Ethics CasesSport

Cases · NBA · 2013–2017

The 76ers' "Process": Tanking as Strategy

From 2013 to 2016, Philadelphia 76ers general manager Sam Hinkie traded veterans for draft picks and fielded young, inexpensive rosters. The team won 19, 18 and 10 games in three seasons, tying the NBA record for consecutive losses. Fans adopted the slogan "Trust the Process." Hinkie resigned in 2016, but players drafted during the period, such as Joel Embiid, later led the team back to the playoffs. In 2017, the NBA flattened lottery odds to reduce incentives to lose. The case raises questions about competitive integrity, obligations to fans and players, and whether strategic losing is a rational response to bad rules.

By Tanner Simkins, editor

Timeline

  1. The 76ers hire Sam Hinkie as general manager.
  2. Hinkie trades All-Star Jrue Holiday for a draft pick and Nerlens Noel.
  3. The 76ers finish 19–63, including a 26-game losing streak.
  4. A first proposal for lottery reform falls short of the votes needed.
  5. The team finishes 18–64.
  6. The team finishes 10–72.
  7. Hinkie resigns with a letter of about 7,000 words.
  8. NBA owners vote to flatten lottery odds starting with the 2019 draft.
  9. The 76ers go 52–30 and win a playoff series.

The ethical issues

  • Competitive integrity: whether planned losing betrays the sport.
  • Obligations to fans who pay for tickets.
  • Player welfare: careers spent on teams designed to lose.
  • Rules and incentives: whether tanking is a rational response to league rules.
  • Long-term versus short-term duty to stakeholders.

Stakeholders

StakeholderInterests & obligations
76ers fansEntertainment, ticket value and future success.
Players on the rosterCareers, development and morale.
Sam Hinkie and ownershipBuilding a championship team.
Other teamsFair competition.
The NBACompetitive balance and integrity.
Broadcasters and sponsorsA product worth watching.

The case

In May 2013, the Philadelphia 76ers hired Sam Hinkie, a Houston Rockets executive, as general manager.[1] Hinkie set out to rebuild through the draft. His first major move traded All-Star guard Jrue Holiday for center Nerlens Noel and a future first-round pick.[1] Guard Tony Wroten referred to the rebuilding culture as “The Process.”[1]

Background

The rebuild followed an ownership change. On July 13, 2011, Comcast-Spectacor agreed to sell the 76ers for $280 million to a group led by Josh Harris, a co-founder of Apollo Global Management.[1] Under Hinkie, the team chose Michael Carter-Williams with the 11th pick in 2013. He won Rookie of the Year, and was then traded at the 2015 deadline in deals that brought back more draft picks, including a protected Lakers first-rounder.[1] That pattern defined the approach: collect assets and accept losses now.

Several top picks could not contribute right away. Noel was recovering from a knee injury suffered in college. In 2014, Embiid was recovering from a foot injury and Dario Šarić was expected to stay in Turkey for one or more years.[1] After Hinkie left, Bryan Colangelo, Jerry Colangelo’s son, was named president of basketball operations on April 10, 2016.[1] The team then traded for the No. 1 pick in the 2017 draft and chose Markelle Fultz.[1]

The rules and governance

The lottery itself was a response to tanking. After coin flips decided the top pick, accusations that the Houston Rockets and other teams deliberately lost late-season games led the NBA to introduce the lottery in 1985.[2] In 1990 it adopted a weighted lottery that gave the worst team the best chance at the top pick. That design improved fairness to weak teams but also rewarded finishing last.[2] The failed 2014 proposal would have given the four worst teams roughly equal odds of about 11%.[2]

For years, the league responded to tanking mainly by redesigning the lottery’s incentives. Explicit disciplinary authority came only with the 2026 reform.[2][5][7]

Three seasons of losing

The 76ers went 19–63 in 2013–14, including a 26-game losing streak that tied the NBA record for a single season.[1] They finished 18–64 in 2014–15 and 10–72 in 2015–16.[1] During this period, a losing streak that carried over between seasons reached 27 games.[1] Draft picks included Joel Embiid, who missed his first two seasons with injuries and later embraced the “Process” nickname.[3]

Hinkie’s exit

In December 2015, the team hired Jerry Colangelo as chairman of basketball operations. On April 6, 2016, Hinkie resigned with a letter of about 7,000 words.[1] Addressed to the team’s equity partners, it borrowed the form of an investor letter. He compared his decision to Warren Buffett’s 1969 letter closing his partnership: “Given all the changes to our organization, I no longer have the confidence that I can make good decisions on behalf of investors in the Sixers—you. So I should step down. And I have.”[8]

The letter is the fullest statement of the strategy’s logic. “A competitive league like the NBA necessitates a zig while our competitors comfortably zag,” Hinkie wrote, adding that the team had often chosen not to answer critics “in an effort to stay true to the ideal of having the longest view in the room.” He argued that “the long view picks at the lock of mediocrity” and that taking it brought an “unintuitive advantage built in—fewer competitors.”[8] He reported that in his first 26 months the team had added “more than 26 new picks or options to swap picks over and above the two per year the NBA allots each club,” and claimed the team held “essentially two NBA teams’ worth of first round pick value plus the third most second round picks in the league.”[8] He also urged owners to “divorce process from outcome,” using the decision to draft Embiid third as an example of a choice that might look wrong before it could be judged.[8] The letter never used the word “tanking.”[8] The 76ers won the 2016 draft lottery and selected Ben Simmons.[1] In 2017–18, the team went 52–30 and won a playoff series.[1]

Aftermath

The players Hinkie drafted became the core of the team that followed. Embiid, the pick he defended in his letter, was named the NBA’s Most Valuable Player for 2022–23.[9][8] That season ended like several before it, with a seven-game second-round loss to Boston. Ben Simmons, the 2016 top pick, had been traded to Brooklyn in February 2022 in the deal that brought James Harden. In May 2026, after a second-round sweep by the Knicks, the team fired its president of basketball operations, Daryl Morey.[1] Whether the results vindicated the method is still argued. Supporters point to a franchise rebuilt from the bottom of the league into a playoff team with an MVP. Critics note that the strategy’s architect lost his job before it paid off, that the team spent three seasons offering paying fans a product designed to lose, and that the league changed its rules twice in response.[1][5][7]

Lottery reform

The NBA’s lottery gave the worst teams the best odds of the top pick. In October 2014, a reform proposal, opposed by Philadelphia, fell short of the votes needed.[2][4] On September 28, 2017, owners approved changes beginning with the 2019 draft, giving the three worst teams equal 14% odds of the top pick, down from 25% for the worst team.[5][6] The NBA said the changes were “necessary to improve the competitive incentives for our teams.”[5]

The 3-2-1 Lottery

On May 28, 2026, the Board of Governors approved a new “3-2-1 Lottery” for the 2027 to 2029 drafts.[7] It expands the lottery to 16 teams. Teams outside the playoffs and play-in get three balls each, but the three worst teams are “draft relegated” and lose a ball.[7] It also bars a team’s own pick from going first in consecutive drafts or landing in the top five three years running. The league gained expanded authority to discipline tanking, including reducing lottery odds, changing draft positions and imposing significant fines.[7]

The core dilemma

If league rules reward losing, is it wrong for a team to build a roster designed to lose in order to win later?

Competing values

Competitive integrity competes with strategic rationality. Fans’ present interests compete with their long-term interests. Players’ careers compete with organizational plans. League design competes with team autonomy.

Strongest arguments

For the Process: Teams stuck in the middle rarely win titles; the lottery rewarded losing, and Philadelphia followed the incentives openly.[2] The later playoff seasons suggest the plan built a contender.[1]

Against the Process: Fans paid for a product built not to compete, players’ careers suffered on rosters designed to lose, and the league judged the incentives harmful enough to change the rules.[5][6]

Applying the frameworks

Utilitarian

A utilitarian lens weighs the long-term benefits of a successful rebuild for a franchise and its fans against the costs: years of uncompetitive games for paying customers, damage to the league’s product, and harm to players’ development and careers. It also asks what happens if many teams copy the strategy.

Kantian (duty)

A Kantian lens asks whether deliberately building a team to lose could be universalized. If every team aimed to lose, competition itself would collapse. It also asks whether fans, who pay for a sincere effort to win, are treated as mere means.

Virtue

Virtue ethics asks what kind of character an organization shows. It contrasts patience and long-term thinking with the integrity of competing honestly every night, and asks how players and coaches are asked to compromise their own competitiveness.

Walk it through: the Simple Decision Model

  1. Spot the issue. You are a new general manager taking over a mediocre team with no clear path to contention. The stakeholders include fans, season-ticket holders, players, coaches, owners, the league and rival teams. The codes in play are the league constitution, lottery rules and the spirit of competition.
  2. Gather facts. What are the realistic paths to contention? What do the lottery odds and the draft class look like? How will players and fans react to a multiyear rebuild?
  3. Test options. Options: (a) a full rebuild through the draft, accepting heavy losses; (b) a balanced rebuild that stays competitive; (c) pursuing free agents and trades. Weigh long-term success against the team’s duty to compete and fans’ experience.
  4. Check codes and law. Would the plan look acceptable if every team adopted it? Are you prepared to explain it to players and fans honestly?
  5. Decide and document. Record the strategy, its rationale and its benchmarks.
  6. Communicate and follow up. Communicate the plan openly with ownership, players and fans, and review it each season.

What’s settled and what’s contested

Settled: The 76ers won 47 games across three seasons, Hinkie resigned in 2016, and the NBA flattened lottery odds from 2019.[1][5]

Contested: Whether the strategy was ethical, whether it actually produced the team’s later success, and whether flatter odds removed the incentive to tank.[2]

Why this case matters

The Process is a case study in how institutional rules shape ethical behavior. It asks whether responsibility for tanking lies with teams who exploit incentives or with leagues that create them, a debate that resurfaced in later reforms.

Key terms

Gamesmanship
Pushing the rules to their limits, without technically breaking them, to gain an edge. It tests, and can erode, the game.
Rules vs. spirit of the game
Rules are the written minimum; the spirit is the fairness and respect the rules exist to protect. Rules set the floor; spirit sets the ceiling.
Trust
The public’s belief that what they are watching is real. Integrity failures are ultimately failures of trust.
Stakeholders
Everyone with something at stake in a decision: athletes, coaches, parents, officials, fans, employees, sponsors, media, communities and regulators, including the less visible ones.

Definitions from the Ethics Cases glossary.

Discussion questions

  1. Is deliberately building a losing roster different from deliberately losing games?
  2. Did the 76ers owe fans a competitive team each season?
  3. Was tanking a rational response to the lottery rules? Who bears responsibility?
  4. Did the eventual success justify the strategy?
  5. Did the 2017 lottery reform solve the problem?

Sources

  1. Philadelphia 76ers — Wikipedia
  2. NBA draft lottery — Wikipedia
  3. Joel Embiid: 'I'm The Process' — Sports Illustrated
  4. Lottery reform falls short of passing — ESPN
  5. NBA Board of Governors approves changes to draft lottery system — NBA.com
  6. NBA approves draft lottery reform to dissuade tanking — Reuters
  7. NBA Board of Governors approves new Draft Lottery system to address tanking — NBA.com
  8. Sam Hinkie, letter to the equity partners of Philadelphia 76ers, L.P. (April 6, 2016) — ESPN (document)
  9. 76ers' Joel Embiid named 2022-23 Kia NBA Most Valuable Player — NBA Communications