Get Ready to Be Frustrated
The draft is coming up this week. AU on why you should be prepared for whatever happens to make you more confused and antsy than anything.
I'll never forget the sound of the Franklin Music Hall crowd the night of Live Ricky VI when Mark Tatum revealed the Sixers in the third-to-last lottery envelope. The roar had been crescendoing with every successive non-Sixers team whose logo Tatum had flashed to that point, first reaching a real fever pitch when he announced the Pelicans in the seventh spot, meaning the Sixers would be keeping their top-six-protected pick. Then the Wizards, the Jazz -- and after the commercial break, the Hornets. Was this really happening? Had the Sixers not only kept their pick but moved up in the draft? Were we really going to get Dylan Harper or even Cooper Flagg?
Yes, yes, no. When Tatum revealed the Sixers at three, the crowd exhilaration didn't really drop in volume, but the tone of the entire thing changed -- it was kind of an "AHHHHHHHHHHHOHHHHHHHHHHHH" transition. Suddenly, delirium had become disappointment, and then confusion, as what looked to potentially be the answer to all our problems instead just left us with more questions. Well... number three, that's still pretty good right? But wait who do people think we should take there again? And does he really fit what the Sixers need? Do any of these guys? And holy shit did fucking DALLAS really get this thing instead of us?
A month and a half later, I don't know if we're really any less puzzled than we were the night that the objectively best thing to happen to the Sixers in almost a year still left us flustered and kinda miffed. And I doubt anything's gonna feel that much clearer after the draft happens this Wednesday, either. That might be where the frustrating really gets started, actually.
Drafting at No. 1 is the easiest franchise-altering thing you can do in pro sports. Nine times out of 10 there's no mystery involved with it whatsoever; these days it feels like teams have no problem very openly telegraphing their plans almost as soon as they get the pick and there's never really any negative consequences for doing so. No. 2 is only slightly more challenging than No. 1; more often than not there's an agreed-upon top two and you just take the guy who isn't going No. 1. Three is often where things get tricky -- now there's not quite so much consensus, not quite so much obviousness. Three is where you actually have to make a decision: What do you want? Are you sure that's really the most important thing for your franchise? Are you sure that this guy is gonna be the guy to give it to you -- and if so, how long is that going to take? Should you trade up? Should you trade down? Should you trade out altogether?
These are all questions that we've asked about the Sixers' No. 3 pick over the last six weeks, from just about every angle possible. There's about a good half-dozen guys who all seem roughly plausible as the top guy on the Sixers' big board after Cooper Flagg and Dylan Harper, and like a bunch of 19-year-old film noir heroines, they all seem equally seductive and deadly. Nearly all of Dan Olinger's and MOC's draft prospect analysis columns have gone the same way for me -- I've spent their first halves convincing myself that the guy they're talking about obviously the best guy for the Sixers at three, and then the second halves feeling like we already dodged a bullet just because they weren't actually on the team yet. There's good reason to fall for all these guys -- Ace Bailey, V.J. Edgecombe, Kon Kneuppel, Derik Queen, whoever -- and equally good reason to not want them even in the same zip code as the Wells Fargo Center.
And no matter who we take with the No. 3 pick on Wednesday -- or if we trade up -- or if we trade down -- or if Daryl openly puts the pick up for auction to the highest bidder -- we're gonna be at least partly frustrated with the selection. We took V.J. Edgecombe? Great, we used a top three pick on the next Isaac Okoro, some guy who's never even gonna threaten an All-Star team. We dealt back to No. 7 and selected Derik Queen? Cool, we're gifted a franchise-altering pick and the best thing we get out of it is a reach who can't even play with Joel Embiid. We just decided to say fuck it and take Ace Bailey? Awesome, we get to spend the next four months watching Daryl play chicken with every other GM in the lottery and still probably end up keeping the guy who might never be cool with playing here. Even a pick that ultimately becomes a good outcome probably won't feel that good or that simple right away.
In truth, Daryl's kinda had it easy with the first handful of first-round picks he's had to make with the Sixers. Not to say that the decision-making part of it was easy -- no doubt it took months of prep and deliberation and AI situation-room briefing to arrive at the choice that we made. But in terms of us, it was relatively straightforward: Daryl was in the position at No. 15, or No. 20, or at 23, to just wait and take whoever we most wanted that was unexpectedly still available. (Or, in the case of that No. 23, to then trade them for De'Anthony Melton.) Jared McCain? Cool, awesome that he fell to us, we'll take him for sure. Tyrese Maxey? Cool, fucking crazy really that he fell to us. We'll start on the Mike Muscala banner already just in case.
But no one -- no one except Joel Embiid in 2014, anyway -- falls to you at No. 3. There's no pleasant surprises of the player pool available at that point, just a lot of brilliant-but-flawed choices we've already spent too much time researching to feel 100% excited about. Daryl's gonna just have to pick one, or move some assets around to pick slightly earlier or later, or find a way to opt out of the pick altogether. Whichever one he does, we'll be at least a little itchy that he didn't do one of the others: There's so many plausible options available right now and such an important result at stake that unless he ends up packaging No. 3, Kelly Oubre Jr. and a couple future seconds to Dallas for No. 1, it's almost impossible for whichever one Daryl chooses to end up outweighing the collective possibility of whatever else he could have chosen instead.
The sad truth is that no matter what Daryl does, this Wednesday's draft will almost certainly feel more like the 2015 draft, when we took Jahlil Okafor with the No. 3 pick, than 2014. We had our specific reasons for being down on Okafor -- namely that we'd already taken centers with our top picks the last two drafts -- but it wasn't like the pick was really that surprising otherwise; we knew Hinkie was a Best Player Available guy and Okafor was, at that point, the consensus guy once Karl-Anthony Towns and D'Angelo Russell were off the board. The real disappointment wasn't just in Okafor, it was in how we somehow expected more -- some extraordinary draft deus ex machina to descend from the heavens and immediately validate our draft as Good and Smart. We waited all night for it, and a few months after too, but it never happened. What happened was Jahlil Okafor.
Hopefully the pick we get at No. 3 this year -- or whatever return we ultimately get elsewhere -- does better for us than Jah did. But even if it eventually does pan out, the next few months will probably still feel similar: a lot of waiting and wondering and what if. Ah shit, doesn't Kon Kneuppel look a little better than we expected in Summer League? Could we have maybe gotten him and an extra rotation guy if we'd traded down? Our guy looks OK, but isn't he maybe a little redundant on our roster? Is he even gonna start as a rookie? Will he ever? What were we even hoping for with this guy? How the fuck did the Mavs end up with the No. 1 pick?? It doesn't mean that there's no way for Daryl to do right here, but it means that, as exciting as this week may be leading up the draft, the events of that night are gonna end up leaving us more anxious and disoriented than anything. It's probably gonna sound a whole lot like AHHHHHHHHOHHHHHHHH actually.
Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the 'If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders' section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.
I don’t understand how some of you get through your day-to-day with this level of constant anxiety and reflexive misery. We just had the worst season since the Process, and those were intentionally bad, so I’d argue this one was way worse. Somehow the basketball gods not only chose to let us keep a pick we had no business expecting to keep, but it’s an even better pick than we thought it ever could be, and you’re still miserable.
I think some of your comments on picking third vs. second is perception vs reality. Over the last few decades (at least) the third pick has been, on average, better than the 2nd pick. The lack of “you just take the guy who wasn’t taken one” feels like a good thing. But it’s actually the opposite in reality.