Sam Hinkie is on a noncompete in his contract until the end of the 16-17 season, which is causing him to treat it like a "gap year."

Hinkie relocated from Philadelphia to Palo Alto where he's staying busy with afternoon meetings and reading as much as possible.

“When I meet someone out here, I’ll say, ‘I’m kind of between gigs,’ ” Hinkie says in a length profile by Chris Ballard in Sports Illustrated. “Or, if I’m being cute, sometimes I’ll say, ‘Oh, I’m like a founder that got pushed out for professional management,’ and they’re like, ‘Oh, first time? That happened to me in ’85 and ’93 and ’02.’ ” He pauses. “There’s not the sense of shame for failure here that there is some other places.”

Hinkie compares taking over the Philadelphia 76ers in May of 2013 to joining a game of Monopoly midstream.

“You don’t have any real estate, all the hundreds are gone, and they’ve got Park Place,” said Hinkie.

After stepping down as general manager of the 76ers in May, Hinkie kept a low profile for several months but is beginning to go public again.

“I can’t afford to be quiet all the time. I learned that.”

Hinkie never liked the public part of his job with the 76ers. For this profile, Hinkie denied requests to talk to his wife and parents.

“The worst part of [a general manager’s] job is that it’s public,” he says. “And so I do as much as possible to protect the people I love because they didn’t choose this life, I did.”

“There’s a huge disconnect between who Sam is and who the world thinks he is,” says Than Powell, a grad school friend.