We’re seven games in the Sixers’ season, so it’s time to check in on those who think the team will go 0-82 this year. Yesterday, SI’s the Cauldron – where the last Hinkie hit-piece went up – put out a pretty well-reasoned take on the Sixers and the struggles of their process. A few days before that, a Forbes contributor farted out one of the worst things I’ve ever read. Let’s look at that one first.

Mark Heisler wrote “76ers, Still Tanking After All These Years, on Pace for 0-82 Dream Season” for Forbes.com, and apparently their submission standards don’t require any sourcing or fact-checking. It’s almost as if his background research was only done on Howard Eskin’s twitter feed:

Hinkie, an analytics guy, is shy to the point of disdaining human contact. A ghost with the press, he sometimes doesn’t return calls from other GMs. In a league in which all transactions, networking, exchanging information and gossiping are done by phone, Sam I Am? is intermittently present.

But it’s not just random info he gleaned from hot takes, he’s also got first-person info from a season ticket holder:

“Don’t laugh. I’m paying $10,000 for season tickets and I don’t even want to watch them on TV for free.”

And who is this season ticket holder? It’s the writer’s brother-in-law, a “real Philadelphia fan” and “personal friend” of Pat Croce. Maybe Pat or someone else can tell him that he doesn’t have to spend ten grand on season tickets if he doesn’t want to. It’s not a blood oath.

Of course, Heisler takes on Hinkie’s drafting of bigs, Hinkie missing out on “his point guard” in D’Angelo Russell, and filling out the roster with “unknowns named Jakarr, Furkan, T.J. and K.J.” Well, T.J. McConnell is top-ten in the NBA in super-small sample size assists, while Furkan isn’t the team, and K.J. hasn’t been since LAST trade deadline. Also, what is this argument? That people have weird names? One of the all-time active greats is named Dirk. The best young player in the league is named Kawhi. Sorry there aren’t any “Bill”s in the NBA anymore.


But Heisler crosses the line when he shit-talks Pablo Torre’s well-researched and well-written profile of the team last year as “benign press.” At least he knew who was on the team.

The Cauldron takes a much more reasoned, rational, and researched approach. Seth Partnow writes:

“In many ways, this ambitious, long-term effort is laudable. By removing all sentimentality and short-term pressure from the equation, Hinkie and Co. have created the closest thing possible to a scientific laboratory in which to construct a contender.

What hasn’t happened is actually building much, so far. Much like the team’s offense, good opportunities have arisen, but too few have been taken. Avoiding mistakes can itself be a mistake if it is used as a rationale to avoid having to make tricky decisions. Though there were muffled chortles at the recent and sizable contract extensions given to Jeremy Lamb (Charlotte) and Terrence Ross (Toronto), is it really better to not have players upon whom such choices have to be made? …

Though fortune has yet to smile upon the 76ers, it is hard to dispute that, through their recent draft position and Hinkie’s future-pick collecting, that they’ve enhanced their chances of finding that player.”

Even the most rabid pro-process nuts will admit that this is a high-risk situation. So that’s what a fair assessment of the situation looks like. It’s not “the team made my brother-in-law mad,” it’s “this is a rough process, and maybe it’s not going as well right now as it could be.” Partnow weakens his case by using pre-season statistics to make his points instead of the regular season stats with the same sample size. But, it’s one of the more reasonable and well thought-out anti-process reads you’ll see.

When pro-processors hopped on board the Hinkie train, they knew they were in for a long haul, so complaining about pieces like the one in the Cauldron is just doubt or weak-will. That Forbes one though? That’s hot garbage.