And Billy King’s plan is….?????

Let me make this clear immediately: I AM NOT – I repeat, I AM NOT – a college basketball expert. I don’t follow NCAA. Ok?

I don’t know shlt about college players except when I (occasionally) watch some game. It happened like 3-4 times this year, so that you know it.

That’s why I won’t break down Sixers’ draft picks, first because in my blogroll you have dozens of sites that do it remarkably, second because I wouldn’t be credible. And as a Sixers blogger I want to be credible.

Let’s stick to FACTS and things that are SURE. 

Fact #1 is this: “The draft concluded with the Sixers eventually acquiring Georgia Tech forward Thaddeus Young (in the picture), Colorado State 7-footer Jason Smith, Vanderbilt forward Derrick Byars and Providence forward/center Herbert Hill“.

All I read about these guys is: Young could be a terrific player but CAN NOT play PF, Jason Smith is a good big man with serious upside (…) but an average rebounder, Byars is a SG/SF, Hill doesn’t count, I guess…

Fact #2 is: Sixers desperately needed (well, actually need) a REBOUNDING PF. They didn’t get any player to solve this problem, that to me was THE priority.

Fact #3 is: we didnt’ manage to trade up, even if we had a lot of assets to do so, such as 4 picks a really good playmaker like Andre Miller + some role players that could be used, Carney, Hunter, Green etc. Billy King’s explaination for failing to trade up is this. Some significant excerpts:

“We did everything we [could] to move up to get a big [man] – it didn’t work out”

“We offered some great situations; other teams chose not to [accept] them”

“We’re not done. This is not the end product that we’re going to start the season with.”

This is always our resident idiot GM speaking. To me, working in the P.R. business for the last fifteen years, these sentences can be translated into:

1) I didn’t do my job

2) Other teams’ GMs did it

3) I am not satisfied with what I ended up with

This REGUARDLESS of the value of the new players, I repeat. They might turn out to be great, I do hope so, but I’m talking about another story. The story of a GM who doesn’t have a plan (unless you considering that saving his own job is a plan), doesn’t have a long term view, that at the end of the day is MEDIOCRE. Billy King, not that we didn’t know before, but you suck.

Do these picks put us in the playoffs mix again? I am not sure… Celtics and Knicks improved a lot last night (short term fixes, anyway, like it’s well explained by Yahoo’s Wojnarowski, so I am not impressed with their moves, just to be clear…).

Do these picks help us in the long term? Difficult to say, but if I have to answer now I would say NO.

We still miss a very important piece to be competetive – in the weak Eastern conference, btw – a very good PF in a league that was already CROWDED of terrific PFs and since last night even more, with Durant, Horford, Brandan Wright, Noah (a Sixers target, as King confirmed), Hawes and Yi coming in…

The Sixers team coming out of last night’s draft would still be KILLED under the boards on a daily basis. I think we will resign Joe Smith, actually we should do it, we need his toughness and some veteran leadership. I am ok with Joe staying here for a couple of years, but at a reasonable price (which is always a risky expression when your GM is Billy King).

The last thing I would like to add is that Portland (2009 NBA champs?) ended up with Oden, Frye, Francis (…) and Rudy Fernandez after finishing the season with 3 (THREE !!) losses more than us.

Now how do now sound our last regular season wins @ Detroit, @ Toronto, vs Indiana? Glorious? or DETRIMENTAL AND STUPID?

Ok enough being negative, let’s chill out and wait some time for a deeper analysis. This sounds more like a instinctive vent, I realize it now. Sorry.

Maybe it’s the two hours I slept to follow the draft live before going to work… Sixers madness anyone?