Just Trade the Pick
You've seen this episode before, and you can recite the script by heart.
Andrew Unterberger is a famous writer who invented the nickname 'Sauce Castillo' and 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.
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The NBA finals have finally ended, which means the draft must already be but a few hours away. There was a time when I found the constant churn of the NBA season to be a major selling point of the league -- as recently as 2020, when it was still significantly more charming than some of the other churns going on in the world and in my head. Now, it feels more like getting done with the work day and remembering you still have to run errands and answer personal emails and figure out what you're going to do with your car in the morning before you finally get to unwind with leftovers and Seinfeld reruns. And then there's free agency, and then there's Summer League, and before long you're already running late to catch the train again the next morning.
So, the draft. The Sixers have the 23rd pick, which I guess is better than having no pick, but not good enough to wake me out of my (now-annual) post-second-round-exit stupor and actually get me excited about Sixers Things again. I've seen some names circulated around and they all sound very late-first-round-prospect-y. I have not yet bothered to actually match players to skill sets, but I'm guessing among them is an athletic wing who can't shoot, an undersized guard who has some playmaking juice but defensive and positional concerns, and maybe a rim-running big with limited finesse and just a hint of developing stretchiness. I'm sure there's one that has garnered something resembling consensus favorite status among Sixers Twitter; I'm sure I'll hear all about them night of, and for the sake of my brothers, sisters and non-binary siblings on the front lines I hope he falls to us.
What I really hope, though, is that it's a moot point by the time we get there -- because we've agreed to ship the pick elsewhere.
What for? One or multiple players who would help us win now would obviously be nice. The actual player pool of likely available targets is too still far depressing for me to dive into the deep end, but I'm sure there's some 32-year-old swingman with moderately impressive playoff experience who could be a seventh or eighth man on a winning team -- a Marcus Morris type, very possibly actual Marcus Morris. Package the pick with some combo platter involving our younger guys and/or Danny Green's potentially expiring contract and we can possibly bump that return up to a fifth starter -- or maybe some second-draft guy like Coby White who hasn't been that good but potentially still could be. Hell, package it with Tobias' deal and whatever other stuff we have besides Joel and Tyrese that teams might actually want and see if we can land an Actual Guy; crazier shit has happened on draft night. (Technically, the Sixers can’t officially trade the pick until after they make it due to the Stepien Rule + Brooklyn owning their 2023 pick, but they can agree to a deal in principle and essentially pick a dude for the other team — and indeed, that hasn’t stopped them from shopping the pick, or Sixers writers from suggesting trade packages.)
Anyway, the return isn't really the point. The main objective here isn't getting something of value for the No. 23 pick, it's freeing ourselves from the burden of living out the inevitable relationship arc of living with a No. 23 pick on a not-quite-contending team.
You've seen this episode before, and you can recite the script by heart. The guy struggles and tantalizes in equal measure during Summer League and a couple spot stretches during the preseason, and starts the regular season on the fringes of the rotation. He does the Lorenzo Brown shuffle back and forth from Delaware for a couple months, until some combination of injuries and underperformance on the big league roster briefly opens up rotation minutes for him. He looks like a revelation in his first few games getting real minutes, and you wonder how the Sixers could've possibly taken this long to give him a chance at real minutes. Then the flaws you were willing to overlook at first begin to get more and more glaring, and he quickly ends up in Doc Rivers' doghouse. Injuries heal, the Sixers maybe pick up an additional vet, and he's nailed back to the bench even as we scream at Doc to give him more of an extended look. Then he gets more minutes again, still stuns and still disappoints, and ultimately divides fans and media as to what, if anything, their future on the team could or should be. Repeat to fade. ("Fade" in this case usually being when they're deployed as an emergency option in the playoffs, and look like a kid trying to bike without training wheels for the first time.)
If you read that whole last graf you are likely muttering very loudly at your computer right now: Matisse Thybulle. You're talking about Matisse Thybulle. Just say Matisse Thybulle's name already. Fine, sure, yes: Matisse Thybulle. But also, 85% of all draft picks in the 20s. That's mostly what you get with them: hope and frustration. It's fun when you're winning 20-something games a year and you spend most of your waking hours dreaming loftily about the future anyway, but when you're closer to the 50-something range and repeatedly ramming your head against your team's playoff ceiling, it just feels like more bullshit to deal with. It'd (maybe) be another story if Matisse wasn't still on the team and still being brilliant and unplayable in roughly equal measure, but until we figure out what to do with him, having to carry another player of his model sounds absolutely torturous right now.
Of course, if you read that last graf you are even more likely scuh-reeeeming at your computer right now: TYRESE MAXEY. WHAT ABOUT TYRESE MAXEY? HOW COULD YOU TALK ABOUT THIS AND NOT BRING UP TYRESE MAXEY???? Fine, true, fair: Tyrese Maxey. But Tyrese Maxey isn't really indicative of the remaining 15% of all draft picks in the 20s -- really, that's like 13% dudes who never even see the light of day in the Association, and 2% Tyrese Maxey and Desmond Bane and Jordan Poole and other dudes who change the entire trajectory of your franchise as a result of you hitting three 7's with one pull of the slot machine. Maybe you can find one or two teams in all of NBA history who's done it twice in the space of a half-decade, but it's probably not the Sixers, and it's definitely not gonna be these Sixers. To pick in the 20s basically ever again after Tyrese Maxey has officially become both King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard seems arrogant.
I dunno. This is obviously not a coherent draft plan for the Sixers. If Daryl Morey ends up trading the pick for a big bag of basmati rice I probably won't be thrilled about it. And I guess as long as we have to watch the Sixers during Summer League (yes, of course we still have to watch the Sixers during Summer League, you didn't really just ask that did you?) it might not be the worst thing to get to watch some dude that our most devout Sixers Slopmongers have already spent months getting hype over. But the chances of whatever draft darling we get remaining in our good graces by this time next year feels so low that I think I’d rather go through the motions with Isaiah Joe one more time then have to try to build love anew. It's still way too early in the work week for all that.