The Sixers have made no attempt to hide the fact that they are choosing to bottom out in order to have the best possible odds of obtaining the highest of draft picks as part of their rebuilding process.
In advance of last season, they made a draft night trade for the injured Nerlens Noel, and then sat him for the entire season, even though he was healthy enough to play toward the end of the year.
This summer, Philadelphia drafted another injured player in Joel Embiid, and then traded for Dario Saric, who is expected to remain in Europe for the upcoming season. And, the team added Pierre Jackson to the roster, who also will be unavailable for sone time due to injury.
Even though the Sixers are undoubtedly acquiring assets, they aren’t being used to help the team in the immediate future because the way the Draft Lottery is currently structured, teams are incentivized to lose in order to have a better chance of landing a top-three pick.
Adam Silver has stated on more than one occasion that he doesn’t like that perception, so changes to the lottery system are coming. But the timing of those changes being implemented is something that the Sixers want to see delayed for as long as possible.
From Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com:The NBA is pushing toward changes to the draft lottery system by next season but is facing a strong objection from the Philadelphia 76ers, the franchise that could suffer the most from it, multiple sources told ESPN.com.
Earlier this month at league meetings in Las Vegas, lottery reform measures were introduced and changes could be voted into place by the NBA Board of Governors at their preseason meeting in October. Though there are several facets and the proposals haven’t been finalized, essentially the goal of commissioner Adam Silver is to balance out the lottery odds so the worst team or teams wouldn’t have the highest chances of landing the top pick, sources said. ...
In a new format, this could be altered so the bottom five or six teams all would have an equal chance.
The Sixers are entering year two of what is a stated rebuilding plan that’s scheduled to last three-to-five years. A quick change to the way the Draft lottery works would hurt those plans, at least the part about hoping to be in position to land another top draft pick by losing a bunch more games next season.
A one-year heads up before making any changes feels like it would be fair to the Sixers, as well as to other teams in less blatant but similar situations. But there are other factors in play, including lost revenue in Philadelphia and a distaste for the strategy by other owners that could force its implementation more quickly -- even though giving an equal shot at landing top picks to multiple teams could have the opposite of the desired effect, and may end up incentivizing more of them to lose in order to finish in that group by the end of the season.