The 2014 NBA Draft was a special one for the Philadelphia 76ers. After a tough 2013-14 season to kick off their Process, they ended up selecting Kansas big man Joel Embiid with the third overall pick.
The big man essentially fell into their laps after an injury scared away the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Milwaukee Bucks at picks 1 and 2. After missing two full seasons due to foot injuries, Embiid has since blossomed into one of the dominant players in the league regardless of position and has positioned the Sixers as legitimate title contenders for the foreseeable future.
It is that individual and team success that suggests that he would be the top overall pick if the Cavaliers could re-do things. In a re-draft done by Bleacher Report, that is exactly the case as Embiid went to Cleveland with the first overall pick which led to the Sixers selecting UCLA leaper Zach LaVine.
B/R on LaVine:
A cluster of capable-but-flawed-in-some-way starters land in the next tier, and Zach LaVine leads it for his powerful offensive punch.
Only Joel Embiid and Andrew Wiggins average more career points than LaVine’s 17.7, and LaVine betters Wiggins as a distributor and a shooter at every level.
LaVine’s production hasn’t generated much team success to date, but that might say more about his supporting cast than him. He’s one of only nine players to average 23 points, four assists and four rebounds both this season and last, and he’s the group’s only player to not yet make an All-Star appearance.
He could stand to improve as a defender and to increase the difference between his assists (4.2) and turnovers (3.4), and he’ll never be the best player on a good team. But he has a special combination of explosiveness and shootiing touch, and that has fueled his rise as a point-producing machine.
On top of having the third overall pick, the Sixers did hold the 10th pick in 2014. They selected Elfrid Payton and flipped him to the Orlando Magic in order to acquire Dario Saric with the 12th pick. Much like Embiid, the Sixers had to wait on Saric as well as he waited to come over to the NBA while continuing to play overseas.
In this case, the re-draft gave the Sixers Gary Harris:
For all the thievery in this draft, Gary Harris was involved in one of draft night’s biggest heights. Somehow, the Denver Nuggets managed to turn Doug McDermott and Anthony Randolph into Harris, Jusuf Nurkic and a second-round swap in an exchange with the Chicago Bulls.
Harris became a regular starter as a sophomore, and he’s been both a double-digit scorer and a dogged defender ever since.
When his three-ball falls with regularity—40.5 percent over his third and fourth seasons—he’s on a short list of the Association’s top three-and-D contributors. His offense is in a two-year decline, but he did enter this season’s hiatus ranked 11th overall and tops among shooting guards in ESPN’s defensive real plus-minus.
Things would have looked much, much different if this happened to go down. For one, maybe the Sixers don’t get the number 1 overall pick in 2016 and be able to draft Ben Simmons. Maybe they have just enough success and win just enough games to where their tanking plan does not exactly work to fruition.
A world without Embiid and Simmons is a world Sixers fans probably don’t even want to consider. [lawrence-related id=30521,30510,30501]