Hunched over my laptop in a corner booth at the Buffalo Wild Wings on Roosevelt Boulevard, I hurriedly tapped away on the keyboard, attempting futilely to drown out the chatter of the nearly 500 Sixers fans who had assembled there. It was the night of the NBA Draft Lottery, an annual exercise in statistical randomness that flies in the face of what we typically embrace as sports fans.

But here we all were, nervously watching a production that more closely resembles an episode of The Bachelor than the sport that brought us to the restaurant in the first place and hoping beyond hope that we would be among the lucky few handed a rose before the credits rolled.

Those of my friends who don’t follow the NBA gave me a blank stare when I explained to them the importance of the lottery and why I would not just willingly, but enthusiastically, travel to the outer edges of the city just to watch its results be hastily delivered over the course of about four minutes. Heck, even explaining it to diehard fans of other teams was a challenge.

ICYMI: We ate wings and watched the lottery with 500 (or so) diehards. They were awesome.

https://t.co/6pB9uBFbsr — Philadelphia 76ers (@Sixers) May 22, 2015

But that lottery party was only the tip of the iceberg. The renewed sense of excitement surrounding the Sixers extends far beyond the zealots gathered at Buffalo Wild Wings; overall, fans are engaged, they’re on board, and they see a bright future through what has been a trying decade of basketball in the city of Philadelphia. And while some outsiders may look at the win-loss column and scoff at that optimism, those of us on the ground level understand exactly why our faith has been restored.

How We Got Here

Two years ago, nearly to the day, the Sixers set a new course for their franchise. Under the direction of a third-year ownership group headed up by Managing Owner Josh Harris and Co-Managing Owner David Blitzer, the team hired up-and-coming executive Sam Hinkie of the Rockets to serve as the team’s President of Basketball Operations and General Manager. A well-respected apprentice under Houston GM and moneyball pioneer Daryl Morey, Hinkie brought with him the knowledge and experience to take a struggling and depleted Sixers team and put it on the right track to sustained success.

The roster he inherited was highlighted by All-Star point guard Jrue Holiday and rounded out by a handful of solid contributors in Evan Turner, Spencer Hawes, and Thaddeus Young. Seven of the 15 players on the roster were set to hit unrestricted free agency on July 1, 2013, including center Andrew Bynum, whose chronic knee issues kept him from appearing in a single game for the Sixers after arriving in Philadelphia via a blockbuster deal the previous summer.

In trading for Bynum, the team had parted ways with All-Star swingman Andre Iguodala, promising young big man Nikola Vucevic, then-rookie forward Maurice Harkless, and a lottery-protected 2016 first-round pick. To make matters worse, with Jrue Holiday’s four-year, $44,000,000 extension set to kick in for the 2013-14 season, Hinkie only had about $12 million at his disposal to use in free agency. And if that weren’t enough, the team traded its own lottery-protected 2014 first-round pick on draft night one year prior in a deal that netted them the rights to Arnett Moultrie, who now plays professionally in China.

Coming off a 34-48 season that earned the Sixers the ninth seed in the East and the 11th pick in the 2013 NBA Draft, the avenues for improvement were few and cupboard of assets with which to do so was bare. For Philadelphia to get to where they wanted to be – championship contention, they knew they had to take a step back in the short term.

Sam Hinkie Sets His Course

Entering draft night two years ago, fans didn’t know what to expect. Sam Hinkie had spent the previous seven seasons out of public view as a member of the Houston Rockets’ front office and in his brief time in Philadelphia had not offered much insight into his plans entering his first offseason with the Sixers.

They quickly found out.

On June 27, 2013, the Sixers shocked the basketball world when they traded Jrue Holiday and a second-round pick to the Pelicans for the rights to the sixth-overall pick – Nerlens Noel, and New Orleans’ top-five protected first-round pick in 2014. The team then drafted Michael Carter-Williams with its own first-rounder, the 11th-overall pick, and completed a flurry of deals in the second round that eventually resulted in the team acquiring the rights to Arsalan Kazemi, a pick that would become Jordan McRae a year later, and Pierre Jackson (later waived), as well as cash considerations.

Noel, who suffered a torn ACL towards the tail end of his freshman season at Kentucky, was projected by many to be the first-overall pick in the 2013 Draft before the injury. Even in the days leading up to June 27, a number of experts wondered aloud if the Cavaliers wouldn’t still use the draft’s first pick to secure his services. But in the end, the injury scared away a handful of teams at the top of the draft, and the talented seven-footer fell all the way to #6, where Hinkie and Sixers jumped at the chance to acquire the defensive-minded young prospect.

While some questioned the move at the time, it’s hard to argue that it has been anything but an overwhelming success for the Sixers. Noel indeed missed the entire 2013-14 seasons while rehabbing his surgically repaired left knee, but the redshirt rookie campaign that followed made the wait more than worthwhile.

Noel averaged 9.9 points, 8.1 rebounds, 1.7 assists, 1.9 blocks, and 1.8 steals per game in 2014-15, becoming the first player to do so since Hakeem Olajuwon in 1994-95. But perhaps the most important number attributed to his name was 75, the number of games in which he appeared as a rookie. That number is one more than the 74 played by Holiday in two seasons since the deal was made. Noel finished third in Rookie of the Year voting and became the first rookie to receive a vote for Defensive Player of the Year in three seasons.

Additionally, the top-five protected pick that New Orleans included in the deal eventually became the 10th-overall selection in the 2014 Draft. That pick was used to select point guard Elfrid Payton, who was immediately dealt to Orlando in exchange for the rights to Croatian forward Dario Saric (selected 12th overall) and a 2015 second-round pick. The deal also absolved Philadelphia’s draft debt to the Magic – a lottery-protected 2016 first-round pick owed as a result of the aforementioned Andrew Bynum deal.

The Anatomy Of The Payton-Saric Trade

The enormous ramifications of that deal that saw the rights to Elfrid Payton and Dario Saric change hands may not have been apparent in the moment. After all, the prize of the deal – the first-rounder dealt to Philadelphia – was the team’s own lottery protected pick, not set to convey for another two years. But for a number of reasons, some fairly complicated, the deal could turn out to be one of the most important of Hinkie’s tenure.

Trades in the NBA are governed by a strict set of guidelines outlined in the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Hundreds of pages of dry legalese spell out exactly what teams can and cannot do in precise terms, from length and value restrictions on contracts to stretch and amnesty provisions to escrow and tax policy. Even the most popular summary of the document is over 80 pages long and contains more footnotes than a Grantland column.

Understanding the CBA is difficult enough, but navigating it effectively is a feat that is even more impressive. In the Sixers’ deal with the Orlando Magic last year, Sam Hinkie did that and more. Beyond the acquisition of the two picks and Saric, one of the most highly touted young prospects in all of Europe, the trade had the added benefit of effectually negating a draft obligation that would have prevented the Sixers from trading future first-round picks until at least 2019.

Here’s how:

The CBA contains language that prohibits several dozen types of transactions. One of those stipulations is called the Stepien Rule, named after former Cavaliers owner Ted Stepien. The rule basically forbids teams from trading future first-round picks in consecutive years. For example, if Team A wanted to use future first-round picks to acquire a player from Team B, they could trade their 2015 first-round pick and any combination of picks in alternating years (2017, 2019, 2021, etc.) up to seven years into the future; they could also elect to trade picks in even-numbered years (2016, 2018, 2020) instead. However, Team A could not trade multiple picks in consecutive years. In cases where picks are protected (top-five protected, lottery-protected, etc.), the CBA dictates that a team cannot trade a pick if there is any chance it will leave them without a first-round pick in consecutive future drafts.

The Sixers, as a result of the aforementioned Bynum trade, owed a future lottery-protected pick to the Magic that would have taken effect two years after the team made good on its lottery-protected first-round debt to the Boston Celtics (via the Miami Heat, with whom the Sixers completed a draft-night deal in 2012. That obligation expired at the conclusion of this past season, becoming a pair of second-round picks in 2015 and 2016 because Philadelphia’s first-round selection fell within its top-14 protection. Therefore, the team would have owed a lottery-protected first-round pick to the Magic beginning in 2016.

While owing a future first-rounder to another team is obviously never a good thing, the nature of this obligation was especially troublesome. Because the debt could not be paid until 2016, the team would have been barred from dealing another future first until 2018 if the pick failed to convey before then then and 2020 if it conveyed in 2018 (when the pick was only protected for picks 1-8).

In a league where future first-round picks are a major bargaining chip when it comes to acquiring high-level talent, absolving the Sixers of that debt was something Hinkie looked to rectify. By re-acquiring their own first-round pick as part of the Payton-Saric deal, the Sixers basically wiped their slate clean, assuring themselves the ability to act if they so choose should one of the league’s star players become available on the trade block.

Developing A Winning Culture Despite Losing

When people, myself included, talk about the Sixers’ plan, the focus far too often falls upon the stockpile of “assets” acquired by the team over the past two seasons. And while that aspect of the team’s rebuild has been remarkable (as evidenced in the infographic at the bottom of this article), the strides the team has made off the court are also deserving of praise.

When former Spurs assistant Brett Brown was hired as head coach in August 2013, he immediately made it known that his devotion to developing a culture similar to the one he enjoyed in San Antonio would be as strong as his commitment to developing players on the court. The longtime assistant and former Australian National Basketball League head coach stressed a defense-first mentality, the significance of fitness, and, in his words, the importance of establishing “mateship.” Twenty-one months later, he’s made definite strides in all those regards.

Under Brown, the Sixers’ defense has climbed from 27th in points allowed per possession to 12th at the end of last season, a remarkable accomplishment for a team that has been amongst the youngest in NBA history during his tenure. Much of Philadelphia’s incredible climb up the defensive standings can be attributed to rookie big man Nerlens Noel, who steadily improved all season long under Brown and his staff, finishing 2014-15 as the only player in the league to hit the marks he did in defensive rating, defensive win shares, and defensive box plus-minus; he was also the only player to finish top-10 in both blocks and steals last season.

The team has committed itself heavily to sports science, combining cutting edge technology and time-tested techniques to get the best out of their athletes and reduce to risk of injuries. When new players arrive, they are given a comprehensive dietary plan catered specifically to their bodies and fitness goals, and during practices each wears a motion-tracking device that measures and analyzes every single movement they make. For the Sixers, information is power, and they do everything they can to acquire as much of it as possible.

And while the win column might not show it, the Sixers practice and play as hard as any team in the league, at times to the surprise of visiting coaches and players and even sometimes to Brown himself. It’s largely a byproduct of the roster Sam Hinkie has constructed, with lottery picks playing alongside less decorated young players who are looking to make their mark and prove they belong in the NBA. The energy and drive of these players are infectious, and it’s shown in the play of the entire team in each of the past two seasons. And while, understandably, the Sixers haven’t hit on every single undrafted free agent and 10-day signee that has donned red, white, and blue, the emergence of players like Covington, Sampson, and Hollis Thompson is a testament to the atmosphere of skill development and cultivation that is so central to what the program is looking to accomplish.

Doubling Down On The Plan And Looking Ahead

It was two years ago that Hinkie and the Sixers set their course – to strip the team down to its foundation and build it back up in a more sustainable way. In the time since, they have used the draft, and to a lesser extent trades and free agency, to slowly but surely acquire the building blocks so central to that process.

At every point along the way, the team has remained true to its commitment not to settle for “good enough” but to strive for “great.” They did it when they traded Jrue Holiday on the night of the 2013 Draft, they did it when they used the pick acquired in that deal to select Nerlens Noel knowing that he was unlikely to suit up in 2013-14, they did it again when they took the same educated risk with injured big man Joel Embiid using the third pick in 2014 and selected draft-and-stash candidate Dario Saric with the 12th pick, they did it once more when they dealt Evan Turner, Spencer Hawes, and Thaddeus Young for draft picks last year, and they doubled down on the plan when they traded Michael Carter-Williams for a loosely protected first-round pick via the Los Angeles Lakers at the deadline this past February.

The pick netted in the Carter-Williams deal, regarded as one of the most valuable future assets that has changed hands in recent NBA history, is protected for picks 1-3 in 2016 and 2017 and is unprotected in 2018. The Sixers also hold the rights to Miami’s top-10 protected first, Oklahoma City’s top-15 protected first, and their own 2016 first-rounder, completely unprotected.

With the potential for four first-round picks next season in addition to Denver’s second-rounder, five more picks in 2015 (including the third-overall selection), Dario Saric waiting in the wings, Joel Embiid mere months away from making his Sixers debut, and the team’s cap situation better than perhaps that of any team in the league, maybe those looking from the outside in will begin to see what we see.

So Where Do We Stand?

No front office in the NBA has been as active as that of the Philadelphia 76ers over the past two years. Today, only one player – Jason Richardson – remains from the roster inherited by Hinkie, and the team has increased its stable of draft picks from 2013-2020 from 15 to a ridiculous 34. Here’s a closer look at how Philadelphia was able to accomplish this incredible feat: