There are tangents, and then there's the 13-page letter Sam Hinkie penned to Philadelphia 76ers ownership to notify them of his resignation on Wednesday.
Citing Abraham Lincoln, Bill Belichick, and Warren Buffet, among others, Hinkie's myriad references would make university professors gush.
Here are the highlights of the bizarre letter:
Giving his Twitter handle as a point of contact
In the interim, I'll probably be with my wife and kids for a few weeks. If you need to reach me - now or later - I am available at and I suspect someday soon on Twitter via @samhinkie.
Revealing investor letters are his guilty pleasure
I hope this letter finds you well. I have been serving the Sixers at your pleasure for the past 34 months. Atul Gawande, a Surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, remains (from afar) one of my favorite reads. He laughs that reading scientific studies has long been a guilty pleasure. Reading investor letters has long been one of mine.
Referencing an extinct species of birds
New Zealand’s flightless bird the moa (measuring in at 10 ft, 400 lbs.) had the life tramping around the South Island for a great long run; then the first Maori explorers washed ashore in canoes, and that was that.
Regretting acquiring a mere 26 draft picks
In the first 26 months on the job, we added more than one draft pick (or pick swap) per month to our coffers. That's more than 26 new picks or options to swap picks over and above the two per year the NBA allots each club. That's not any official record, because no one keeps track of such records. But it is the most ever. And it's not close. And we kick ourselves for not adding another handful.
Complaining about BlackBerry's demise
I still miss Blackberry’s keyboard, but the 2007 iPhone debut rendered it nearly obsolete to all but a few of us curmudgeons.
