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Daryl Morey Suggests Sam Hinkie Should Ring Bell Before 76ers Playoff Game
May 11, 2021
The modern Philadelphia 76ers—who can clinch the top seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs with one more win or a loss from both the Brooklyn Nets and Milwaukee Bucks—are where they are today, at least in part, because of former general manager Sam Hinkie.
Whether you approve of his form of tanking or not, it's a major reason why the Sixers have two superstars on their roster today in Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons. And president of basketball operations Daryl Morey—who once worked with Hinkie in Houston—is open to the idea of honoring Hinkie during this year's playoffs:
Daryl MorΞy 🗽🏀 @dmoreyWhat I am mostly excited for with the announcement that we will have 10k fans in the playoffs is that during opposing team lineup introductions the players will now for sure hear how much they truly suck. This is my current favorite @sixers crowd tradition - when did it start? https://t.co/hvnNlU1jDP
Before Sixers games, the team has a person of interest ring a ceremonial bell. It's often an athlete from one of the city's other teams, or a former player like Allen Iverson.
Getting Hinkie to do so would be a big deal, especially for a large subset of Sixers fans who still revere Hinkie and his Process-era approach to rebuilding. The Sixers have largely distanced themselves from Hinkie and that rebuild, given how controversial it was, but Morey seems willing to extend an olive branch, much in the same way Embiid has dubbed himself The Process as his nickname.
