Can the Sixers get lucky for once?? I don’t even watch the Association, but it can’t happen twice in a week, right?!
How to Watch: 7 pm on the Mothership (that means ESPN if you’re under 30…)
Not a long one here, but I feel like after the NHL Draft debacle, I need to get something up about tonight’s NBA Draft lottery and how the odds are better than a coin flip that the Sixers will add a piece in a pretty deep draft, especially at the top. And I realize the irony of the hockey guy whose team just pulled the worst possible outcome out of their pads writing this, but I know college basketball better than anyone else on here, so this is kinda the only thing I can write about when it comes to the NBA.
The Sixers have not been afraid to sell draft capital to try to get past the second round of the playoffs. That strategy was… a decision. Not a very good one, but a choice that was made nonetheless. That places them in the precarious position where if the lottery balls for the first 4 overall picks fall in a way that bumps them past 6th, the Sixers lose their pick to Oklahoma City. They have a 10.5% chance at the first overall, a 42.1% chance at a Top-4 selection, and a 64.6% chance of a Top-6 pick, thus holding onto their selection.
That’s really it, we know who is the future First Overall pick, and we know that the sixers are only one of five teams with a double-digit percentage chance of the lottery balls coming out our way and the Sixers drafting 1OA for the first time since the day Danny Ainge took Bryan Colangelo behind the woodshed in a day and draft that I don’t think any of us want to revisit. This team has a decent young core emerging with Maxey and (hopefully) McCain, and another top-tier piece could prove to be important in preventing the full-blown crash out that I think most of us fear.
Note from the guy in charge (that’s still me): We are recording our episode for Thursday tonight, and Tyles and I will be watching the lottery reveal as we record the show, so if nothing else, enjoy the instant reactions from us on Thursday morning when the flagship drops.