Malachi Richardson Could be Solid Late-First Round Pickup

Malachi Richardson could be a very solid pickup for the Philadelphia 76ers in the late first round. They will interview him on Thursday.

News was reported by Keith Pompey of the Philadelphia Inquirer on Wednesday that the Philadelphia 76ers would interview and work out several NBA Draft Prospects. Syracuse guard Malachi Richardson was one of those candidates, and one that was a bit of a surprise to come up alongside Buddy Hield and Brandon Ingram.

The team will definitely interview Richardson, but it’s not clear if they will work him out at the combine or not.

For many Sixers fans, Richardson is a bit of a mystery. This season’s college basketball draft watching has mostly been spent on the likes of Ben Simmons, Brandon Ingram, and really anyone who would fall in the top five of this year’s draft, since that’s where the bulk of the Sixers picks do fall. What is commonly ignored, though, are the two picks that the Sixers hold in the 20s, the Miami Heat’s pick at 24 and the Oklahoma City Thunder’s pick at 26.

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Typically, we think of these picks as players that will not make it through training camp, or we write off the existence of these picks because there may be a chance — and I believe there still is — that the Sixers try to package those picks in a trade to move up a pick to the early or late teens in the first round.

Still, even if that is a goal with those picks, if that is unable to occur, the Sixers need to have a backup plan. Richardson may be just that.

Richardson had a solid freshman go-around at Syracuse University, and was noted by some as the greatest scorer the school has seen since Carmelo Anthony, who led the University from upstate New York to a national title in 2003.

Richardson is noted by most draft boards as a player who should be drafted in the mid-20s, so it makes sense that the Sixers would interview him with the intent of picking him up at 24 or 26. For a player that’s slated to go so late in this year’s draft, he’s not as raw as you would expect. His talents seem to be developing fine, and some of them may be already close to fully developed.

Richardson does have a tendency to make some questionable decisions, and there are some games that he played in that make you wonder if he even planned on playing that night. Although there was only six games total that Richardson played in and didn’t score double-digit points, he did have 14 games where he shot below 35 percent from the field, and 20 games where he shot below 35 percent from beyond the arc. Among these games were several 1-for-5 and 1-for-4 nights, as well as one disastrous 0-for-11 game from beyond the arc.

That 0-for-11 performance tells me one thing — he doesn’t have a gauge for when he’s feeling his shot, and thus does not know when to shot. Luckily, there’s no repeat game of that occurrence, so I’m lead to believe that he corrected the issue, but that has to be one of the first things a team asks him about when they interview him. That game sticks out like a sore thumb, and makes me leery to draft him in the late-teens instead of the mid-20s.

Despite these lowly games for Richardson, they do show us one thing about him — he was important. 8 of those 20 games where he shot so poorly from beyond the arc ended up being losses for Cuse, showing that he was important to their success this season. And let’s not forget that there was success, as the Orange were in the Final Four in Houston this season.

At 6’6″ with a 7’0″ wingspan, he has potential to be a great defensive player, and was eighth in the ACC this season in defensive win shares. He averaged a steal a game this season.

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The Sixers already have some pretty decent depth at the shooting guard spot with Isaiah Canaan and Nik Stauskas and Malachi can’t really play the point, so I don’t think he’d get a lot of minutes unless he played really well when he was given the chance. Despite that, Richardson could be a solid addition and a good use of that 24th or 26th pick. He’s a solid rim attacker and 3-point shooter, and does a decent job of scoring in whatever way he can. His decision making may be questionable at times, but when he can stay focused, he has great games with snappy decisions.

Rookie Josh Richardson of the Miami Heat wasn’t taken until the 40th pick of last year’s draft, and so far he’s tearing it up in the playoffs. I see a lot of similarities between Miami’s Richardson and Cuse’s Richardson. The Sixers may find a steal like Miami if they pick Malachi Richardson.