Philadelphia 76ers Need Cohesion, Not Seniority

II. Recent drafts were failures

The need to judge any draft before players actually play games is one that plagues professional sports, but is all based on the hunch factor.  Of the three NBA drafts, the Philadelphia 76ers had a multitude of occasions where the NBA lottery could have landed the Sixers in a wonderful place.  For three years, the Philadelphia 76ers had a lottery pick, and for three straight years the team was unable to do any better than third.

Contrast those odds with that of the Cleveland Cavaliers, whose drop to the bottom of the league coincided with the decision of LeBron James to join his friends at the Miami Heat.  For three of those four years without James, the Cleveland Cavaliers landed the top NBA draft pick.  Unfortunately, in 2013 the Cleveland Cavaliers selected Anthony Bennett first overall, who sought to be assigned to the development league in December 2015.

“Four draft picks are probably a little bit too many”- Bryan Colangelo

The draft strategy of the Philadelphia 76ers, as a result of no favor of the NBA’s Lady Luck, simply became doubling down on the risk.  In short, the team grabbed players who were injured or were committed to international contracts, in the belief that if they panned out, their upside would more than make up for the greater risk of the downside.  As a result, the team converted draft currency into blue chip players with greater than usual risk, or converted today’s draft pick into one of more value tomorrow.   In either case, the strategy was consistent with the belief that the system was rigged to thwart immediately improvement, and the only way to improve substantially was to delay immediate value for the potential for far greater value later.

In terms of whether a Dario Saric or a Joel Embiid is a failed draft is a moot point, as neither have played on an NBA basketball court today.  When they do, and they have had sufficient time (say by season’s end) to acclimate to the NBA version of basketball, we will have a better understanding of the wisdom of deferring value in those drafts.  In fact, the entire concept that the Philadelphia 76ers have enjoyed a bounty of NBA draft picks is true, but most of the picks were converted on draft night to subsequent picks through a series of compounding draft selections.

The goal of the personnel decisions was to set up the team to succeed.   That meant the goal was to create a pipeline of young talent, accumulate a war chest, and accumulate draft picks.  That “austerity” of deferring the draft value to the future is what made selecting up to four first round picks possible in the first place.  To some, the odds of hitting a home run in the NBA draft dictate the need for so many draft picks to ensure that the team discovers the true diamond in the rough.  Others still fool themselves into a belief that the NBA draft is purely skill, and a true aficionado of the NBA would only need one first round pick to find a blue chip player.

It seems that Bryan Colangelo subscribes to the “purely skill” theory.

Next: Forced to Start Reserves