Sam Hinkie joined ESPN’s Pablo Torre podcast to talk on the Philadelphia 76ers and the NBA along with several other topics.
During the interview, the former Sixers’ general manager addressed the rumors around breaking up the Joel Embiid-Ben Simmons duo via trade.
Hinkie claimed there is no absolute necessity of breaking the duo up, as superstars in their primes are hard to come by in the NBA.
(via RealGM):
“Oh gosh. Don’t people remember what it took to get them? Right? For all of them,” said Hinkie. “Getting a star player in the NBA is like not impossibly hard, but close. Right? And requires an incredible amount of luck, or an amazing amount of time, or some other way to try to get at it. What is Joel? 26? To have a young player who is nominally in a traditional sense just entering his prime and say ‘We’ve got to blank.’ No, job one is you’ve got to get great players on your team. That’s job one. And he is one. I’m not alone on this.”
The former NBA executive was the man behind ‘The Process’ in Philadelphia, which created mixed feelings in the NBA fans, as Hinkie was building teams with the hope of losing as much as they could to secure a good draft position.
At the same time, he signed players on the cheap to trade them for other more valuable assets. With that strategy, the infamous GM was able to draft Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons to create the molecule of a championship team.
Now, the Sixers brought Daryl Morey, Hinkie’s former boss, to revamped the team’s roster after a disappointing 2019/2020 campaign.
Here you can listen the full conversation between Sam Hinkie and ESPN’s Pablo Torre:
