Win Now or Prioritize The Future: Current State of the Sixers heading into the NBA Draft

The NBA Draft is Monday night and the Sixers have the 22nd overall pick courtesy of the Jared McCain trade that sent one of the most exciting young guards in the league to Oklahoma City where he dropped 24 points in a Western Conference Finals game this postseason while the Sixers were already on the couch watching the Knicks win a championship.

Jared McCain is going to be a problem in the Western Conference for the next decade and the Sixers traded him for a late first-rounder that they now have to nail because the margin for error with this franchise’s decision-making has been nonexistent for years and keeps getting thinner. Great, right?

Anyways, I’ve spent the past two weeks physically repulsed by the sight of Philadelphians walking around in Knicks jerseys after New York won the title and paraded through their streets like they achieved world peace.

The Knicks are the worst fanbase in professional sports with the worst city attached to them and watching them celebrate a championship while the Sixers sat at home with three max contracts and zero depth was the kind of gut punch that should force everyone in this organization to take a long, honest look at where this team actually stands instead of where they want to pretend it stands.

The Knicks Won Because They Had Depth

As much as it physically pains me to acknowledge anything positive about the New York Knicks, the reality is that their championship run was built on depth in a way that the Sixers can’t even begin to replicate with the current roster construction.

Landry Shamet wasn’t even sure he’d be on the roster and he contributed meaningful minutes in the playoffs. OG Anunoby dropped 33 points in the Game 4 comeback that effectively ended the Finals when De’Aaron Fox forgot how basketball works and handed the Knicks the greatest comeback in NBA Finals history.

Multiple players stepped up across every round because the Knicks had enough talent beyond their top two or three guys to absorb bad nights from their stars and still win games.

The Sixers have the opposite of that.

If you really stop and think about the current roster, the backup power forward is Dominic Barlow and the backup center is Andre Drummond, who can’t even finish a bunny at the rim.

Kyle Lowry is essentially occupying a roster spot as a player-coach while names like Jabari Walker and Trendon Watford wouldn’t be recognized by most NBA fans if you put them in a police lineup.

That’s the depth behind Embiid, Maxey, George, and Edgecombe, and it’s the kind of bench that gets exposed in the first quarter of a playoff game against any team with legitimate rotation depth.

The three-point shooting matters and always will because the Knicks had the best three-point percentage in the playoffs near 40 percent, but plenty of teams that shot well from deep still got eliminated.

The Lakers had the second-best three-point percentage in the playoffs and went home early while the Celtics were eighth in the regular season from beyond the arc and couldn’t shoot consistently enough to escape the first round.

The Sixers were in the middle of the pack from three and still got obliterated by the Knicks in the second round because shooting alone doesn’t win championships when you’re running a five-man rotation against a team with nine guys who can play.

The Window Is Closed and Everyone Needs to Accept It

I know this isn’t what most Sixers fans want to hear but the championship window with Embiid and George as the centerpiece closed before it ever really opened and continuing to pretend otherwise is hurting the franchise’s long-term future.

It’s very easy to convince yourself that Embiid will be healthy and back to 100 percent all season while George suddenly rediscovers his All-Star form, but the reality is that both players are aging, clearly past their primes, and attached to contracts that might be the worst financial commitments in professional sports history.

George’s deal doesn’t expire until 2028 and Embiid’s contract runs through 2029, which means the Sixers are locked into declining production from two max players for the next two to three years with virtually no financial flexibility to build around them.

Those contracts are impossible to move because no team in the league is trading for aging stars on max deals whose bodies are breaking down and whose production is declining every season. The Sixers are stuck with them, which means the front office has to stop viewing every decision through a “win now” lens and start building toward the future.

The organization failed Embiid far more than he ever failed the organization, and the years of wasted primes and botched roster construction around him are the real reason the Sixers never made a Conference Finals run. That’s fine, but defending Embiid’s legacy and being honest about where the team stands right now are two separate things, and the honest assessment is that the Sixers aren’t one move away from contention no matter how badly the fanbase wants to believe they are.

Pick 22 Should Be a Forward or Center Over 6’5″

The draft pick needs to be a big who can actually play meaningful minutes and develop into a rotation piece for the future rather than a win-now addition who might give you 10 minutes a night on a team that’s going to lose in the second round anyway.

Every mock draft and projection board has different names at 22 but the principle should be the same regardless of which specific player is available, which is that the Sixers need size, depth, and youth at the forward and center positions because those are the exact areas where the roster is thinnest and the drop-off from starter to backup is the steepest.

Thankfully this draft class has enough forwards and centers in the 20s range that finding one at 22 shouldn’t be a difficult task. The Sixers don’t need to reach for a guard or get cute with a high-upside swing who won’t contribute for three years because they need a player who can come in, learn behind the veterans, and be ready to step into a bigger role when the Embiid and George contracts come off the books and the roster has actual financial flexibility to build around the young core.

Maxey and Edgecombe Are the Future and the Draft Should Reflect That

Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe are the two players this franchise should be building around for the next decade, and instead of chasing a championship window that has been nailed shut by bad contracts and declining stars, the Sixers should be spending the next few years accumulating and developing talent around those two so that when George’s deal expires in 2028 and Embiid’s comes off the books in 2029, the organization has a legitimate young core with depth throughout the roster and the financial flexibility to make aggressive moves from a position of strength rather than desperation.

Building depth takes time and the Sixers barely have five reliable starters as it stands right now, so why use pick 22 on someone who might marginally improve a team that isn’t winning a championship this year when you could use it on someone who helps the team make a legitimate run three or four years from now?

The short-term pain of acknowledging that this roster isn’t a contender is worth the long-term gain of building something sustainable around Maxey and Edgecombe instead of continuing to paper over the cracks with band-aids and hoping that Embiid’s body holds up long enough to make one more run.

Gansey’s First Draft Pick Sets the Tone for Everything

Mike Gansey just took over as president of basketball operations and Monday night is his first opportunity to show the fanbase what his vision for this franchise looks like. If the pick reflects a “win now” mentality that ignores the reality of the roster’s limitations, it tells Sixers fans that the new regime is making the same mistakes as the old one.

If the pick reflects a forward-thinking approach that prioritizes youth, size, and long-term development, it tells the fanbase that Gansey understands where this team actually is and is willing to make decisions that might not produce immediate results but position the organization for sustained success down the road.

The Sixers have been chasing a championship for the better part of a decade through trades, free agency, and roster moves designed to maximize a shrinking window around Embiid’s prime, and that approach produced five playoff berths, zero Conference Finals appearances, and a second-round exit to the Knicks who then went on to win the whole thing.

Gansey has the opportunity to break that cycle by drafting with the future in mind instead of the present, and pick 22 on Monday night is where that shift either begins or doesn’t.

The Knicks just won a championship with depth while the Sixers got swept in the second round without it. The lesson is right there for anyone willing to learn it and the draft is the first chance for the new front office to prove they’re paying attention.

Draft a big, build around Maxey and Edgecombe, stop pretending this roster is one piece away from a title, and start building something that can actually win one in three years instead of losing in the second round again next April.

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