Every year, the Sixers disappoint and crash out of the playoffs, then we decide to reexamine the process. Was it a failure? Was it a success? Did it last three years? Six years? TEN YEARS? Are we a full decade into the rebuild now?

It’s pointless and exhausting and repetitive. What happens is that people make up arbitrary process end dates to fit whatever narrative they want to peddle. If you were anti-Hinkie and anti-Process, you’re likely pushing the ten years angle, because you want to keep attaching the failure to the rebuild that you disagreed with in the first place, likely to score cheap “I told you so” points. And if you’re a Hinkie apologist, you’re saying the Process ended when he left, rendering the project incomplete and putting the blame on people like Bryan Colangelo and Elton Brand instead.

The truth is that 99% of these arguments are incomplete at best, or totally disingenuous at worst. Why? Because we’re all smart enough to know that this was a convoluted and non-linear decade of Sixers basketball, featuring dozens of players, two different coaches, multiple player-personnel executives, and meddling agents, trainers, and other peripheral characters. Nuance doesn’t aid flimsy arguments, but some quick facts might help:

  • Sam Hinkie resigned more than seven years ago.
  • Joel Embiid is the only remaining player from Hinkie’s tenure.
  • Bryan Colangelo presided over the Markelle Fultz and Jayson Tatum draft.
  • Burnergate created a player-personnel vacuum during the 2018 draft, when the Sixers selected and then moved Mikal Bridges.
  • Elton Brand was in charge when Tobias Harris and Al Horford got their albatross contracts.
  • Daryl Morey made the trade for James Harden.
  • Doc Rivers replaced Brett Brown three seasons ago.
  • Ben Simmons screwed everyone with his holdout.

So on and so forth. You can talk about the Jimmy Butler trade and offseason. Various Embiid injuries. Jahlil Okafor not panning out, then trading him for nothing. There were so many missteps along the way that are now easily identified with the benefit of hindsight.

The folly in 2023 is defining what the Process actually is or was. Initially, it was easily understood to be the unabashed rebuild started by Hinkie in 2013. Now, it’s somehow morphed into a catch-all phrase for the era of Sixers basketball that took place over the next ten years. It’s almost like people are talking about two different things entirely, because the actual strategy of the rebuild is now being conflated for some generic timeline instead.

In truth, there’s so much blame to go around, and everyone knows this. Hinkie deserves his share of the blame for this lack of success. Bryan Colangelo deserves his share. Same with Brett Brown, Elton Brand, Josh Harris, Doc Rivers, Daryl Morey, Barbara Bottini, Adam Silver, Jerry Colangelo, Alex Rucker, Ned Cohen, Marc Eversley, Joel Embiid, James Harden, Ben Simmons, Klutch sports, Tobias Harris, Markelle Fultz, Ebony Fultz, Raymond Brothers, the peanuts that tried to kill Zhaire Smith, Drew Hanlen, Keith Williams, and dozens of other people or inanimate objects we’ve probably mercifully forgotten about. Ten years spun us a vast web of errors that continued to hamstring whatever batch of players or executives were next in line.

Point being, so much happened over the past decade. Every perennial exercise in Process re-litigation or re-definition is ultimately feckless. We have to move on from these vapid discussions. We spend too much time talking about the bun and not the meat.