The Draft that Changed Everything Forever

It’s been a couple days now since Sam Hinkie and the rest of the Sixers’ management unveiled their master plan after weeks of keeping the public in the dark.  Step one of the Hinkie era was the jettisoning of the team’s all-star point guard, Jrue Holiday, and the 42nd pick to New Orleans for Nerlens Noel (taken with the 6th pick) and a top-5-protected first round pick in next year’s draft.  Noel, ironically the player listed in our draft preview as not being in the Sixers’ plans, will be a focal point of the rebuild as the team fully embraces a tanking strategy.  In order to properly bottom out for the loaded 2014 draft, the team had to get rid of its best player and avoid another late lottery finish.  For too many years now, the Sixers have been stuck in the NBA’s ‘middle-class’, not good enough to compete with teams employing the league’s upper echelon superstars, and not bad enough to find one of those superstars of their own via the draft.  In one fell swoop, Hinkie ensured that would no longer be an issue.

The future of the team will be Noel, Michael Carter-Williams (taken with the 11th overall pick), and next year’s two first-round picks.  Ideally, the Sixers’ pick yields the luckiest lottery ping pong ball of the decade, earning them the Canadian LeBron, Andrew Wiggins, and the Pelicans’ selection finishes in the mid-lottery.  Even if the team doesn’t luck into the first overall pick, the 2014 draft class is loaded and tremendous prospects such as Duke’s Jabari Parker or Oklahoma State’s Marcus Smart will be available to them.

While it’s one thing on paper to have a great master plan of tanking, it still makes for some pretty painful viewing along the way.  Make no mistake, the Sixers are going to be bad next year, Spencer Hawes vertical leap bad.  With Holiday gone, the team will hand the keys of the offense over to Carter-Williams, who has tremendous potential but is not ready yet to be an starting-caliber point guard in the NBA.  Nole is still recovering from ACL surgery, and will not be return until around Christmas with Philadelphia in no hurry to rush him back.  Also, there were rumors the Sixers were trying to trade Evan Turner to get back into the end of the first round.  It would not surprise me to see him moved before the season starts but if not, he’s almost certainly gone at the trade deadline.  To fill out the roster this year, expect management to send out some fliers to young players on short-term contracts.  Fans will have to simply appreciate any signs of growth from their young players, rather than worry about seeing the team put up too many tallies in the win column.

Still, looking past the 2013-14 season, the future looks extremely bright for the Sixers.  In addition to the four blue-chip prospects on the team after next year’s draft, Philadelphia will have the capability to make a run at a couple big-name free agents.  Turner, Hawes, Lavoy Allen, and Kwame Brown will be off the books after next season, freeing up about $19M in cap space, in addition to the $11M available with Holiday a Pelican.  That space will provide Hinkie and company with the flexibility to make a key free agent signing or even trade some of their young talent away for an established star (similar to how the Rockets traded for James Harden).  While it may sting to have lost a young, likable star in Jrue Holiday, for the first time in a long time, the Sixers appear to have a plan and intelligent decision-makers in place to see it through.  Those facts alone are worth all the losses the Sixers will pile up in the upcoming season.