Re-drafting Philadelphia 76ers 2008 pick
The Philadelphia 76ers choose a solid big man in this 2008 NBA Draft, but they ended up not selecting one of the best players in the draft.
Sadly, the Philadelphia 76ers only had one pick in the 2008 NBA Draft. They ended up using the pick on Marreese Speights and while Speights was a solid enough player during his career, he ended up not being the best player available at the 16th pick.
Speights was probably ahead of his time as he was a stretch center in the NBA. For his career, Speights shot 35.6 percent on 3-pointers. If he was in his prime in today’s NBA, he’d be a primary target for a lot of teams. Sadly, his skills weren’t appreciated for the bulk of his 10-year career. He has career averages of 7.9 points and 4.1 rebounds.
Yet, despite the fact that Speights would be more coveted in today’s NBA then what he was during his prime, he ended up not being the best player available when Philly selected in the first round. There’s quite an impressive list of players that were drafted after Speights.
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- Roy Hibbert (17th pick)
- JaVale McGee (18th pick)
- Ryan Anderson (21st pick)
- Courtney Lee (22nd pick)
- Serge Ibaka (24th pick)
- Nicolas Batum (25th pick)
- George Hill (26th pick)
- Nikola Pekovic (31th pick)
- Mario Chalmers (34th pick)
- DeAndre Jordan (35th pick)
- Goran Dragic (45th pick)
Out of the players listed about, DeAndre Jordan is the best player. Despite making less All-Star games than Hibbert and the same amount as Dragic, Jordan is better than those other two All-Stars. Jordan has averaged 9.5 points and 10.8 rebounds. for his career. For six straight seasons, Jordan averaged a double-double until this past year. He’s been one of the better defensive centers in the game during his career as well.
A rotation of Jordan and Samuel Dalembert in the late 2000s would have given Sixers a legit two-headed monster at the center position on the defensive end. Jordan would have benefited learning behind Dalembert for a few seasons as well.
Next. Re-drafting Philadelphia 76ers 2007 picks. dark
The Philadelphia 76ers didn’t make a terrible choice by choosing Speights in the 2008 NBA Draft, but they could have an All-Star center had picked Jordan instead.