“With the Sixers’ luck…”

We won four of the last six games, including yesterday’s 89-78 win at Oklahoma City vs Hornets, for a 15-32 (.319) record, “only” third worst overall, and we keep hearing this BS on the Sixers board.

Negadelphians always complain, and the current reasoning more or less is this: “if we win too many games, we’ll have less chances to get Oden , Durant, Noah” etc at the lottery. It’s mathematics, I know.

But it’s the comment I put on the title that irks me the most. People say that Sixers had no luck in the lottery, so next one will be the same, we’ll get the #15 pick etc etc.

Well, I made a little research, take a look at this:

YEAR – PICK – PLAYER – POSITION – SCHOOL

1992 – 9 – Clarence “Ricky believed in you” Weatherspoon, PF, Southern Mississippi (in the picture)

1993 – 2 – Shawn Bradley, C, BYU

1994 – 6- Sharone Wright, PF, Clemson

1994 – 20 – BJ Tyler, PG, Texas

1995 – 3 – Jerry Stackhouse, SG, North Carolina

1996 – 1 – Allen Iverson, PG, Georgetown

1997 – 2 – Keith Van Horn, PF, Utah

1998 – 8 – Larry Hughes,  SG, St Louis

1999 – no first round pick (traded it to the Lakers for Dancing Barry and Dyan Cannon, by that time already 65  y/o)

2000 – 20 – Craig “Speedy” Claxton, PG, Hofstra

2001 – 26 – Samuel Dalembert, C, Seton Hall

2002 – 16 – Jiri Weverybodyknewhewasastiffbutwedraftedhimanywaylsch – SF (Slovenia) – actually he’s a Czech, anyway… we won’t digress

2003 – No first round pick (traded to the Knicks for a pirate copy of  “Kazaam III” and a Spike Lee autograph poster – that eventually resulted fake)

2004 – 9 – Andre Igoudala, SG, Arizona

2005 – No first round pick (traded to Milwaukee for a Randy Breuer card and the original jersey weared by Danny Schayes for his career high – 11 points)

2006 – 13 – Thabo Sefolosha, SG, Italy (actually he’s Swiss, with south-african origins, but we won’t try to teach americans our geography, since it’s a waste of time)

Ok, so what’s the point, Guido, ehm, Ricky?

That in the last 15 years we had 8 (EIGHT !) picks among the first ten, and three in the top 3… This isn’t exactly what I would call “bad luck” in the lottery… on the contrary, we had pretty good chances to build a dominating team through the drafts, especially from 1993 to 1997, but we weren’t able to surround Iverson with other good, young players. To sum it up, we had the picks, but we didn’t have the drafting…

It took Larry Brown to lead Sixers to the finals in 2001, but with only one player originally selected by the Sixers: Iverson himself.

So don’t overrate the draft, of course it would be great to have a top 3 pick, but this doesn’t guarantee future successes. Miami got a ring with a #5 leading them.

You need good drafting but better management. Not (only) high picks.