The Philadelphia 76ers finally had something go their way. After years of losing at a historic rate and failing to nab the top pick in the NBA Draft in previous seasons, the Sixers won the NBA Draft Lottery on Tuesday night in Manhattan and obtained the first overall selection in the June 23 draft.
Ironically, it comes just months after the resignation of general manger Sam Hinkie, who began the franchise’s bottoming-out period known as The Process —many called it blatant, outright tanking— and the father-son duo of Jerry and Bryan Colangelo replaced him. The Colangelos will seemingly try to field a more competitive product for next season under head coach Brett Brown, who said that the evening’s development was certainly a positive development in a “process” that may or may not be still ongoing.
“How could it not be?” Brown told The Comeback during his post-lottery press conference. “I think the pain that we all go through, the pain of losing is real. You can’t camouflage it. The city has been incredibly patient, tolerant… I’m just thrilled for the city of Philadelphia.”
New management even gave Brown a contract extension to work with the team’s plethora of young, inexperienced players. Along with Jahlil Okafor and Nerlens Noel— who Brown didn’t mention but were the first two names discussed by majority owner Josh Harris at his press conference— Philadelphia has Dario Saric overseas and are relying on 2014 third overall pick Joel Embiid to finally both make their NBA debuts this fall.
“How can’t you be excited about the future of our organization?” Brown asked.
There were audible yelps of joy in the Hilton’s grand ballroom as Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum announced that the Sixers would finally receive their first top overall pick since they selected Allen Iverson in 1996.
Brown was nervous throughout the telecast, he said, trying to read the teleprompter to see if it would reveal who won the lottery before Tatum made the announcements. Brown, like the rest of us not sealed in the lottery room, anxiously waited to see the order of the draft’s first 14 picks.
The Lakers will pick second, avoiding a drop out of the top three that would have meant sending the pick to the Sixers. Boston will select third, having received the selection from the Brooklyn Nets in the ill-fated Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce trade. Phoenix and Minnesota round out the top five and no teams moved up in the proceedings.
“These last three years were brutally hard,” Harris said, stating the painfully obvious. And in some ways, Brown said, it justified the process the team went through after the last three seasons.
“Our process was questioned, at times fairly enough,” Brown said. “But I felt like what we were building around us on the court and off the court, that we were doing the right thing to give ourselves genuine longevity.”
In Commissioner Adam Silver’s press conference, he insinuated that it was fitting that Philly finally won the lottery.
“The purpose of the draft is to help the worst performing teams in the league re-stock,” Silver said. “So from that standpoint, the fact that the 76ers got the first pick makes sense.”
With the team’s main front-court players seemingly set, it would make sense that the Sixers would grab a playmaker or a ball-handler number one. Philadelphia will likely take either Australian point-forward Ben Simmons or Duke forward Brandon Ingram with their pick. Both Brown and Harris said that they don’t know who the pick will be, but the general consensus is that Simmons will ultimately be their selection.
Brown lived in Australia for 17 years and coached Simmons’ father back in the day for the Australian national team.
“Just having that knowledge of where he was raised and understanding the culture,” Brown said of Simmons. “There are lots of different connections that just make me, I think, better informed.”
Getting the pick doesn’t change the day-to-day operations of the team, Brown said, but now Philadelphia finally controls its own draft destiny. Philly missed out on unanimous rookie of the year Karl-Anthony Towns last year and Andrew Wiggins and Jabari Parker last year. Now, it no longer has to wait and see what happens with another team picking ahead of them.
“In many ways, I feel like we have been rewarded for the patience and perseverance,” Brown said.
With Hinkie now out of the picture and the Colengelos taking his place, the footprints and the residue of the three-year process still remain. Now that the franchise is seemingly ushering in a new era, it finally achieved Hinkie’s primary objective of landing the first pick just after his very public departure.
Finally Philadelphia has the opportunity to select a franchise player before anyone else. Maybe, just maybe, this is the end of the Sixers bottoming out in its constant search for a superstar.
