Philadelphia 76ers Considering Trading Top-5 Draft Pick

The Philadelphia 76ers president Bryan Colangelo hinted at the NBA Draft Combine that the team may try to shop the Los Angeles Lakers’ pick if it conveys to them.

The Philadelphia 76ers organization is now headed up by Bryan Colangelo. After being in the former place of Sam Hinkie for about a month, Bryan has done about as much talking as Hinkie did in an entire year. Some of what he is saying isn’t sitting well with fans.

Over the last three years, many fans fell in love with Sam Hinkie’s radical way of rebuilding the 76ers, and were disappointed to see that he didn’t get to see his plan all the way through. Hinkie acquired many assets over the course of his three years with the team, and this offseason was supposed to be a major one for him. With the possibility of two picks in the top five — because of the Los Angeles Lakers pick being owned by the Sixers given that it falls out of the top three — there is a lot of room to do a lot of different things. They can take two potential stars in one year.

Bryan Colangelo doesn’t see it that way. According to multiple reports from the NBA Draft Combine, Colangelo is hinting at trading the Lakers pick if it conveys to the Sixers. A report from Scott Howard-Cooper detailed some of Colangelo’s quotes, and Bryan told Howard-Cooper that the Sixers would, “certainly be open for business” following the conclusion of Tuesday’s NBA Draft Lottery.

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"“It’s hard to put a number or a value on degree of aggressiveness, but we’ll certainly be open for business and listening to whatever is there… I think any time you have certain assets on the table in front of you, you need to determine what your best strategic move is, and some of that is yet to be determined. To what degree we’ll be aggressive, it’s too early to say.”"

Colangelo spoke on how important the lottery was to them. It seems as if the team has a few action plans involving trades in place, but they probably have different plans for different draft positioning variations.

"“You don’t want to leave anything on the table. If there was an opportunity to do something and you didn’t know that or realize it because you didn’t make a phone call then that’s your fault. But I think we’ll explore everything in every regard and that’s the good news about having the kind of flexibility and the number of assets that we have… It really just comes from the conversation following the lottery results. That’s the one thing about the lottery. Once it’s completed we’ll know exactly what we have. Before anything else happens, that’s the first domino that’s got to fall. Tuesday’s a big day for us in a whole host of ways.”"

Given that this year’s draft is a bit shallow, if the Lakers pick conveys to them at five, there may be reason to consider trading it.

What’s important to note about this report is that the only time a top five pick is ever mentioned is in the title and by the author. Bryan Colangelo, as made clear by the quotes above, never says anything about trading a top five pick. Colangelo could have been speaking about the two later picks that the Sixers have in the draft.