Sixers get top pick from Boston to take Fultz

Bryan Colangelo, the Sixers president of basketball operations, would not say who the team will take with the No. 1 pick in Thursday’s NBA Draft.

That’s the nature of drafts. They’re secretive. Teams always play it close to the vest. They don’t want the rest of the league to know what they’re doing until they do it.

So it wasn’t a surprise that Colangelo was tight-lipped during a press conference at the team’s practice facility in Camden Monday to announce the blockbuster deal between the Sixers and the Celtics that sends the rights to the Sixers pick at No. 3 as well as the rights to a future first-round selection to Boston for the No. 1 pick in the draft.

But, if the Sixers don’t take Washington guard Markelle Fultz, it will be a bigger shocker than the deal itself.

A team doesn’t bring in a player for a last-second workout five days before the draft, as the Sixers did with Fultz last Saturday, unless said player is the focal point of its draft intentions.

Fultz is the guy the Sixers want and they were willing to make the trade with a divisional foe, which is taboo in most circles, to make it happen.

This, though, is the right move, hopefully the first of many.

The Sixers need players, lots of them. They won 28 games last season and 10 the year before that, and have not been to the playoffs since 2012. One player is not going to transform this team into a playoff contender, let alone a threat to challenge the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers for league supremacy. It is, though, another step in the process, and came at the right price.

“We are not pledging anything that mortgages our future,” Colangelo said. “We’re using, to some degree, house money.”

The Celtics receive either the rights to the Lakers No. 1 pick next year, which the Sixers received in the Michael Carter Williams trade, or one of the two picks the Sixers have in 2019, one of which came from the Sacramento Kings in the deal that brought Nik Stauskas to Philly (as well as the No. 3 pick Thursday, which now belongs to Boston).

All of those picks, though, are protected. The Celtics only get the Lakers pick if it falls between No. 2 and No. 5. If it’s the No. 1 pick or No. 6 or later, Boston will receive the better of the two picks the Sixers have in the 2019 draft, unless one of those picks is No. 1 overall, then the Celts get the lower choice.

Either way, the Sixers are still going to have three first round picks in the 2018 and 2019 drafts, barring another trade, which is a possibility.

“Whether we are selecting No. 1 or just staying at three, there’s been some talk in us acquiring another pick,” Colangelo said. “I’m not going to give up those efforts because we have moved up to No. 1.”

With boatloads of cap space, too, Colangelo wouldn’t rule out adding players via free agency, as he did with Jerryd Bayless, Gerald Henderson and Sergio Rodriguez last year.

So basically, the Sixers are giving up one additional first-round pick to fill an immediate need, and that is a player who can play both guard positions, just in case the experiment of playing Ben Simmons, last year’s No. 1 pick, at the point fails.

“I always feel that future assets are just that, future assets,” Colangelo said. “But when you can look at a group of talent in this particular draft and know that you have a comfort level with who those players are, grab them while you can because it’s a known quantity.

“What happens in ’18 and ’19, there’s so many things that can happen between now and then I would rather try to get this taken care of now. And we felt, once again, that there was a big enough gap between three and one that we moved forward. That was the primary reason to do this now rather than hang onto that other asset.”

Fultz has flaws. Every player does. There are questions about his willingness to defend and fight through picks. However, he also just turned 19 less than a month ago, so he’s extremely young and has the physical tools to improve in both of those areas. He’s 6-4 with a 6-10 wing span. That kind of length can disrupt a lot of passes.

The Huskies only won nine games in his one season at Washington, and he was a guy who was a JV player in high school as a sophomore. Ben Simmons didn’t lead LSU to the NCAA Tournament in his only season in Baton Rouge, and that didn’t stop the Sixers from making him the No. 1 pick last year. Joel Embiid was hurt at the end of his only season at Kansas and did not play in the Big Dance, either.

The Sixers need a shooter who can also play the point and Fultz fills that bill. Fultz was sixth in the NCAA in scoring (23.2 ppg.) and shot 41.3 percent from the college 3-point line.

There is no guarantee that Fultz will pan out. The draft is full of busts at No. 1, most recently Anthony Bennett in 2013. The Sixers don’t know if Simmons is the player he has been cracked up to be and won’t know until camp begins, since he’s not playing in any of the summer leagues.

But the opportunity to add another young talent like Fultz to a young core group that includes Embiid, Simmons and Dario Saric for the price of one extra first-round pick was the right move at the right time.

Even if Colangelo wouldn’t say the name out loud.

To contact Terry Toohey, email ttoohey@21stcenturymedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @ TerryToohey.