Here’s Tony Bruno, on a recent podcast, railing against Sam Hinkie supporters [around 55:40]:

“Exactly. I don’t think Chip Kelly is a fraud. Sam Hinkie is an undeniable fraud. Sam Hinkie, it’s not a personal thing, was an unmitigated failure. He got run out of here. He didn’t resign. He got his ass run out of here because the NBA laughed at this team … Adam Silver laughed at the Sixers … bring in a 90-year-old guy in Arizona to try to save this disaster.

And then these strappers – this vocal minority of a couple hundred guys who sit around and play with themselves at night having visions of Sam Hinkie dance in their heads – these guys are lunatics. They are disturbed. And then get a billboard. They pay their own money to get a billboard to thank Sam Hinkie for 19, 18, and 10 wins. And you wonder why this city’s a national joke when it comes to sports? It’d because of idiots who sit around and have their little boy-toy meetings, sit around in circle-jerks, what a bunch of losers.

I’ve never been more embarrassed of guys like Spike Eskin and all these strapazoids. These guys are a joke. The fact that these guys have major positions in sports is laughable. It’s one of the reasons I’m glad I’m not doing sports radio every day. I’m ashamed of what’s happened to this business.

Don’t give me “oh you’re one of those old school guys.” Yeah, I am. And I know more than you because I’m an old school guy. You’re a 20-something punk who doesn’t know anything. So if you’re a 20-something punk who now thinks because you’re studying analytics and you sit and home and masturbate to stats every night and you’re … talking about how ’bout these Golden State Warriors … you’re a frontrunner … But the world of sports has changed where you’re worried about salaries instead of watching the game and enjoying it? That’s what’s happening in sports.”

I love Tony, but he fundamentally misunderstands what Sixers fans, supporters, Jim Adair, Spike Eskin, Max Rappaport, Jake Pavorsky et al. believe. I simply don’t get how some of the old guard in the media – I mean that as a term of endearment – aren’t grasping why people are (or were) supporting the Sixers’ plan. There is an entire generation of fans, in which I’m included, that have basically never seen a winning basketball team. [Pro team, of course. Bang.] Besides the Allen Iverson years around the turn of the millenium, the Sixers have been consistently, aggressively bad since the early 1980s. Their efforts to buy their way to respectability have led to countless sub-mediocre seasons. What they’re doing – or were doing, under Sam Hinkie– it’s unclear where things will go from here – was intentionally bottoming out in the name of collecting assets to, maybe, eventually turn into something great. It’s high risk-high reward, for sure, and there’s hardly a guarantee it would work*, but it certainly had more upshot than signing fucking Elton Brand again, or even the first time!

*I have no idea what tense to write in because I don’t know if the Sixers are still doing it.

You can certainly argue that they weren’t urgent enough in trying to bring everything together, or that ownership isn’t component enough to ever get anything right, but then again, this process has only been three full seasons. This compared to three decades of futility. I can live with that. No one is cheering the collection of no-names they have now (well, except for maybe Jim). And no one is judging Hinkie on three losing seasons– his intent was to lose! People are cheering the process for what it might yield. I can understand why some will argue against this route, but I don’t get why some people can’t grasp how you can argue for it.

This old school Philly mentality of PUT A GOOD PRODUCT ON THE FLOOR is fine… until you’ve had to endure 30 years of being an also-ran. It rings hollow in critiquing what the Sixers are doing, because the stated alternative is simply more of the same. What Tony is doing here is essentially railing against reasoned, informed pragmatism because it doesn’t fit his view of how things should be. I mean, if you think those guys are losers for taking out a Sam Hinkie billboard… well, I’m not going to stop you there… but you can’t rip people for having an informed opinion just because you don’t like it. If there’s an example of a rant that flies in the face of progress for the sake of flying in the face of progress… this is it. Still, a highly enjoyable rant on Tony’s fun podcast.