Sam Hinkie announced his resignation from the 76ers on Wednesday, a decision that was equally surprising and not. With his exit, he sent the team’s equity partners a 13-page letter reflecting on his time with the franchise, its future and more. Here’s four important and not-so-important tidbits we learned from the letter, which was posted on ESPN.
The 76ers front office uses Slack, a popular interoffice communication tool.
This was mentioned when Hinkie was writing about Marlene Barnes, an executive assistant who had been with the team for decades.
She adapted wonderfully, and now is a regular Slack wizard along with much of our staff, has seamlessly plugged into one productivity hack after another, and has ordered more books from Amazon than she ever thought possible. Her presence served as an everyday reminder to me of the impermanence of my leadership. I told her within a few weeks of working together that when I see her in the mornings I’m reminded that I am a steward—today’s steward—of her Sixers.
There was once an event meant to include the players’ wives — and only two people showed up*
*This is a point about how young the team is, but also a mind-boggling story.
Something important to us is to find ways to be supportive to our players’ larger extended families and loved ones that take this journey with them. One group, too casually referred to as “the wives club” at many NBA teams, helps support players’ families in getting acclimated to the city by handling tickets for loved ones, volunteering in community events, hosting baby showers, and the like. In 2013 my wife and I arrived at the arena one night to host a few from this group. While I was prepared to highlight for the group the team’s 10 family room, child care at the arena, etc., it turned out that our attendance at this event totaled two. Two mothers. It was a pointed reminder of just how young our team was.
John Geliebter-USA TODAY Sports
The 76ers retain the rights to more future second round picks than 27 other NBA teams.
On this point, Hinkie wrote:
In the upcoming May draft lottery, we have what will likely be the best ever odds to get the #1 overall pick (nearly 30%), a roughly 50/50 chance at a top-2 pick (the highest ever), and a roughly 50/50 chance at two top-5 picks, which would be the best lottery night haul ever. That same bounce of a ping pong ball (almost a flip of a coin) will determine if we have three first round picks this year (unusual) or four (unprecedented). That’s this year. Or this quarter, if you will.
If you were to estimate the value of those firsts and the ones to follow, from this point forward we have essentially two NBA teams’ worth of first round pick value plus the third most second round picks in the league.
He expects to starting tweeting soon.
So everyone keep an eye on @samhinkie, though currently that is an account without an avatar or any tweets. It does have more than 1,000 followers.
You can read the whole thing here.
[presto-gallery id=”82178430″ title=”Underclassmen declaring for the draft” type=”presto”]
