The Other Leg Drops On Sam Hinkie

Once On, Never Off?

Something that started to make Sixers observers wonder, and part of my significant amount of despair regarding the less than thrilling Sixers draft, was the inability to package second round assets to trade up into the first round for, well, a guard. Any guard, really. Sixers GM Sam Hinkie has been good at finding some in the flotsam of NBA fringe talent, but you can't expect to do more than get a good benchie or two that way. Top tier talent will win out in games and minutes that matter, and coaching up folks requires them to come in with enough on the ball.

Anyhoo... the hope was that he'd move up and take someone who might be of more immediate help than, say, the gaggle of foreign centers and power forwards that we'll probably never, ever see in the laundry. And as the draft bled away and the Sixers did nothing of their usual note, it made me start to wonder, especially with the number of teams that have come up short in deals with the man, whether he was just not finding people to dance with.

Which leads to tonight's little note... $3 million last season to the Pelicans in fines for failing to disclose a leg injury to Jrue Holiday, prior to dealing him for the pick that became Nerlens Noel. Which seems like a pittance for what winds up costing a team more than half of the games that his team has played.

Now, NBA teams don't out and out blackball a team from trades. It's also not as if there is a smoking gun and clear causality in Holiday being limited by what the Sixers knew, and the Pelicans didn't. You'd have to do a lot more than what the Sixers are alleged to do to not have anyone make trades with you, or take calls, especially if you are in the need for a big, and the laundry has those.

But you don't have to treat them as, well, most favored nations. Or to take their first dozen odd offers, or take what might seem to be a solid offer. You can, in short, treat them like untrustworthy customers, or maybe even just wait them out for weeks afterward, possibly in the same way that the Celtics got shut out of moving all of their assets.

It's a small league. And it doesn't take that much to shut down avenues of talent acquisition. Which kind of makes somehow getting a free agent of note to somehow come to an 18-win tank party suddenly important...