It’s Time To Be Irrationally Angry About the Sixers 2nd Round Draft Strategy
Thursday night in Brooklyn, the Sixers has the most Sixers draft you could possible imagine. In one round they had the fan base completely elated with the move and the pick. In the next round, just a mere minutes later, they managed to make everyone irrationally angry.
Elton (on) Brand. Am I right?!
I love Matisse Thybulle, I love that the Sixers were able to land him and I give that move an absolute A+. They had to trade up (more on that later) to get him, but they got their guy who seemed like THE guy to get late in the first round. It is really hard to hit a home run late in the first round like that in the NBA because it is such a top heavy drop system, but the Sixers did it.
Every playoff team, and every serious contender, has a Matisse Thybulle. When Thybulle comes back from his case of the Bubonic Plague he caught during his rookie year, he is going to be a stud.
Now to the second round. The god damn second round. The god damn 2nd round round selling Sixers.
In no scenario ever, were the Sixers going to use all five of the the 2nd round picks they had last night. They need to save salary cap space and roster slots. There was a day where maybe you could experiment with five or six rookies on a roster but today ain’t that day.
The Sixers season ended because they couldn’t find any guy in any of the 50 states who could give them valuable bench minutes. Somebody, anybody. Any age. Any size. Any position. Any skill type. A human being with opposable thumbs. They were also essentially praying for most of the season that any warm body over 6’11 would show up and spell Embiid for a night or two, or even a few minutes.
It never happened. And they lost to the Raptors in 7 games because of it.
So with the chance to take some fliers on young, inexpensive guys to fill the bench out with using picks 33, 34 and 42…what do the Sixers do?
Get held hostage by the Celtics and give (trade) the other two of those away. Unbelievable.
By now I’m sure you all have seen the report the Celtics knew the Sixers want Thybulle. So, they held him hostage and got the 33rd pick out it. The pick was Carsen Edwards, everyone’s darling. We went from the team who does the fleecing with Hinkie, to the team who gets fleeced without him.
So the Sixers needed an athletic big at 34 to back up Embiid…and they traded it for future picks…at which point they will need to draft an athletic Big to back up Embiid.
Then, give away 42 so they could unload Jonathan Simmons. Simmons, who if released, wouldn’t have counted much against the cap anyways. The pick was Admiral Schofield, another fan favorite.
The Warriors, the gold standard of well run NBA teams, spend the majority of their salary cap on four main players. Sound like someone we know?! Golden State does a phenomenal job finding late round talent like Quinn Cook(undrafted), Kevon Looney, Jordan Bell and now Eric Paschall, who can fill out the roster productively. The Sixers, a not well run organization, sell their late round picks.
I’m well aware that the second round of the NBA Draft is one of the least important parts of putting together a competitive team. It’s a bunch of fliers and projects. But while the second round may be unimportant, the Sixers Management strategy (or lack thereof) is very important and very telling.
For a team I love so dearly, I fucking hate pretty much every single thing the front office of the team does.