The Road ahead – The draft and the upcoming offseason
To complete the novel of the 2013/14 NBA season the Houston Rockets have won their first NBA title since Hakeem Olajuwon in the years w/o Jordan and once again a dominant Big Man helped them do it. Dwight Howard won the NBA Finals MVP title in a series against Miami that went down to the wire of Game 7.
First important thing for the not-so-successful teams was the draft lottery and that looked good for the 76ers. They came up with picks No 2 and 8 in a very strong draft class. Although Charlotte won the first pick Philadelphia was ecstatic for the soon-to-arrive youths.
After some weeks of intense training camps the night of the nights for the young players and the awaiting franchises had come. Philadelphia was reportedly narrowing in on Jabari Parker as 2
nd pick and Wayne Selden as the 8
th pick because designated superstar Andrew Wiggins was surely to go to Charlotte. After Adam Silver had opened the evening for the first time in his role as commissioner, Charlotte and that’s to be said, Michael Jordan surprised everyone by picking Marcus Smart – the projected third pick at Number 1. The Point Guard out of Oklahoma State seemed to be surprised himself and so were the 76ers executives. There was not much knowledge about Andrew Wiggins that exceeded his college career as no one had seen this change of events coming. And yet the 76ers had the chance to draft this tremendous talent and took it at once. The following picks were chosen as the mock draft had predicted and after pick Number 5 – Julius Randle to the Jazz – the Knicks’ executives who were to choose next, came to talk with Philadelphia GM Sam Hinkie and asked to swap their 6
th pick for Philadelphia’s 8
th pick plus the 26
th first round pick that had come from the Pelicans as part of the Jrue Holiday-Nerlens Noel trade. Sam Hinkie took the opportunity to draft Glenn Robinson III who was predicted to go at 7 but had outshone many others at 76ers training camp.
With those two picks of Andrew Wiggins and Glenn Robinson III the whole city looked at the next season very differently as the free agency approached. Evan Turner was given a new contract draft for negotiation as was Spencer Hawes after both made a great leap the season before. But that was no surprise. The real bombshell was dropped by someone else. After losing the Finals, LeBron James quietly opted out of his contract to become a free agent.
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