How does Daryl Morey’s arrival change Sixers’ NBA draft approach?

There’s not a more hopeful occasion on the NBA calendar than draft night, where all it takes is one guy to potentially change the future of your franchise. The Sixers, fresh off one of their most disappointing seasons in recent memory, will have their first chance to begin fixing this collection of misfit parts when draft night rolls around next week.

Daryl Morey, the guy charged with leading that operation less than a month after taking a job with the Sixers, is under no illusion that this is a one-man show.

“[GM Elton Brand] has been working hard on those five picks. We were in Houston, even though we didn’t have a pick this year, we actually talk about it — it’s actually more prep for the draft when you don’t have a pick,” Morey said at his opening presser. “Because you’re maybe buying a pick in the second round, or going after undrafted guys, including some famous ones that ping-ponged between us and Philly and Minnesota. So I do think, we haven’t even had a meeting yet, but we’ll be ready. They’re ready, and then obviously we were prepping for 6 months before, and during, the bubble as well in Houston, and that’s still in my brain hopefully.”

The draft, as Morey alludes to in that quote, is an all-year operation that is arguably the most collaborative part of pro sports. Teams rely on the wisdom of their scouts, trips on the road from their executives, input from coaches, understanding of their current players, and the words and wisdom of people around the prospects to judge them. With ownership of five picks in this year’s draft, the Sixers have the ammunition to do almost anything they want — trade up, trade back, trade out, or perhaps combine them as part of larger, roster-altering deals we’ve discussed all offseason.

But what exactly do we know about the draft history of the remaining Sixers staffers vs. Morey from his time in Houston? That’s where we start our next two weeks of draft coverage.  

What we saw from Brand and Co.

It’s a bit difficult to pin down a singular strategy for the old front office because there were a lot of cooks in the kitchen, and not much time to reflect on their moves. After Sam Hinkie hit the road in 2016, Bryan Colangelo only oversaw two drafts before skipping town, and Brett Brown was the decisionmaker with final say in at least one of those years (2018).

Still, the last two drafts have featured a pretty consistent approach to the back end of the first round, where the Sixers will pick again this season. Philadelphia targeted productive upperclassmen with the idea being they could contribute right away, and that worked out for the Sixers in both 2018 and 2019, despite the draftees being wildly different players.

Landry Shamet and Matisse Thybulle did share something in common outside of being upperclassmen — they were brought in to fill very specific roles and not do much else beyond that. While Shamet was an off-the-catch shooting specialist and Thybulle was a disruptive defender, both slid…