"Sigh."

“Sigh.”

Though Hinkie himself has been hesitant to say it, the endgame of his so-called “plan” is to win an NBA Championship. Sure, the overarching theme is to avoid middling in the 6-10 seed every year, to make a real run at things, to be a real contender. But if that happens, the hunger for a title is going to be real. Even the most adamant supporters of the plan seem to see 2018-ish as the goal for being a real title contender, and maybe winning one. Personally, I’d like to be in the Eastern Conference Finals in 2019. That’s what national writers don’t seem to get. When they say it’s a five-year plan, the end of that plan isn’t to be an okay basketball team. It’s to be great. But we still don’t know what the outcome will be.

Enter Chris Sheridan, basketball blogger and grade-A creepo. Over at Sheridan Sports, he contends that high school girls are pretty not only will the Sixers be contending in a couple of years, but in 2025 we’ll be talking about a Sixers dynasty:

Everyone likes to poke fun at Sam Hinkie these days, calling him the best tank driver since Michael Dukakis. But remember something: They used to say similar things about Sam Presti, especially when he arrived in Seattle to take over the SuperSonics and promptly ridded the team of its two best players, Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis as part of a strategy to rebuild through the draft. And that is what he did, putting together a core of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden that should have won multiple championships by now if not for the ill-advised decision to trade Harden rather than max him out.

But Presti was having to operate under a tight salary cap, which is something Hinkie will not have to deal with. By the time Nerlens Noel, Joel Embiid, Dario Saric and others finish their rookie scale contracts, the salary cap will be well over $100 million — and teams will be able to carry at least three max players on their roster. Remember how Pat Riley was able to put together a trio of three superstars but needed them all to take less than the max? Hinkie will not have the same dilemma when his young core becomes max eligible. He will have a roster that will have grown up and developed and learned how to win together, and then it’ll just be a matter of keeping the right players in place and supplementing the roster with the right dose of veterans to add to the mix …

If Hinkie plays his cards right, he’ll have a core of five or six studs to build with over the next half-decade and beyond. Nobody has ever built a team this way, and by the time it is all said and done, Hinkie will be in the Hall of Fame.

Sure, Sheridan’s blood might not all be in his brain because he’s still boned-up from the lottery, and the whole money argument leaves a lot of unaddressed issues, but it makes … sense? The Sixers will have a ton of money to max Embiid, Noel, potentially D’Angelo Russell, and then build a team around them. But all three of those guys have to pan out, the right decisions have to be made in-between now and then, and honestly, you have to bank on another team in the league not ending up with two once-in-a-lifetime players on their roster. There’s a lot out there to take into account.

I’m very, very far away from proclaiming 2025 the year we talk about a Sixers dynasty — because so, so much has to happen — but Noel and Embiid will only be 31. And just ask Kyle how young that feels.