Sam Hinkie is playing on another level. He fucked Vlade Divac and the Kings so hard when he absorbed the contracts of Carl Landry and Jason Thompson in exchange for 2016 and 2017 first round pick swap rights and the Kings’ 2019 first round pick outright, planting his seed so far inside the organization that they didn’t even know it was there. Now, fully gestated, it’s about to birth, as Kings owner Vivak Ranadive has sought and received permission* from the Sixers to speak with Hinkie. Surprised, Vlade? If impregnating your opponent with… yourself isn’t creating optionality, I don’t know what is.

*Hinkie has a non-compete which runs through the end of the season, but at least Harris is man enough to allow him to speak to the Kings.

From Marc Stein:

The Sacramento Kings have expressed exploratory interest in former Philadelphia 76ers general manager Sam Hinkie, according to league sources.

‎Sources told ESPN.com that Kings owner Vivek Ranadive sought and received permission directly from Sixers counterpart Josh Harris to speak with Hinkie.

Sources say Hinkie has long intrigued Ranadive, whose franchise has been thrust into a rebuilding mode not unlike Philadelphia’s status under Hinkie in the wake of trading DeMarcus Cousins to New Orleans.

And Woj:

It’s no surprise that Hinkie intrigues Ranadive, who is from India and became a star of Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath book because he didn’t know anything about basketball when he coached his daughter’s team and thus leveraged his lack of institutional knowledge to rewrite convention and win with subpar talent (he pressed a lot), and something something bought an NBA franchise. My guess is that Hinkie scoffs at Gladwell-like pseudo science, but that wannabes like Ranadive are the perfect sort of owner to defer to Hinkie’s wizardry because he uses business jargon and obscure phrases and appeals to the left coast “turns out” crowd. Philly proved to be too old school of a town for that sort of thing, but Sacramento seems like a good place to begin production on Tank 2.0: Hinkie’s Revenge. And that sound you hear is absolutely hipsters beating off. As for me? I’m intrigued by the possibility that Hinkie and the Sixers are playing the long con and that his ouster was all just a charade so they could get him behind enemy lines as a sleeper agent sent to obtain all of the second round picks. ALL OF THEM. We shall see.