One fine night in June 2013, reporters covering the Philadelphia 76ers gathered in the gym at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine to cover the NBA draft, confident the team would select some serviceable player (or not) and continue to bumble along, as indeed it had for decades.

The Sixers were 30 years removed from their last title, 12 years removed from their last appearance in the Finals. There was seemingly nothing that could happen that would dramatically change their fortunes, much less draft night itself. (Though goodness knows the team tried. One year the crack marketing staff decided it would be a swell idea for the dance team, in full regalia, to serve the assembled media schlubs their soft drinks and snacks, an exercise that left neither party feeling comfortable. I mean, talk about two groups that never hung out together in high school …)

So this promised to be another dismal, dull affair, to borrow a line from Mick Jagger and the boys.

Only it wasn’t.

Midway through the proceedings, newly hired general manager Sam Hinkie pulled the trigger on a deal that sent guard Jrue Holiday, an All-Star the season before, to New Orleans for the just-drafted Nerlens Noel and a 2014 first-rounder.

That proved to be the opening salvo in what came to be known as The Process, a rebuild that saw Hinkie tear the team down to its chassis in the interest of accumulating draft capital (including all those second-round picks; the man loved those bad boys). We were all treated over the next four years to the stylings of Henry Sims, Jarvis Varnado, Casper Ware, et al. And we all saw the Sixers climb back in the direction of respectability under Hinkie’s successors … only to fall short, again and again, of NBA Valhalla.

This is not to relitigate The Process. I find that boring and worthless. No, the Sixers, who saw their season end with a flaccid Game Six loss in their second-round series against Miami Thursday night, are no closer to a title than Holiday, Andre Iguodala, Thaddeus Young and Co. were in 2012. But fundamentally, Hinkie was correct: The worst place to be in the NBA is the vast middle ground, with a chance at neither a ring nor a great draft pick; you either want to be really, really good, or really, really bad.

Hinkie ensured that those Sixers fell into the latter category. Boy, did he ever. I mean, just for starters, you really had to have your head on a swivel while seated in the media section during those years, lest you get hit in the noggin by one of Tony Wroten’s errant passes. As then-coach Brett Brown said at the time of his reckless guard, “He won’t die wondering.”

So let’s leave that alone, while at the same time appreciating the irony of Holiday this week showing more fight in one sliver of action than most of the Sixers did over the last two games of their season. I’m referring, of course, to the closing seconds of a pulsating Game Five between Milwaukee and Boston, when Holiday, now in his 13th season and in the employ of the Bucks, made two brilliant defensive plays to ensure a Milwaukee victory.

Never mind that Boston bounced back to win Game Six on the road, or that the C’s stand poised to take the series Sunday at home. Holiday – unlike, say, Ben Simmons or James Harden – showed once again he is unquestionably a winning player. (For further proof, consider the play he made on Phoenix’s Devin Booker at the end of Game Five of last year’s finals. With Milwaukee up one, he rips the ball free, and rather than milking the clock fires an on-the-run lob to Giannis Antetokounmpo for an and-one dunk. Talk about not dying wondering.)

The Bucks went on to win the title in six games, and while Holiday has never made an All-Star team since his days in Philadelphia, his career has been a rousing success.

So let us glory in The Second Guess, for there is nothing quite like it in sports. A team’s season can end, but Second-Guess Season never does. Second guesses power talk radio, galvanize Twitter feuds, keep fans up at night.

Oftentimes second guesses are, really, more entertaining than the games themselves.

Start here: The Sixers drafted Holiday at No. 17 overall in 2009. That was the draft that saw Blake Griffin taken first, by the Clippers, and Harden go No. 3, to Oklahoma City. No argument with either of those choices, but it was also the selection process that saw Stephen Curry somehow slide to No. 7, DeMar DeRozan slip to No. 9 and such valuable role players as Patrick Beverley, Danny Green and Patty Mills go in the second round.

You know who else went before Holiday? Hasheem Thabeet (No. 2), Jonny Flynn (No. 6) and Jordan Hill (No. 8). Also Brandon Jennings, Terrence Williams, Gerald Henderson, Tyler Hansbrough, Earl Clark, Austin Daye and James Johnson (Nos. 10-16).

As much as we trash the Sixers for their draft-day shenanigans (and not without reason), they deserve credit here. Jrue Holiday was a freakin’ steal.

So there’s that. And at the other end, we have the trade that sent him away. Besides Noel, the Sixers, through additional maneuvering, ultimately acquired Dario Saric and Landry Shamet for Holiday. Not terrible. And spin it forward even more: If they don’t get Saric, they aren’t able to package him with Robert Covington and Jerryd Bayless in the November 2018 trade to Minnesota for Jimmy Butler.

Which, of course, has become this week’s ultimate Second Guess, after Butler, now with the Heat, took the Sixers apart: How could they have ever let him walk after the 2018-19 season?

On this score I will defer to Bleacher Report’s Yaron Weitzman, who in 2020 released a wonderful book entitled “Tanking to the Top: The Philadelphia 76ers and the Most Audacious Process in the History of Professional Sports.” (Shameless plug here: Yaron was once a guest on the podcast I do with LNP sports columnist Mike Gross, “After the Buzzer.”)

With fans of Team Clap-Yer-Hands now grumbling anew about Butler’s departure, Yaron explained via Twitter how it all went down. How management worried that because Butler had taken over late-game ball-handling duties from Simmons in the 2019 playoffs, Simmons would eventually issue a him-or-me edict. How Brown and Butler had their differences, but Brown was OK bringing him back … though the front office was concerned that it would have to replace the coach in mid-season. How Embiid, who was and is close to Butler, was not insistent about his friend’s return. And how the braintrust really wanted to sign Al Horford, knowing the team would almost certainly need another reliable big man, given Embiid’s injury history.

In short, management chose Brown, Simmons and Horford over Butler, an enormous miscalculation. Add it to the list. Who knows what might have happened, for instance, if the Sixers had taken Brandon Ingram instead of Simmons with the first overall pick in 2016? Or if they would have stayed at No. 3 and taken Jayson Tatum a year later, instead of trading up for Markelle Fultz?

And who knows what would have happened if they hadn’t dealt Mikal Bridges for Zhaire Smith in 2018? Or if they had been more patient in developing young players like Jerami Grant and Christian Wood?

That’s the beauty of Second-Guess Season, which has no end. And why, unlike Tony Wroten, we will all die wondering.