One Week to Draft Night

By Sean Kennedy (@PhillyFastBreak)

You think you know…but you have no idea. This is the diary of…a Philadelphia 76ers fan.

ESPN, Yahoo, and any site big or small that covers basketball seems to be convinced that the Sixers have their hearts set on Andrew Wiggins with their initial first round pick next Thursday night. Reportedly, the team was willing to trade the 3rd overall pick and Thad Young to Cleveland for the first overall pick to ensure they got the young Canadian from KU. All the speculation led to a comical situation when Wiggins was involved with workouts with the team Monday and Tuesday of this week. The media descended on PCOM, hoping to gain access to watch the drills take place, maybe ask the 19-year-old some questions. Instead, they were kicked off site by PCOM security and given bottled water and doughnuts as compensation.

So is it like the old saying says, where there’s doughnuts, there’s fire? A big part of me remains largely skeptical that the media would be so clued in on the intentions of Sam Hinkie and the Sixers brain trust. This was a front office that a year ago, gave not a hint they were planning to move their all-star point guard in Jrue Holiday on draft night, a deal that ushered in tankapalooza and changed the entire direction of the franchise for at least the next half decade. But now suddenly, everyone with a media credential knows exactly what the Sixers want to do? Not so fast, my friend!

As many people have speculated, there’s a very real possibility that the Sixers leaked the information that it was Wiggins or bust as a smoke screen to mask their true intentions. Perhaps they want Joel Embiid, and want to move up to number one to get him, but want Cleveland to think he’ll still be available for them if they swap down to number three. Maybe they have some huge deal in the works to trade Carter-Williams and get yet another top ten pick, and have drummed up all the Wiggins talk to throw the media off the scent. Or it could be that they really do want Wiggins, and think other front offices around the league would find it too obvious that everyone was reporting the truth. As White Goodman said, “I know you, you know you, and I know you know that I know you.”

Regardless of what Hinkie and company are truly planning, I think it’s safe to say that no one outside their war room will really know the Sixers’ intentions until next Thursday night. We’ll keep reading every nugget of information from Chad Ford and every other NBA insider, because the Finals are over and there’s not too much else to do in the hours when the World Cup isn’t going on. It’s fun to envision scenarios where some blockbuster deal goes down, or the two guys you really covet both fall to the Sixers at 3 and 10. So by all means, keep dreaming your dreams, but know that they were probably just inceptioned in there by Sam Hinkie himself.

Like Jon Snow, you know nothing Sixers fans.