Sam Hinkie is a nerd. Sam Hinkie is a scam artist. Scam Hinkie is a fraud. Even if all of these were true (the first one is), there’s one pure positive: Sam Hinkie is not Billy King.
After spending years flailing around, unable to build an actual team around Allen Iverson – and sure, some of that falls on AI, but a small amount – Billy King went balls to the wall in Brooklyn and completely decimated any future they had with a few deals. He was just fired or he stepped down or whatever, and the Nets are reportedly favoring Bryan Colangelo in their GM search. I’ll let this one opinion from the RealGM forums give you a little insight into that, from “Is Billy King the worst GM in league history?”:
“Nope. Gotta be [Bryan] Colangelo.
[in response]: Nets are in the worst situation from the whole league. Colangelo ruined the Raptors for a few years in advance. Billy King ruined the Nets for a half, I’d say even a decade in advance.”
The Sixers will have at least three first round picks this year, maybe four. The Nets’ fourth first-round-pick, starting now, comes in 2022. How did he ruin the Nets’ future so quickly? Through some of the most garbage trades ever, resulting solely in keeping the Nets in the middle until the guys he traded for were gone.
In a trade you can’t really blame King for, he tossed in a second round pick which became Draymond Green. That’s just rough luck.
After all the other players from those deals were gone (except Jarrett Jack who came in return for Marcus Thornton, who came in return for Jason Terry), King traded Kevin Garnett straight up for Thad Young. The Nets got those players to win a championship. They didn’t, so Thad is their only result. The flowchart for that doesn’t look great:
After dealing Thad and then dealing what he got in return, Sam Hinkie has turned the current Net into two first round picks (OKC’s and MIA’s). Those are two very different strategies at work.
Through Billy King’s dealings, here’s a list of picks the Nets no longer own:
They do have the potential for Boston’s 2017 second (and two seconds they got for Jason Kidd), so it’s not all bad.
Whenever you look at the crowded Hinkie/Colangelo front office, remember it could always be worse. Billy King failed at building a decent team around Allen Iverson, and that wasn’t even his biggest shortcoming as GM. It’s almost impressive, and it’ll be even more impressive if he ever gets another job.