The 2016 NBA trade deadline has come and gone quietly for the 76ers.  Even after receiving inquiries from teams such as the Miami Heat and Boston Celtics, the front office team of Colangelo and Hinkie thankfully chose not to move any of the franchise’s valuable “assets”.  Instead Sam and Jerry settled for a very Hinkie-ish move in trading for veteran Joel Anthony and a 2nd round pick in 2017.  It’s a stone cold lock that Anthony will be waived this week.

With a nearly irrelevant trade deadline now behind us it’s time to take a look at the “official” second half of the 2015-16 NBA season.  The Sixers have 29 games remaining in the third year of “the process” and after the jump I will identify five items I will be watching for with this team as we count down to the 2016 Draft Lottery.

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With the 12^th pick in the 2014 NBA draft the Sixers picked Croatian native Dario Saric. With his current contract situation Saric will continue to play for Anadolu Efes of Istanbul, Turkey for possibly as long as two years while his NBA rights are assigned to the 76ers. As we all know, Saric has been making some big news over in the Euro League as Saric (20 yrs. Old) won the Euroleague’s MVP award for the month of November and became the youngest recipient of the that honor.

“It took a lot of practice and a lot of work to win such a special award as this,” Saric told Euroleague.net.  “It is very important to me, I am very happy to win it. It is amazing and a part of my dream has come true.”

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In business, there is a concept called Fitness Landscape.  The concept is derived from evolutionary theory and it is accepted and exercised widely in the business world.

Here how it goes:  Imagine a system that we want to improved performance from.  The system can be a biological species, a business system, or for the sake of our conversation an NBA team such as the 76ers.  This system is located on a plain or a landscape that measures its performance.  Any time the performance improves the system goes up to reach a peak.  Anytime the performance drops, the system will go down into a valley.

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Sam Hinkie’s roster turnstile continues this morning as multiple online reports  — we believe Marc Stein Tweeted it first — are stating that the 76ers general manager is about to sign / call up Robert Covington of the D-League’s Grand Rapids Drive.  The 76ers roster already has 15 players on it, so someone who dressed for Sunday night’s debacle in Toronto is about to get waived.

The 6-foot-9 , 215-pound forward with a 7-foot wingspan spent the majority of last season with the Rio Grand Valley Vipers of the NBA Development League where he earned rookie of the year honors and for what it is worth, was league’s all-star game MVP.  Covington also had a cup of coffee with the Houston Rockets last season (7 games) and put up 2.3 ppg. as well as less than 1 rebound per contest.

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Those of us who have followed the 76ers for a while as devoted fans or professional sport writers understand the facts of what Sam Hinkie is trying to accomplish in the 2013-14 season.

We appreciate the way he traded established players for a stock pile draft picks.  We are aware that under watchful eye of head coach Brett Brown, Hinkie is trying to develop young players. And perhaps most importantly, we recognize that Hinkie is losing a great deal of games this season for ping pong balls at the 2014 NBA Draft Lottery.

But one element of Hinkie’s rebuilding project that has been intriguing and at times mysterious, is the revolving door of reserve players he has signed only to get rid of them after a few weeks or months at most.

The  Sixers roster has changed so often this season it makes us wonder, “Is there a method behind Hinkie’s frequent roster moves?”

The evidence indicates that there is in fact a method to Hinkie’s ways and after the jump, I’ll explain that possible method in detail.

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Evan Turner was perhaps the most frustrating and mystifying 76er I ever watched in my nearly 30 years of rooting for the franchise.

One night Turner would hang 34 points on the Knicks thanks to 59% shooting from the field and actually look like a player who should have been taken No. 2 overall in the 2010 NBA Draft.  The next night he would shoot 2-10 and total 6 points against the Hawks while acting like an overly dramatic teenager towards the officials all night and his head coach at times.

Turner’s roller coaster level of of play and his highly emotional mind set are the reasons I dubbed him  “The Enigma”.  And that nickname served the combo-guard well right up to his final moments in a Sixers uniform as it appears executives around the Association found Turner just as difficult to figure out as we did.

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