Philadelphia 76ers superstar Sam Hinke wasn’t always the very successful GM of a beloved NBA franchise. Once, he was one of USA Today’s top 60 Undergraduates in America, then an MBA student who consulted for professional sports teams looking to get into the analytics business. But his next life step was the one that would be the die in which his philosophical outlook would be cast forever.
Bain Capital! Before he went to work full time with Daaaaaaaaryl Morey and the Rockets, Sam Hinke was an analyst at the private equity company founded by former Republican Presidential Nominee and current blogger Mitt Romney! Ideally, private equity’s broader purpose is to purchase struggling firms, strip out their excess, non-profitable assets (and employee salaries) and resell the company (at a profit that is taxed at the capital gains rate), now reborn as a money making operation. (They often don’t really do this.)
Hinke and his employers have brought the private equity management mindset to the Sixers. And it might pay off one day! But right now the team is in the “Stripped out assets” phase of their plan and things are gettin’ ugly on the floor! The team’s highest paid player is Jason Richardson. Their SECOND highest paid player is Joel Embiid, who is on a rookie scale deal and will not play this year on account of a foot injury. Their only proven NBA Caliber players are the aforementioned J-Rich, Michael Carter-Williams and Luc Richard Mbah Moute. They traded their best player from last year’s very, very bad squad, Thad Young.
Elliott Williams, a 25 year old former Trailblazer, is on the roster in the second year of a four year, five millionish dollar contract where every year is a team option year. In other words, if he performs poorly he will be cut but if he performs well he will not make significantly more money as a reward for his efforts for another three years. This contract is the sort that should inspire the union to intervene on his behalf, a vision of the NBA with NFL contracts. The roster is littered with borderline type players on contracts like this. If they break out, they will probably get traded. Strip any asset that isn’t necessary and replace it with something cheap you can control! It’s how the future works!
But a critical eye reveals that the Sixers are still being sentimental. There is so much more you could strip out to make this team better in the future and more profitable in the present!
ONE: Brett Brown. Who is this guy, anyway? Why should HE be able to afford granite countertops for coaching this team? I was reading this article about Erik Spoelstra; you know the Heat paid him pennies to look at video once? Let’s ditch the Brown fella, find a particularly tall video guy, the kind who won’t be intimidated, and I’ll say there like a 56% chance he is going to be a perfectly capable coach and a 15% chance the we promoted the new Erik Spolestra: if he’s good enough, we can get a second round pick for his rights, trade that in for a player you can pay like six bucks, and if he’s good enough, we can trade the right to sign him for EVEN MORE second round picks!
TWO: You know how much we spend on trying to get people to come to these games? A lot. Here’s what we do: cut the sales staff in half, OR IF WE CAN, trade them to, like, the Knicks or something. They’ll be glad to go wherever their passion for sales takes them! Then we just stop selling tickets to games no one cares about. Magic, Bucks, Jazz, Lakers, who wants to see them play THE SIXERS play those shitty teams?`We just empty arena that bad boy. Think about all the game day operations and event staff we won’t have to pay! Hell, we can probably trade 20 or so of them for a second round pick or something. If our concessions people complain, we can just open the concourse while keeping the bowl closed, so they can sell food for the three hours during the game. People love stadium food, they’ll flock to the arena AND avoid the Sixers game at the same damn time!
THREE: Malik Rose is one of the league's best color guys. Offload him for a 2nd round pick to San Antonio, they need an upgrade and he's not doing anything for us right now! Commentators are a product of the bygone era of radio (Shut that down altogether, by the way), we have the glorious vision of television now! And as long as no one is watching, let’s scaaaaaale back out investment in crap like cameras. You know, an iPhone camera can do 1080p video, and you could probably buy an iPhone > HDMI cable and make a coherent enough broadcast out of it. I know we can get a trade exception from OKC for some new cameras, I have Presti on the phone RIGHT NOW.
FOUR: When the Washington Professional Football Team had their trademark revoked by the FTC, a lot of people saw the end of a horrible and dumb era in Washington. But you know what I saw? Opp. Ro. Tune. Itty. Aren’t we tired of spending all this money on lawyers who protect our copyrights? Let’s just renounce that shit. Then, we make the bootleggers to work FOR US. With MULTIPLE bootleggers working against each other to make the cheapest product, the bulk prices for t-shirts is going to outright collapse. Then, we swoop n, but those things for, like, pennies, and mark it up in our stadium when the Cavs or the circus, one of those popular events, are in town! We’re all believers in capitalism here. If we stop sucking at the teat of the Government’s Copyright Fairy, we could start RAKING IN DOUGH RIGHT NOW.
FIVE: Uniforms. Gauche. Trade em’.
SIX: I was looking at the court:
Do we really need ALL OF THESE PANELS!? Let’s take some of this unnecessary crap out.
The Players hardly run on the baselines.
These players and refs have been in this for a long time. I think they know where the keys are by now.
We know what team we’re watching. Also, the way these bootlegs are flooding the streets, the 76ers logo hardly means anything to people any more.
The long two is dead. Why even tempt the players?
We don’t have any shooters anyway. Who needs those dumb three point lines?
You know, I thought it looked a little unbalanced like that, so I just took out everything that looked like white noise. We can trade the panels to a high school in exchange for a tall teacher we can run out in practice. If he’s good, we can trade him for picks. It’ll be great. We're going to be so good!
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