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The Philadelphia 76ers entered the 2013 NBA Draft at a crossroads. They had made a huge trade for Andrew Bynum in the previous offseason giving up a lot of important pieces for him only to not play a single game.
The team would go on to a 34-48 record after coming to within a game of the Eastern Conference Finals the season before. The fact that Bynum did not play at all played a factor in the poor record and it earned the Sixers the 11th pick in the lottery.
However, they wanted more. On draft night, the team sent All-Star guard Jrue Holiday to the New Orleans Pelicans in exchange for the 6th pick in the draft. The pick turned into Nerlens Noel who was supposed to be the number 1 pick before a knee injury scared teams away and he slid to 6th.
He missed the entirety of his first season and he made his debut in the 2014-15 season. He averaged 9.9 points, 8.7 rebounds, 1.8 steals, and 1.9 blocks as he made an impact all over the floor. However, the team then drafted Joel Embiid in 2014 and Jahlil Okafor in 2015, and Noel was then traded to the Dallas Mavericks at the deadline in 2017 as he was the odd man out initially.
Holiday has since gone on to have a very nice career with the Pelicans. He has morphed into one of the top perimeter defenders in the NBA and he averaged 17.6 points, 6.8 assists, and 1.5 steals during his time down in New Orleans.
Noel played one more full season for Dallas before signing with the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2018 and he has since turned into a big defensive presence off their bench. He is a good shot blocker for them and that is what the Sixers were going to ask of him, but then Embiid blossomed in that 2016-17 season and there was not much reason to keep Noel around. [lawrence-related id=37878,37874,37858]