7 ways the Sixers can replace Bryan Colangelo

The Philadelphia 76ers and Bryan Colangelo broke up on Thursday after Twitter burner accounts sharing sensitive player medical info were traced back to Colangelo’s wife. (What a world.)

Given the Sixers are in the midst of the franchise’s most important offseason in decades — with magnificent free agent dreams, loads of trade assets, and a lot of big game available — this is a bit of a stumbling block.

The NBA Draft is in less than two weeks. Free agency opens in about three weeks. The major dust on the whole offseason will settle within roughly five weeks. Time is of the essence. There’s no great time for front office upheaval, but now is a particularly poor moment.

So what now? What are the 76ers’ options?

We’ve laid out seven strategies to fill the position, considering ... well, everything about this sordid ordeal: the Twitter scandal, LeBron James, Sam Hinkie, and all the twists and tumbles amid all that.

This is essentially what the Sixers plan to do for the rest of June, or until a new general manager is hired. The team announced Thursday that Brown will oversee basketball operations on an interim basis.

Love for Brett Brown crosses all boundaries in Philadelphia right now. The players appear to love him, the Hinkie partisans love him, the Colangelistas love him. He’s golden, so it makes sense to imbue him with power, especially as there are indications he’s smart enough to wield it wisely by deferring to front office experts on front office matters.

It’s not crazy to think the Sixers could look for a new general manager but permanently give Brown the role of president of basketball operations, holding final control over the whole enterprise and answering only to managing partners Josh Harris and David Blitzer. That doesn’t usually work out too well — see Mike Budenholzer in Atlanta and Stan Van Gundy in Detroit — but, hey, the Spurs have been fine!

It avoids the biggest risk in bringing in a new general manager who Brown will sit under in the organizational chart: that the GM and coach won’t be on the same page.

Marc Eversley arrived to Philadelphia shortly after Colangelo, becoming his right-hand man as he had been with the Raptors. Eversley has spent time in the Wizards front office as well, and initially came to the NBA via Nike, where he worked in player relations. That’s a smart background for a future NBA general manager.

Simply promoting Eversley after a broad search wouldn’t be the most headline-grabbing move, but it’d ensure some continuity and could make this critical offseason go quite smoothly. And frankly, the Sixers don’t really need any more headlines right now.

The hollers of liberty will rally for this result. First things first, if this is remotely on the table, though: Jerry Colangelo, still a special advisor to Harris and Blitzer, has to go. He should probably be relieved of duties regardless: he hired his son to run the team, and his son proceeded to bring great shame to the franchise. The elder Colangelo has also reportedly been using his status as the ultimate NBA insider to threaten to ruin the Sixers’ reputation should they fire his son. A clean sweep of Colangelos inside the Sixers is warranted if there’s any truth to that.

Anyways, back to Hinkie. He built this thing. Colangelo drafted Ben Simmons (an obvious No. 1 pick earned by the Sixers’ total tank job), made the highly questionable Markelle Fultz-Jayson Tatum deal, and signed J.J. Redick. Everything else? That’s Hinkie. He only left because the NBA convinced the Sixers in some fashion to hire an advisor like Jerry Colangelo, and Jerry Colangelo then hired his son to elbow Hinkie out.

Of course, it may be that Hinkie doesn’t want the job. He has a beard now, y’all. If that’s so, Hinkie should declare his disinterest on Twitter before the Sixers even call, just to look like a boss and keep the legend growing.

Another option that avoids some of the agita that hiring Hinkie would create is to go back to the Hinkie well by hiring a similarly oriented general manager. The top candidate: Celtics assistant GM Mike Zarren, the Hinkie before there was Hinkie and one of the most brilliant analytic minds in the sport. Zarren might well be the anti-Colangelo (although I’m ignorant of his collar game) in disposition and reputation.

Zarren was also a candidate for the 76ers’ general manager job when the team hired Hinkie in 2012, but pulled himself out of consideration.

A compromise between hiring Hinkie and someone like Zarren would be to pull Hinkie’s old right hand man, Sachin Gupta, into the fold. Gupta left the Sixers before Hinkie did, and it’s unclear as to whether he’d be interested or qualified to run such a high-profile role. But he pulled off the heist of the decade. Bring him in for another interview at the very least.

This is also known as the David Griffin option.

Griffin was dismissed by the Cavaliers a year ago, much to pending free agent LeBron James’ chagrin. Griffin doesn’t have a perfect record, but he had some difficult circumstances in pivoting from rebuilding franchise to championship contender when LeBron decided to return to Cleveland in 2014. Griffin navigated it all quite beautifully.

Also, since LeBron likes him and has a relationship, the Sixers’ bid to sign King James this summer would get at least a little boost from hiring Griff.

It seems like a no-brainer, doesn’t it?

Or, the Sixers could one-up that strategy and really lean into the LeBron Trust Circle by hiring a GM with even closer ties to the superstar. The top candidate for that role: James Jones, now vice president of basketball operations for the Suns.

Jones famously won championships as a Friend of LeBron, signing up for small contracts to stay in his orbit as a valued teammate and confidante. Hiring Jones to run the front office would be a risk given his light experience on the executive side, but it would essentially be a straight-up love letter to LeBron. If King James had any concerns about whether he would have influence in Philadelphia, this would preemptively answer the question.

What Jones may lack in front office experience, he makes up for in knowing better than to tweet medical info on burner accounts.

Of course, the Sixers could ignore the Hinkie restoration movement and the potential for a LeBron coup and just, you know, try to hire the best executive available. That could still mean Griffin, Zarren, or Eversley. It could mean longtime Thunder assistant GM Troy Weaver finally gets a shot, or the Wizards’ Tommy Sheppard gets called up. Is there still a constituency for Rich Cho? Does R.C. Buford, perhaps seeing Gregg Popovich’s retirement coming in the next few years, want new digs? Are teams going to start interviewing Curt Miller from the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun? How do we feel about Jeff Bower and Joe Dumars? Brandon Williams? Could another GM under contract elsewhere be tempted to switch teams?

There are lots and lots of good general manager candidates out there for the Sixers to consider. Perhaps the smartest path is to take a fresh approach, leave The Process out of it, and find a new leader for the next exciting era of Sixers basketball.

(But you can’t claim it wouldn’t be fun to keep fighting these same battles for another three years, right?)