Imagine this is the early 1500s and you are hiring someone to paint the Sistine Chapel. I know, I know, but please be patient.

You invite Michelangelo, and he shows you a sketch of an awesome work that may have a lasting impact on the art world. You think this may be a bit ambitious-and worry that it will be difficult to accomplish as planned-but you still hired him. Can the results after a few years be remembered for many years?

But about halfway through, something changed. After seeing him paint a few more strokes on the ceiling, you decide you don’t like the way he mixes the colors, the brushes he uses, and the fact that he is lying on his back, dirty every day, covered in paint. To this point It took longer than you hoped, and the locals are beginning to feel uneasy about this work in progress that they think is eye pain.

So what would you do? Did you show the patience he asked for when you commissioned the work? You let him finish and see if he can fulfill his promise? No, you brought a six-year-old child to use finger painting to complete what should be a masterpiece. You do this because the Catholic Church says you must do it—and because the six-year-old is the son of a senior bishop.

How do you think it will end? And, more importantly, when you don’t even allow Michelangelo to see through it, how can you have a reason to blame Michelangelo for having a doomed plan?

Of course, this is a somewhat extreme example. But considering the heated debate on Twitter this holiday weekend, this is also a very suitable choice. That’s right, five years after Sam Hinkie was forced to leave Philadelphia, we filed another lawsuit again.

The debate is as stupid and pointless as ever. The problem with all of this is that we try to judge a process based on the final result, whether it ends or not. It’s as if we didn’t learn anything from the whole experiment.

The reason we are in trouble again is that my former colleague Keith Pompeo of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote Saturday’s column (As others have done in the past) The Process was declared a failure after the 76ers were out of the second round again. Naturally, this sparked outrage online, because the benefits of reaching the top were once again discussed so much that it actually became popular on Twitter.

To be honest, unfortunately, so many people are debating such things online on the Saturday of the holiday weekend, and there is obviously only one correct answer to the success or failure of the “process” in Philadelphia: neither. It is incomplete, because the person who drafted the plan started to act as expected, but was never allowed to complete it, replaced by (the next day!) someone who proved more incompetent, this NBA executive is equivalent to an NBA executive. Finger-painted six-year-old children, this is the nepotism passed down from the upper class, because all these failures embarrassed those in power.

I can fault most of what Keith wrote—as in fact, the process is not actually the four-year tank job he suggested, because Xinji didn’t even last three full seasons—but most of it was recounting. The rotation of the facts makes it look as if every action, except for a few (such as the drafting of Joel Embiid) is wrong. Unfortunately, as we mentioned above, many of these actions were not made by the architects of The Process, but were made after Hinkie resigned. At that time, the team had so many assets that they didn’t know how to deal with, including the upcoming ones. Lotto picks and two future All-Stars waiting to appear in Embiid and Ben Simmons (not to mention Dario Saric, Robert Covington, Jeremy Grant and others through Excellent players who arrived in this process but were eventually transported out of the city).

On the one hand, The Process ended at the moment Bryan Colangelo took over, and began to convert the assets collected by Hinkie in previous years into fewer, less attractive assets, traded to the draft pick Markelle Fultz, and basically gave up the entire process. The previous government in guiding the organization’s philosophy. If this is the case, then when we really should judge it based on its own process, how can we judge something called a “process” based on its final result, a process that has never been allowed to complete.

In this sense, it is incomplete and can never be considered a success or failure, at least not a championship in the final sense. However, it is indisputable that despite the end result, the past few years are much more interesting than watching a team tread water like an eighth seed year after year, enough to make the playoffs, but not good enough. Actual competition-and, more importantly, not enough to get a draft pick that can change your team’s course.

On the other hand, even if you don’t believe that The Process is over when Colangelo replaces Hinkie, you still have to believe that it is still incomplete. As long as the team still has the two best players who directly led to the loss-Embiid and Simmons, and possibly even if Embiid is still the only player left after the end of the season-then the process is still in progress. If Embiid wins the MVP award next season and leads the 76ers to the championship, will all this suddenly succeed? Will Keith write another column stating that the process has always been correct? Will we file a lawsuit again?

You can support the process or the reverse process, but it is wrong to regard it as a success or a failure based on the information we currently have.

Unfortunately, in trying to bury The Process, Keith may actually do more to support its advantages The success of the Suns and Eagles this season proved the main argument for the failure of the process.

The success of the Phoenix Suns and Atlanta Hawks this season proved The Process was a failure.

The Suns appeared in the playoffs for the first time in 11 seasons. Now, the Western Conference champion will enter the NBA Finals for the third time in the organization’s 53-year history. Phoenix turned things around by cultivating young talents and acquiring Chris Paul from the Oklahoma City Thunder through a November trade.

The Hawks advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals after defeating the 76ers in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. Prior to this, the Hawks had not won more than 29 games in any of the past three seasons. But they improved by cultivating young players, increasing free agents, and changing the coaching changes of the season by firing Lloyd Pierce and appointing Nate McMillan as interim coach.

Neither team did the same as the 76ers did in the rebuild. [inquirer.com]

As we say in business, this is the core of his story.But one A simple trip along Memory Lane will show you that this is a very convenient way of composition. And it will remind people that the core idea of ??The Process is absolutely correct, even if it didn’t work in Philadelphia as promised (again, because the plug was unplugged before it had a chance).

Did the Hawks and Suns lose on purpose? Most likely, no. Because of their own basic incompetence, they are terrible. In fact, their performance in the previous years is no different from the 76ers’ performance in The Process. After all, the purpose of The Process is to make a middle-class team that has fallen into NBA purgatory year after year without an end, and to provide it with a realistic path to the championship, which is based on the performance of other teams in the league. . This is essentially a multi-year reconstruction, not incremental growth, you are still a bottom resident for several years, gaining assets (read: high-quality picks and players who can move more picks/better players), and Be flexible so that the time is right, you have the “option” to move the parts you collect, and fill in your roster around the young players you choose, these players are selected from all the failed players . Moreover, the Suns and Eagles are showing that with the right players, coaches and executives, progress will happen soon.

It is not complicated. It’s just different. It needs to watch some ugly basketball and lose a lot of games. This is where people don’t like it.

Having said that, Xinji has at least one plan. He tried to do exactly the same thing Keith praised the Eagles and Suns did-lose a bunch of games, get the lottery pick (they became players like Tre Young and Devin Booker), and then put It became a winning list.

In the last three seasons before the 2020-21 season, the Eagles ranked at the bottom with a score of 73-158 (.316), which allowed them to get Trae Young, which was the main reason they entered the Eastern Conference Finals. The Suns struggled longer than the Eagles, until they released their first winning season since the 2013-14 season this year and supported it by participating in the NBA Finals. From 2015 to 2019, Atlanta ranked last (fifth) in their division 3 and 4 times, setting a combined record of 87-241 (.265) in these four years, and then in the shortened 2019 pandemic -20 has made considerable progress during the season.

Strange.It’s almost exactly the same as what the 76ers were trying to do -Saying that the 76ers lost “intentionally” is still the focus of contention; more importantly, they did not actively try to win, but that they lost deliberately, which sounds like they are playing a game. The only difference is that at the end of those periods of loss on the field, the 76ers drove their general manager out of town and replaced him with Colangelo, which brought more than the Suns and the Hawks are currently dealing with. Much more turbulence in the front desk, because each of their general managers has been there for at least two full seasons to help them transition from a bad state to an excellent state.

If anything, the success of the Suns and Eagles proves that if they are allowed to complete it, what the 76ers are trying to do may work. (Who knows what this team will look like, or how many games will they win if Hinkie’s plan ends correctly?)

But they did not. Therefore, no matter how you look at it, it is still incomplete.

We can always argue whether this is the best way to try to establish a champion contender, regardless of whether the process behind The Process is reasonable. But what we cannot do is judge based on the results. Because we don’t know what would happen if it was not ruined by a finger-painted kid.Or what they might still be The MVP runner-up is the epitome of “process”, so much so that he nicknamed himself.

The Process may not give Philadelphia a championship (at least not yet), but it will hardly make it a failure.

Follow Matt on Twitter: @matt_mullin