilding through the draft, or landing a high enough pick, or something like that, being too low. In conclusion, I just never figured it out.” So, long story short, who knows?)

The Sixers might have a perfect roster for just such an approach. As Ian Levy fleshed out and Eric elaborated on the other day, the roster isn’t as far away as it looks at first blush. The team’s shot selection was so insanely, indefensibly wrongheaded last year–worst in the NBA by Levy’s reckoning–that if you adjust them to league average discretion, they come out as a .500 team. Then, if you assume that Hinkie will usher in an system of above-average shot selection similar to what we see in Houston, it’s not crazy to assume that this roster, right now, is a 40-45 win group. (Now, admittedly, Doug Collins got the team to play defense at a level that his successor might not be able to swing–which would factor heavily into a more rigorous projection. I’m not really emotionally ready to give Doug Collins credit for anything though at this point.) And if Bynum resigns on a a short, big money deal–which suddenly seems much more likely than it did a month ago–the ceiling is even higher. This success, if it comes, will improve the 76ers odds of getting a star in two different ways: not only increase the value of the players on the roster–thus giving the 76ers the raw material necessary to swing a trade–but will make the team a more attractive destination for whatever star, or stars, they eventually target.

Suddenly, a franchise overhaul that most assumed would take years seems much closer. While many of us would be willing to take one step back before we can take two steps forward, the 76ers might not have to. The team might be able to have its cake and eat it too.

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Eric Goldwein: The big guy on the right.

Tom Sunnergren: Doug Collins. He did more than anyone in the organization to position the Sixers to draft outside the top ten. He deserves the credit for this. All of it.

Charles Baron: Sam Hinkie. Put the new face of the franchise front and center. He won’t have the moral conundrum that most GMs/Presidents have about smiling at the lottery, as he isn’t culpable for the team’s current condition.

Wesley Share: Jrue Holiday. He represented the Sixers at the Draft Lottery in 2010 when they received the second overall pick and should be used as a good luck charm.

Anthony Calabro: Sam Hinkie should represent the Sixers at the lottery. With no head coach in place, Hinkie is the face of the organization.

2. Where were you when the Sixers “won” the no. 2 pick in the 2010 draft?

Goldwein: In the Promised Land on a Birthright trip. I woke up to a text message saying the Flyers beat the Habs 3-0 and the Sixers got the no. 2 pick. I was heated about the roaming charges.

Sunnergren: In the living room of my mom’s house, sitting with my brother. Granted, we weren’t sitting for long. When the 76ers won the No. 2 pick we were jubilant, even more so than we would have if they’d snagged No. 1. We wanted Evan Turner that badly. Ah, the folly of youth.

Baron: At Wesleyan, celebrating the end of the school year and helping outgoing seniors enjoy their last week as college students. Or something like that. Getting the text message (yes, I’m guilty of skipping that year’s lottery) that the Sixers lucked out was certainly the most memorable part of the night.

Share: I was emphatically celebrating at home with my brother and my father. We were unspeakably excited to draft a surefire star player in Evan Turner who would lift the Sixers from the deep depths of atrocity. We were also very naive.

Calabro: I was in my parents’ basement in Doylestown, Pa. Getting Turner was a big deal. I thought he could really play. I was so young and innocent back then.

3. Should Sam Hinkie blow it up to get in on the Andrew Wiggins sweepstakes?

Goldwein: No. There are two benefits to starting over: getting rid of bad contracts and bringing in a star through the lottery. The Sixeres are already in good cap shape and I don’t think they can get bad enough to pull off the tank. I say go with the Jrue-Thad core and aim for a Rockets-like rebuild. *My answer changes if they played in the Western Conference.

Sunnergren: Yes. I think there’s something to the argument that Eric made the other day – that the Sixers were, effectively, a .500 team last season that simply had terrible shot selection, and could consequently turn it around pretty fast with more 3s/layups–but even if we accept that, it’s still worth taking apart a mediocre (at best) team for a shot at a young fella who could prove to be a transcendent talent.

Baron: Nope. He should follow the path that his Rockets followed: acquire assets and sell off pieces as they reach their peak value, as opposed to the more traditional ‘sell everything and hope for a stud or two in the draft.’ The Bobcats and Kings are prime examples of how losing can beget more losing.

Share: Yes. The Sixers don’t have the pieces necessary to orchestrate a trade for a star player and next year’s draft is expected to be loaded with star caliber players. There are also several other high-level prospects aside from Wiggins who could land anywhere in the top five.

Calabro: Yes. Wiggins is the ultimate prize, but tanking for Jabari Parker or even Marcus Smart is probably a good idea, too.

4. Spurs or Grizzlies?

Goldwein: Spurs in 7. I wouldn’t read too much into the Game 1 blowout, but given two teams of equal ability, I’ll take the one that’s up 1-0 and has the home-court advantage.

Sunnergren: Despite the 1-0 lead Hollinger’s boys have spotted the Spurs, I’ll take Memphis in 7. While the Spurs were a considerably better team in the regular season–don’t be fooled by the narrow 58-56 win advantage San Antonio enjoys, the Spurs outscored opponents by 6.4 ppg in 2012-13 while the Grizz boasted a more modest 4.1 ppg margin–Memphis looked flat ferocious in their dispatching of the Westbrook-less Thunder. It swayed me. Also: Memphis is a tremendous defensive team, and superlative defense is more predictive of postseason success than similarly top-shelf offense. (I can’t find a link to back this up at the moment, but it’s a thing.) Ed. Note: I don’t buy that.

Baron: Spurs in 6. In Game 1 the Spurs reminded the world that they had the second best record in the West. Plus, they have enough quality players in the front court to deal with the Grizzlies’ beasts down low.

Share: San Antonio in 7. There’s no chance a Gregg Popovich squad is ousted by the same team twice in three years.

Calabro: Spurs in 6. Pop coached circles around Lionel Hollins in game 1. The Grizz better find a way to get Randolph going in game 2 or this series could be a short one.

5. Heat or Pacers?

Goldwein: If any team is equipped to defend Miami, it’s the Pacers. Plus, Dwyane Wade isn’t anywhere near 100 percent. (What’s new?) But, LeBron. Heat in 5.

Sunnergren: Miami in 5. LeBron gonna LeBron.

Baron: Heat in 5. The Pacers probably have the best personnel in the league to guard the Big 3 without sending double teams, but as has been the case for the past few years, their lack of depth and offensive power will prevent them from challenging a healthy Heat squad.

Share: Heat in 6. Like last year, the Pacers will fight and claw their way to a couple of victories and provoke questions regarding whether they can be the team to beat the Heat. But, as long as Wade is healthy, the Heat will prove too much for Indiana’s balanced attack.

Calabro: Heat in 6. The Heat will win, but I think this is the series that will make Paul George a household name. Love his game.

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It’s easy to say the Sixers should hit the reset button. Lose 50+ games and get in prime position to land a star in the stacked 2014 draft. 

Pulling off the reset, though, is a lot more complicated than it sounds. Unless new general manager Sam Hinkie is willing to fully blow up the core – that means trading Jrue Holiday and/or Thaddeus Young – the Sixers will have a hard time getting in the Andrew Wiggins sweepstakes.

It’s worth noting that this year’s team almost made the playoffs despite everything that went wrong. They were bad, sure. Pathetic at times. Yet they still won 34 games, only four fewer than the eight-seed Milwaukee Bucks. They ranked 21st in the Hollinger power rankings – closer to the playoffs than the dungeon.

This is in spite of the damage that Philadelphia blogosphere enemy no. 1 Doug Collins inflicted on the team, specifically the offense. Over at Hickory High, Ian Levy did Yeoman’s work which suggests that the Sixers had the worst shot selection in the NBA. Using regression analysis, he estimated that a league-average shot selection could have added about seven wins.

There’s a lot of numbers behind the analysis, but here’s the meat of it:

“In a hypothetical world where the 76ers’ shooting percentages from each area of the floor where completely static and immune to changes from outside factors; bringing just their shot selection up to league average XPPS would raise their TS% from 50.9%, 29th in the league this season, to 51.7%, which would have ranked 21st. Using that number, some regression analysis I’ve done previously, and holding their OReb% and TO% constant, we can predict that their ORtg. would jump from the 99.9 they actually averaged in the regular season to 102.9. That would essentially give them an even point differential for the season, the mark of a 0.500 team. I know I’m sprinting down a slippery slope here, assuming a huge number of other variables wouldn’t change as well, but since the 76ers finished at 34-48 we can estimate that their shot selection may have cost them as many as seven wins this season.

With new GM Sam Hinkie on board there are sure to be some foundational changes to how the 76ers go about their business. I’m certainly not the first one to point it out, but working on shot selection may be a good place to start.”

Seven wins. Yes, it’s an estimate, but regardless of who the Sixers hire, we’ll likely see some variation of the Eddie Jordan effect: a coach comes in and seemingly turns around the team, but in reality just corrects some structural problems caused by the previous coach. When Collins replaced Jordan, he turned a terribly designed defense into one of the league’s best by implementing a system that wasn’t Eddie Jordan’s. With the new coach, whether that’s Kelvin Sampson, Michael Curry, or John Doe, expect the 26th ranked offense to improve dramatically.

That’s without even touching the roster. The team spent $15 million on Kwame Brown, Spencer Hawes, and Nick Young last offseason and the trio combined for 7.6 win shares. Now there’s a finite number of positive contributors available in free agency and inevitably, the smartest teams wind up with players who provide Brown, Hawes, and Young-esque production. But if Sam Hinkie brings in those types, he’ll acquire them on the cheap and stack them in the D-League with the Delaware 87s or at the end of the bench. Based on Hinkie’s track record with the Houston Rockets, the Sixers rotation will feature more Dorell Wrights than Royal Iveys. Not to mention, there could be some addition by subtraction moves this summer (trading Evan Turner, Spencer Hawes, cutting Nick Young, Royal Ivey). 

So with a few tweaks on and off the court, the Sixers could look a lot better next year assuming the Holiday-Young core is intact¹. Warts and all, they may be able to hang with any team in the weak Eastern Conference² that doesn’t have LeBron James.

Sure, resetting is the sexy option. But the Sixers are in a healthy cap situation with two all-star caliber players on relatively cheap, long-term contracts. They don’t have the personnel to pull it off.

1. Thaddeus Young/Jrue Holiday missing the season with a broken foot, a la David Robinson in 1996, wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.
2. The Western Conference is a different story.

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The 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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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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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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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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Stats 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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