The Sixers shook the foundation of “The Process” yesterday when they hired basketball-lifer (and Hall of Famer) Jerry Colangelo. The news completely blindsided fans, the media, and anyone with eyes. No one – not Windhorst, Woj, Eskin, Broussard, OR STEPHEN A. SMITH!!!!!, etc. – knew what the mysterious press conference was going to be about. Yet, immediately, everyone seemed to have instant analysis of a dynamic that was only minutes old. Sort of like that immediate feeling of how sex has changed a relationship. You don’t know how, or why, but things are going to be different. Are we still casual? Are we moving in together? Has Hinkie has been demoted? Has he kept his title but lost his power? Did they cut his balls off, and if so, is his voice still really deep?

Lots of questions. A few potential answers, all of which may or may not include a line about Adam Silver being responsible:

  • Hinkie has been demoted and Colangelo has his job
  • Hinkie’s days are numbered and Colangelo will find someone to take his job
  • Colangelo is more of an advisor, since he’ll still be living in Arizona, has other jobs, and called himself “part-time” while speaking to Mike Missanelli today (great interview)
  • Colangelo is here to help the process along and be its public face to fans, media and agents, because apparently, Scott O’Neil is entirely too combative for that gig compared to his successor, Adam Aaron, who was like a big, dumb, cuddly narwhal

Those are the options. The latter two seem the most likely, but we really don’t know. I mean, just look at what a body language expert could do with this image:

Photo Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports Professional body language analysis: Me

Photo Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports
Professional body language analysis: Me

[Editor’s note: Communications major here. I’m trained in speculating wildly on stuff like this. Colangelo is open toward Harris. Harris is clearly looking to Colangelo for support. Hinkie is closed off, almost drawing a wall between himself and Harangelo. I bet Harris’ legs are folded – billionaire style, tightly – in Colangelo’s direction. Colangelo may or may not be wearing pants.]

The optics of this aren’t great (though I know Hinkie usually sits up in the box with Embiid, as he did when I saw him vanish into a cloud of smoke during a pre-season game):


Many of the … let’s say “veterans” of the media-sphere took it as a sign that Hinkie has been neutered. Tony Bruno (never a Hinkie supporter) had this interpretation. So did Glen Macnow. But what some missed – Macnow specifically – is that the “pro-process” folks are pretty much in favor of this. They don’t want to see the plan abandoned and the Sixers go back to being a perennial fringe-playoff team for the sake of hollow wins. But no one is against “speeding up” the process by bringing in a Hall of Fame NBA mind with a rolodex that would probably make Jay-Z blush. It all depends on what happens next. On the surface, it’s a good thing, regardless of your stance on “The Process.”

But here’s where the bad comes in: Adam Silver. I like him, and I realize as commissioner he is naturally positioned on the side of the billionaire owners because he works for them. But if other owners complaining about losses from revenue sharing is enough for Silver to actually step in, I don’t know if I’m okay with that. If Colangelo is playing the “added help” role, fine. If he usurps Hinkie – as a result of Silver’s nudging – then that means annoyed owners forced the NBA to step in and essentially ordered the firing of another team’s GM. That’s insane. The only reason the Lakers aren’t in the same boat is because Kobe is flailing around on the court every night throwing up 30-footers, but it’s the last time he’ll be in your city flailing around and throwing up 30-footers. WITNESS HIM.

You won’t find one pro-process person out there who is against the idea of putting a better product on the court if it doesn’t hurt the team’s general lottery odds (plus I’d be firing off fewer BOBAN tweets). But doing it for the sake of placating other owners, revenue sharing, market size, etc., well, those aren’t roads we want to go down. Because it would mean the Sixers swung for the fences, and the NBA awarded them a ground rule double… before they even made contact with the ball.