Is Trading Up An Option For The Philadelphia 76ers?

There are a lot of potential outcomes from the NBA Draft Lottery. If the Philadelphia 76ers fell in the draft order, would they look to trade back up?

The Philadelphia 76ers cannot count on the luck of the draw. For example, If the Philadelphia 76ers were unfortunate enough to fall beyond their slotted number four pick, would the team be content? Or does that trigger the 76ers to trade up to get a guy they want? It needn’t be all the way up to select the consensus number one pick Markelle Fultz. Perhaps it’s simply up far enough to select either a Jayson Tatum or Malik Monk?

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Furthermore, if the worst case scenario happens, how do the Philadelphia 76ers respond? In fact, If the 76ers fall to pick number six, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that they use their arsenal of assets and trade up.

Need Willing Trade Partner

But that effort could be in vain. After all,
I’m not sure if a team in the top five would be willing to trade down due to the franchise changing talent available. but if the 76ers came in with the right offer then who knows what could happen.

It is important, however, for the 76ers to not pull a Chicago Bears and drastically overpay to move up one spot. Colangelo must be smart, he has repeatedly said he will not make a move for the sake of making a move, I trust him on this. He was reluctant to trade Okafor and Noel for less value in return, perhaps he panicked on the Trade Deadline. Hopefully there will be no more brash trades like this.

Trade Idea

For this hypothetical trade, the Orlando Magic gets lucky at the lottery and jump up to number two and the 76ers fall to six. They have a lot of holes on their roster, they could do with assets to help rebuild the organization.

Jahlil Okafor will have a chance to revive his career with the Magic, magic is what is needed to save Okafor’s career. And due to having the Sacramento Kings’ first round pick in 2019, the 76ers’ pick is expendable; the 76ers should be a playoff team by them, as long as Bryan Colangelo trusts the process.

In recent years we’ve seen the sort of deals the Magic make when they are on the clock. In short, they tend to get fleeced… a lot. On one hand, hopefully the 76ers can take advantage of this and jump to number two and get Lonzo Ball or Jayson Tatum.

Trade Scenario Two

On the other hand, they could use the number two pick as leverage to make a deal for a superstar like Paul George. I’m not sure how likely that would be, but hey, this is all hypothetical.

In this reality, the 76ers get a star to help make a playoff push, I’m not the biggest Paul George because he doesn’t come across as a leader, he quite often blames his teammates, but to win in the NBA you need a superstar.

In addition, the Pacers get a high draft pick to help accelerate their quick rebuild. This could be a similar situation to the Minnesota Timberwolves after they traded away Kevin Love to the Cleveland Cavaliers for Andrew Wiggins and Anthony Bennett.

Next: 2017 NBA Mock Draft 1.0

All in all, it is unlikely for any of this to actually happen, but its always fun to talk about “what if?” scenarios.