In an effort to ignite their beloved, young 76ers squad in the second half of Game 3 of the conference semifinals, the crowd at the Wells Fargo Center spontaneously erupted into its favorite rallying call. The fans did it again two nights later in the wake of a fracas between Joel Embiid and Terry Rozier. The chant wasn't summoned by the public-address announcer or posted in big letters on the scoreboard because the organization doesn't sanction its usage on any official basis.
"TRUST-THE-PROC-ESS!"
When Sixers fans want to display affection for Embiid or Ben Simmons or express their tribal identity, this is what they yell in unison. Not DE-FENSE or LET'S-GO-SIX-ERS or even an aggressive taunt of the opponent, but an aphorism first coined without intention in a postgame interview with former Sixers guard Tony Wroten, who last played for the team in 2015.
From the moment you touch down in Philadelphia, remnants of the most polarizing sports rebuild in history are emblazoned on the chests of those fans: the hipster dad at the Saturday farmers market pushing a stroller in Rittenhouse Square wearing a Shepard Fairey-knockoff Sam Hinkie tee, the 40ish guy on Sunday evening at the gayborhood hangout in his navy "The Process vs. Everybody" tee, the oldster holding court on a South Philly stoop in the same shirt.
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It has been more than two years since the 2016 resignation of former general manager and president of basketball operations Sam Hinkie, the avatar of the process in question. But as the Sixers bow out of their first postseason since his arrival in 2013 with a 114-112 loss in Game 5 at the hands of the Boston Celtics, The Process remains both a source of contention and an emblem of pride for a segment of the Sixers' fan base.
The residual love for Hinkie, several league sources say, is befuddling and, at times, irritating to some in the organization eager to focus on the progress in Philadelphia and not The Process. And who can blame them? The folklore that surrounds The Process is deep-seated in Sixers mythology and doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon.
For several years following Hinkie's hire in 2013, that debate was merely academic. Whether you were a Hinkie devotee who worshiped at the altar of probabilities and disruption or a skeptic deeply offended by his open exploitation of the league's incentive structure and his willingness to tolerate historic losing, the verdict on The Process was still TBD.
But with the Sixers wrapping up a successful season, albeit one with a disappointing conclusion, the early returns are starting to filter in. The results appear as if they could very well exonerate a strategy that was ridiculed as misguided, unfair and unworkable. Today, a controversial process that begged for the faith of its players, staff, fans and sponsors has begun to pay sizable dividends on that trust.
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Brett Brown believes the team would have been overjoyed if you told them how far they'd go before the season.
After dispatching the Heat in five games in the first round and drawing a depleted Celtics team that needed seven games to defeat Milwaukee, the Sixers momentarily appeared to be co-favorites to represent the East in the NBA Finals. But the vagaries of youth can surface at inopportune occasions in the playoffs, and they did for the Sixers.
A disciplined Celtics team playing a nearly error-free brand of defense stifled Simmons with a dizzying cycle of switches and well-positioned roadblocks at the nail. Faced with stubborn resistance in the post, Embiid opted to force the issue early in the series, at times depriving the team of the kinetic energy that makes it hum. Although the Sixers made some effective adjustments in Game 4 and stubbornly stuck with the Celtics in Game 5, they simply couldn't find enough of the kind of opportunities in transition, free flow and perimeter looks that paced them this season.
Despite the disappointment of falling to a team they felt was of inferior raw talent and athleticism, the Sixers are rightfully proud of their progress and self-assured of their trajectory going forward.
"I was thinking about it, just looking at [Kevin Durant] and [Russell] Westbrook, what they did their first season," says Embiid. "I think they only won 28 games or something like that. Look at how well we did. We have a bright future. Like at the end of the game, [Simmons] came up to me and he showed me his hands, and he was, like, 'There are going to be a rings on these.' And I was like, 'For sure.' So we have a bright future and we're going to be fine."
Simmons, the top pick in the 2016 draft following the Sixers' 10-72 season, is the favorite to win Rookie of the Year. Embiid, a player with a beaming charisma, has established himself as one of the league's most dominant big men -- and one who unabashedly carries "Trust The Process" as a personal mantra. Dario Saric, stashed in Europe for two years, was a classic "win later" pick and a mainstay in the most efficient high-usage lineup in the NBA this season. Robert Covington and T.J. McConnell, both undrafted long shots, were brought to Philadelphia early in The Process, when the Sixers were scraping the bargain bin.
"Sam Hinkie did an amazing job," says Embiid. "Look at everything we've got. He's a big part of it. You have to give him a lot of credit."
"The 18-win season, the 10-win season. All that, it built us up for this moment. That's what allowed us to get to where we are now."
Given the front-office upheaval in 2016, the new regime deserves credit for a relatively seamless transition and maintaining many of the best cultural features of its predecessor. Hinkie's replacement, Bryan Colangelo, added essential pieces to this year's 52-win campaign: Veteran sharpshooter JJ Redick was signed to a sensible one-year deal that gave the Sixers precisely what they needed at the shooting guard position and preserved future payroll flexibility. Midseason buyout signees Marco Belinelli and Ersan Ilyasova provided range and depth that helped propel a second-half surge.
Colangelo declined to go on the record for this story. He cited his comments at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in 2014, at which he told the audience, "I tried to tank." The blowback served as evidence for Colangelo that no NBA executive in his right mind addresses the topic publicly. His administration will be judged on its own successes and failures, but as the Sixers emerge as the NBA's most intriguing young team after the departure of Hinkie, there's one overriding question that probes the Sixers' past as much as their future:
Was The Process worth it?
"I think it was," McConnell said. "We have a foundation that we built on now. We have two franchise players. Obviously, the losing was hard, and you want to put a winning product out there. But I think the team that is constructed now is a winning product."
Opponents of the Sixers' tanking strategy can't be classified as a monolith. There were those who felt that a professional sports team is a civic trust that owes the paying fan, at the very least, the appearance of trying to win. Others believed that the Sixers' manipulation of the league's incentive structure violated the spirit and intent of the system: to help franchises that fall upon hard times through the natural life cycle, not franchises that deliberately construct rosters designed to lose. There were critics who insisted that intentional failure breeds an intractable culture of losing that lingers. Then there were league insiders who resented the Sixers for driving down revenue.
It's impossible to measure the emotional distress of the fans who suffered through interminable losing streaks (and how many multiples worse it was than, say, a string of 37-win seasons), but today those same fans in Philadelphia have rebounded. Headed into the 2013-14 season, the Sixers had sold roughly 3,400 season tickets. In the 2015-16 season, that number grew to 10,000. As of next season, that number will have surpassed 14,000. A local Nielsen rating of 0.93 in 2015-16 grew to 1.75 in 2016-17 and to 2.44 this season, according to an industry source. The Sixers finished third in the NBA in merchandise sales this season, with Embiid (eighth) and Simmons (10th) cracking the top 10 in jersey sales.
"Are you willing to truly grow and endure the pain of losing? The pain is real and true." Brett Brown
Divvying up credit for this return is a tricky exercise. How much should be attributed to seedlings planted by Hinkie and how much to those who did the harvesting creatively and efficiently? However one assigns praise, the belief Hinkie articulated in his 13-page resignation letter -- that when the Sixers are "eventually able to compete deep into May, [Sixers CEO] Scott [O'Neil] will ably and efficiently separate the good people of the Delaware Valley from their wallets on your behalf" -- was spot-on. Rival owners can rest assured that the Sixers are more than compensating for sneaking out on a few dinner checks during the losing seasons.
The claims of a permanent "losing culture" taking hold in Philadelphia have been roundly proved as fallacy. While the Sixers were racking up losses, head coach Brett Brown, with the aid of a staff that is quickly earning a reputation as one of the league's best, was instituting principles and traditions that carried the Sixers through the lean seasons. Brown is an eternal optimist and quite possibly the most earnest
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