It’s almost that time. We’re already lottery watching, checking in to see where the Sixers are in the race to the bottom of the standings while also wondering how many other first-round picks they might secure. The regular season is merely prologue for the Sixers. The offseason is the action.
A lot can happen between now and the lottery, and the lottery and the draft, but we’ve reached the point in the year where mock drafts and big boards become omnipresent. The Sixers, wherever they pick, should find a quality player available. But what happens if the lottery system smiles on the rebuild and boosts them into the first or second slot? Would the Sixers — who have one big man who’s in the Rookie of the Year conversation and another who comes with serious expectations — draft another frontcourt player?
The Sixers currently have the third-worst record in the NBA. If it stays that way, they’d have a 15.6 percent shot to pick first overall and a 15.7 percent chance to pick second. So call it slightly less than 1-in-3 that they end up with a top-two selection.
Depending on which mock draft you prefer, the top two picks are currently projected to be Jahil Okafor from Duke and Karl-Anthony Towns from Kentucky. That could easily change between now and the draft. You’ll remember that Joel Embiid was believed to be the top pick, until his foot injury was revealed and he fell to the Sixers at No. 3.
Okafor is 19 years old. He is 6-11, 270 pounds. He is a large, talented frontcourt player with serious offensive skills. Towns is 19 years old. He is 6-11, 250 pounds. He is a large, talented frontcourt player with serious offensive skills. Those are the kinds of athletes teams want. They are hard to find. Except the Sixers already have two tall, young frontcourt players. Would the Sixers take another big and then try to figure out the fit later?
There are 96 available minutes per game for the two frontcourt positions. If the Sixers drafted another forward/center, they could play their three young bigs around 30 minutes per game without much trouble. The Bulls did it for a while this season with Pau Gasol, Joakim Noah and Taj Gibson, though that plan was derailed at times because of various injury issues.
If Okafor and Towns are the top two players in the draft, and if the Sixers have a shot to land one of them, it’s hard to imagine that Sam Hinkie would pass on the best available talent in favor of filling a need at guard or on the wing. At every step, Hinkie has demonstrated a fondness for value. He’ll trade the reigning Rookie of the Year, but only if doing so comes with a quality return (like a top-5 protected first-rounder). Similarly, you could imagine him taking yet another big if the value was evident, then working to figure out the fit — who plays where, who stays, who goes — later on.
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None of which means that taking a big, if the right one is available with their first pick, is necessarily the best course of action. Eventually, the wide-lens rebuild must give way to a better-focused approach that considers how perimeter players can be added and meshed with post players.
Picking third or fourth would likely mean missing out on Okafor and Towns. At that point, the available players would probably include, among many others, guards Emmanuel Mudiay and DeAngelo Russell, wings Stanley Johnson, Justise Winslow and Mario Hezonja, and center Willie Cauley-Stein. Point guard. Shooting guard. Small forward. Those are positions of need for the Sixers. (For now, eliminating Okafor and Towns, Russell is the one I like most from that group, especially for the Sixers.)
If the Sixers land one of the first two picks, it’s possible — maybe even probable — they’d simply opt for the best overall talent regardless of position. They might already have Okafor and Towns, in some order, at the top of their draft board. Given the opportunity, even though their skill sets would ostensibly overlap with the current combination of Joel Embiid and Nerlens Noel, there’s a case to be made for the Sixers' grabbing Okafor or Towns. The Sixers could try to work all three of them into their plans for the future, or at least spend next season as an open audition for the trio. (The Sixers are already using the rest of this season to play Noel at the four in anticipation of Embiid moving to the five next year.)
If the Sixers do go with a big with their first pick, it’s important to remember two things. First, point guard is the deepest position in the NBA. Second, the Sixers are likely to have at least one more first-round pick — probably the Heat's selection (top-10 protected). They could always get a guard later in the draft. Or trade for one. Or find one in free agency. It’s easier to get a point guard than to unearth a big man.
There is an obvious problem (or concern, if you prefer) with taking another big: It would almost certainly kick the rebuild further into the future. If the Sixers spend next year taking a look at three frontcourt players, tinkering with them, seeing whether they fit together or whether they must be dismantled and handled as individual assets, then putting together a team that might actually compete, even in the Eastern Conference, would likely be delayed.
For now, it’s merely an interesting academic exercise — a what-if to mull while we wait for more information. If the Sixers do get one of the top two picks, it would be hard to advocate against them taking one of the two top bigs. Okafor and Towns are really good. Tough to pass on players like that. But that kind of move would require even more patience. They pay Sam Hinkie to have it. Area fans aren’t quite so fortunate.