Sam Hinkie’s moves are starting to look really smart

Everything is coming up Sam Hinkie. Except for the fact that he’s unemployed.

After the Philadelphia 76ers nudged Hinkie off his front office throne last spring, he repotted his family to Silicon Valley to snowboard and guest lecture at Stanford. Not a bad respite.

Meanwhile, what he built in Philly is taking form. The Sixers won’t be a playoff team in all likelihood, but the excitement surrounding the squad is real. They open their season against the Thunder on ESPN Wednesday (8 p.m. ET) and people actually want to watch them.

It raises the question: How soon will Hinkie be back in the NBA, and will teams fight over him?

Let’s look at the evidence for Hinkie.

Joel Embiid is finally healthy enough to play. He missed two seasons — half of his rookie deal — rehabbing injuries dating back to his year at Kansas. Hinkie knew Embiid was a health risk. He wouldn’t have been able to pick him at No. 3 if he weren’t. He was also the best talent in that draft. Over the past two years, as Embiid has mainlined Shirley Temples and visited therapists in Dubai, doubts have set in.

Over one preseason, Embiid has erased them. Most of them. All of them?

Embiid is flat-out a phenomenon. He’s shown surprisingly solid footwork in the lane, defensive tenacity, a shooting stroke and, most importantly, an excellent sense of meme culture. He drops “trust the process” in almost every interview. He even wants to be called The Process.

Embiid is basically the avatar for Hinkie’s tenure writ large. The fact that he appears to be a very promising basketball player reflects well on Hinkie’s decision to draft and be patient with him. Every Joel Embiid Vine is a little boost to Hinkie’s reputation.

Did we mention he looks really good? Embiid is the crown jewel of The Process, and that jewel is glittering right now. It’s a big arrow in Hinkie’s quiver.

Dario Saric is not quite as exciting as Embiid, but he should be in the mix for Rookie of the Year. Hinkie traded down to pick Saric a couple years ago with eyes on letting him develop in Europe while Philadelphia continued to bottom out and scoop up lottery picks. That’s exactly what happened, and now Saric is here to play out his rookie deal starting at age 22.

There’s always a risk taking a young European player with a hefty club buyout. Hinkie took the risk. It appears as if it will work out. Score another one for The Process.

Before almost anyone else, Hinkie saw that reigning Rookie of the Year Michael Carter-Williams wasn’t anything close to a future NBA star. So he sold high on MCW landing a top-three-protected Lakers pick in a multi-team deal. That pick remains outstanding. It will likely be in the No. 4-10 range in 2017, or something somewhere in the 2018 lottery. (The Lakers don’t appear to have the makings of a playoff team in the near future.)

The trade made the Sixers worse in the immediate term by turning the point guard position into a black hole from which only a spell of Ish Smith provided light. The trade may have helped lead to Hinkie’s ouster as the Sixers became not only bad, but a laughing stock.

Still, he absolutely smoked the Bucks in that deal, as proved by last week’s Milwaukee trade sending Carter-Williams to Chicago for Tony Snell, a bit player for the Bulls who sits on the fringe of the NBA. If Philly scores a No. 4 or 5 pick in a starry 2017 draft for Carter-Williams, Hinkie might deserve some late Executive of the Year votes.

The question for teams hiring a new general manager will be whether Hinkie can do the job when tanking out for half a decade isn’t an option. Given that Hinkie cut his teeth under Daryl Morey in Houston — where the team did the exact opposite of the Sixers by staying competitive while retooling — the evidence suggests that he should be able to adapt.

Hinkie always indicated that he felt the scorch-the-land approach was best for Philadelphia given their position when he arrived. He had buy-in from ownership. It all made sense. If it hadn’t made sense, he wouldn’t have pursued it.

Hinkie won lots of trades (with the MCW swap and the Kings’ pick swap bonanza standing out). We really have no idea how his draft record will look. We haven’t seen him in free agency, we haven’t seen him deal with coach-player turmoil, we haven’t seen him actually put together a competitive team.

But on balance, he appears to know what he’s doing.

Yes, Sam Hinkie will be back in the NBA as soon as he wants to be. And lots of these questions will get answered.