Sixers Coaching Smoke & Mirrors: Hinkie reaches out to Bulls' Ed Pinckney, Adrian Griffin

One day we'll find out that in lieu of finding a head coach, Sam Hinkie sat in a windowless room scrawling numbers on the walls and yelling Latin obscenities directed at Billy Beane. But since we don't have confirmation on that rumor, we'll go with this one instead. Sam has asked for and received permission to talk to Chicago Bulls' assistants Easy Ed Pinckney and Adrian Griffin. Cool.

Pinckney, natch, fits the PHILLY GUY description sculpted by predecessors Bobby Clarke and Ed Stefanski, having won a national title (AS AN EIGHT SEED!) with Villanova in 1985 in the Georgetown game that got me posthumous redemption on Patrick Ewing for this missed layup that directly resulted in my 5-year-old nudity.

Easy Ed, 50, also did his time next to Marc Zumoff in the broadcast booth for a year before latching on with Chicago in 2010. Maybe Hinkie will just hire Malik Rose and have him do double duty as coach/color man. I'd buy.

Being a finalist for the Memphis coaching job (before ultimately losing out to Dave Joerger), suggests he's awful chummy with the advanced stats crowd. Jason Levien and John Hollinger stand tall with the Grizzlies, and if EP got a second interview there, you know he's legit.

Over to Adrian Griffin, who just turned 39, seems a less likely option. While both Scott Skiles and Tom Thibodeau have endorsed his coaching qualities, he's already taken some time off in the past to spend more time with his family, saying he doesn't want to keep moving them around. He came back, but dude may just want to chill in Chicago for a few more years of stability.

I do have aspirations of eventually being a head coach, but at the end of the day, your family's important and you just have to make sure that everything's OK on that end.

GriffDog interviewed with Detroit earlier in the year. He's currently coaching the Bulls Summer League team in Vegas. Broussard made it clear that Hinkie hasn't actually interviewed them yet and he's also interested in Melvin Hunt from the burning pyre in Denver.

I could do with a few more months of coaching updates, so please take your time, Sam. See you this weekend in Vegas. First round's on me.

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