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A big reason why Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid are together playing for the Philadelphia 76ers is due to a massive rebuilding process dubbed “The Process”. The rebuild was led by Sam Hinkie who was the general manager for the Sixers from 2013 through 2016.
The process received a lot of criticism for the way the Sixers went about it as they were essentially losing on purpose in order to get the best draft position. Their efforts netted them two major talents in Simmons and Embiid, but they have yet to win a championship and people have begun to call for the two of them to be split despite Simmons being 24-years old and Embiid being 26.
Hinkie recently spoke about the Sixers with CBS Sports and when asked about splitting up the star duo, he scoffed at the idea:
“Don’t people remember what it took to get them? For all of them. Getting a star player in the NBA is not impossibly hard, but close,” Hinkie said. “It requires either an incredible amount of luck, or an amazing amount of time, or some other way to try and get at it. So what is Jo? 26? To have a young player who is nominally, in a traditional sense, just entering his prime, and say ‘oh we’ve got to blank.’ No, job one is you’ve got to get great players on your team, and he is one.
“And so, I’m not alone on this, you’d be loathe to think we have to do anything and we have to do anything that requires you to potentially move a great player. They don’t move very much for a reason, because people rightly don’t let them go very often for a reason.”
Contrary to a lot of NBA fans’ thoughts, success does not happen overnight in the league. Teams will fail over and over again before they find the right mix to win a championship and stars have to go through tough times before reaching the top.
Simmons and Embiid are two of the top players in this league despite being so young and they have a chance to be even better if they continue to work. It would not make sense right now to trade either of them as they get set to work under new coach Doc Rivers. [lawrence-related id=38763,38770,38755]