By: Jesse Larch, Sports Talk Philly Staff 
Ever since Sam Hinkie resigned as the Sixers general manager, Bryan Colangelo has drawn the ire of the fanbase.
The first reason the fans were against him was that the Colangelos were implanted into the Sixers organization by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. Silver was unhappy with the Sixers apparent willingness to lose games under Hinkie, and this was his way of putting the heat on the organization.
Shortly after the arrival of Bryan and his father Jerry Colangelo, Sam Hinkie resigned as the team's general manager, knowing that the reigns of what he had spent years building were about to change hands.
From the moment the Colangelos came to Philadelphia, they were seen as saboteurs to the process. The Colangelos represented the staus quo, while Hinkie had captivated the the Sixers' fanbase with his radical approach to roster building. Hinkie was fresh, different, and (most importantly) ahead of the game.
Fans felt cheated, and felt that Hinkie got a raw deal. For a general manager that oversaw a perpetually awful team, fans were very supportive of the process. The fans felt that Hinkie was the only man to complete the process, that it was his vision and that he was the only man with the proper foresight to accomplish the goal that he had promised.
Early on in his tenure, Bryan Colangelo did not do much to improve his stock among the fans. His first defining moment was not even his. Colangelo was in charge of the team when they finally netted the first overall selection in the draft after years of falling short in the lottery. Colangelo's first addition to the team was going to be Ben Simmons, who has been described as a generational talent.
The issue was that nobody recognized this as Colangelo's doing, and rightfully so. The first overall pick was a direct result of the foundation that Sam Hinkie had built, and Colangelo had no decision to make in the 2016 draft. Yes, he hosted Brandon Ingram for a workout, but there was no competition for Ben Simmons as the number one pick, and there was not a decision to be made.
We forget that Colangelo also drafted Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot and Furkan Korkmaz later in the first round that year, two players who seem like nice pieces for the future that Colangelo had to find.
Colangelo began to win the fanbase over with his first foray into free agency as the man in charge of the Sixers when he added veterans Jerryd Bayless and Gerald Henderson to the fold, a sign that the team was phasing out of tanking as they had done under Hinkie.
In his first full season as the Sixers' general manager, Colangelo saw the Sixers increase their win total by 18 from the season before, but again, the credit went to Hinkie.
The biggest factor in increasing the win total was the long-awaited debuts of Joel Embiid and Dario Saric, who are both in contention for the Rookie of the Year Award. The two players who are perhaps most synonymous with the process did not have to mention Hinkie's name to remind fans of him. The two players consistently inspired "trust the process" chants to break out at Sixers' games because they were Hinkie's most prized additions.
Embiid was drafted third overall in 2014, with a preexisting injury. In the same draft, the Sixers acquired Dario Saric, originially drafted 10th overall by the Orlando Magic. Hinkie knew when he acquired these two players that he would not be able to put them on the court for at least one year due to Embiid's injury and Saric's contract with Anadolu Efes in the Turkish league. Embiid's injury worsened, and Saric was not bought out of his deal until after two years of playing overseas. Hinkie never got to see his two best draft picks play for him. They represented the patience that was tantamount to the process, and because they were not his additions, Colangelo does not get credit for the team's improvement last season.
Although the team made a good impression on the fans, Colangelo did not. He made a bad impression on the fans with his handling of the team's injuries, and the trade deadline.
Throughout the season, we received conflicting and misleading reports about the injuries of Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid. In both cases, injuries that we were told were progressing ended up becoming season-ending injuries in the blink of an eye. The fanbase felt lied to. Embiid's knee injury transformed from a knee contusion, to a torn meniscus. Ben Simmons's foot fracture saw the time table change from after the new year, to before the end of the season, to being a season-ending injury.
With the trade deadline approaching, the Sixers constantly sat Jahlil Okafor out of games, with head coach Brett Brown admitting that the reason was due to an impending trade for the former third overall pick. Fans were excited by this, as Okafor had quickly fallen out of favor with the Sixers' fans. Fans were prepared to rejoice at the trade deadline when news broke of a Sixers' trade with the Dallas Mavericks. Fans were left shocked and angry when they found out that Colangelo traded fan-favorite Nerlens Noel instead of Okafor for a fake first round pick and Justin Anderson, who does not appear to be any more than an average-at-best bench piece.
What we ignore is that Colangelo made another trade prior to the deadline, that actually showed us how savvy Colangelo can be. With journeyman stretch four Ersan Ilyasova putting up career numbers for the Sixers, Colangelo moved him for draft assets when the Atlanta Hawks came calling. With Ilyasova bound for free agency, and being at the end of his career with clearly no role in the Sixers' future, Colangelo got value for something that had no value to him.
Although Colangelo deserves the criticism that he has received to this point, it is time to accept him as our general manager.
The major fear with Colangelo is that he would dismantle the process that we had all invested so much time and energy into. With the Noel trade, all we could think about was "What would Hinkie have gotten?" With the mishandling of Embiid's and Simmons's injuries we felt discouraged. Trust was incredibly low with the new general manager, but now he has given us a reason to reassess him as the team's general manager.
That reason? Markelle Fultz.
Over the past few days, Colangelo has made the biggest move of his tenure, and arguably the most important move of the process.
The Sixers will surrender the third overall pick, this year, the Los Angeles Lakers 2018 first round pick that will be unprotected only if it lands in spots two through five, and if that does not happen, the pick will translate to the better of the Sixers and Sacramento Kings 2019 first round selections unless one of those selections lands at first overall, which may also have protections on it. In return, the Sixers will get the first overall pick from the Boston Celtics that they will use to select unanimous top-prospect Markelle Fultz.
Fultz will be the first player who will be linked to exclusively to Colangelo in the way that Simmons, Embiid, and Saric are linked to Hinkie.
Colangelo stood toe-to-toe with Danny Ainge, who is almost as notorious as Hinkie for getting one-sided returns in trades, and arguably came out on top. With this move, Colangelo again showed his savvy by protecting two of the Sixers most valuable assets, dangling one and ensuring that we keep the other.
Colangelo showed that he is not against the process, and more importantly, can get us to the next level.
Colangelo displayed an aggressiveness that we have not yet seen from him. He saw something he wanted, and he went and got it without setting the franchise back. He understood that the purpose of stockpiling assets was exactly for moments like this; cashing in to land a potential superstar.
In Fultz, we are getting a player who can fit seamlessly with the current core of Ben Simmons, Dario Saric, and Joel Embiid. Instead of tearing down the stronghold that Hinkie built, Colangelo fortified it. With a core of Fultz, Simmons, Saric, and Embiid, the Sixers will hold a core of four players that project to be top-10 players at their respective positions. Only one other team in the NBA can say that: The Golden State Warriors.
Teams will no longer laugh at the Philadelphia 76ers. Individual players will start to see Philadelphia as a viable destination, and because Colangelo cashed in (some) of the assets to get a draft pick instead of a veteran, the Sixers will have the financial flexibility to bolster the rest of the roster and put a team on the court the likes of which we have not yet seen.
With Colangelo's latest move, he has gotten to the point that we were all sure he would sabotage. After this trade, the Sixers have perhaps the brightest future of any team in the league.
Colangelo has definitively stepped into the light, and out from under Sam Hinkie's grandiose shadow.
We should not forget where Bryan Colangelo has faltered, but we should also acknowledge that he will do what is neccessary to help the Sixers improve, just like Sam Hinkie.
#Sixers fans! Has Bryan Colangelo earned your trust with the move for the first overall draft pick?#SixersTalk #MadeInPHILA
— Jesse James Larch (@JesseLarch) June 19, 2017
