Thybulle was just another draft day failure
‘The Process’ hasn’t worked since selecting Embiid
PHILADELPHIA >> The seventh annual all-star salute to 76ers Draft Night failure concluded Thursday when Matisse Vincent Thybulle was given his well-earned due.
Once considered such a prize that the Sixers just had to maneuver up in the draft to acquire his rights from Boston, Thybulle had a nice, complete fouryear career at the University of Washington and a 6-11 wingspan. He had a chance. But while he would twice be a secondteam All-Defensive player, Thybulle was much like all the rest of the Sixers’ Draft Night gambles since the brilliant selection of Joel Embiid in 2014.
That is to say, he wasn’t great at basketball.
By the time the Sixers finally unloaded him at the trade deadline Thursday for a player of similar skill taken 32 picks later in the same draft, Thybulle had wasted nearly four seasons trying to reach offensive mediocrity. He was averaging 2.7 points and just 12.1 minutes, was a 33 percent three-point shooter and was not a enough of a game-changing defender to trust his offense in the postseason tournament.
The Sixers are trying to sell the idea that Jalen McDaniels will be better. Why not? They squeezed under the luxury tax in the exchange, which could have benefits later. And some low draft picks went a-swirling in the fourteam trade, like anybody cared. All of it, though, is a diversion technique to camouflage the greater failure of a long-ago plan. Known as The Process, the idea was to win through the draft, a clever sales strategy to fool a generation of idiots brainwashed during the golden age of
rotisserie sports.
The Sixers will claim that they made enough of their years of asset-collection to flip one here, there and everywhere to begin a nice collection of 50-win seasons. But what if every once in a while they mixed in a Draft Night that didn’t leave even New York Jets fans cackling? Wouldn’t that have helped too?
Instead, this is what the Sixers have done with their first-round opportunities ever since the 2014 selection of Embiid:
• Jahil Okafor, 2015: After showing no remorse for a season of rotten play, the Sixers used the third pick in the draft to select the immobile center from Duke, apparently forgetting Embiid already played that position. By 25, Okafor was out of the NBA after averaging 10.5 points and is resurfacing with the G-League Blue Coats.
• Ben Simmons, 2016: The No. 1 overall pick had made one three-pointer in his only season at LSU, which ended with a rout in the SEC Tournament and Simmons’ disinclination to play in the NIT. He had some decent statistical years with the Sixers, but refused to accept coaching and, at age 26, can barely play and has no trade value to the Brooklyn Nets. Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot
arrived at No. 24 and is out of the league. Furkan Korkmaz, who can’t get off Doc Rivers’ bench, was taken at No. 26.
• Markelle Fultz, 2017: The clever Bryan Colangelo thought he’d gotten the best of the Celtics’ Danny Ainge by trading up for the overall No. 1 pick to acquire an overmatched guard who’d just helped the University of Washington go 2-16 in the Pac12. Fultz claimed to have a shoulder syndrome that rendered him useless from the foul line and everywhere else. He has been reinvented as an interesting point guard in Orlando, not that he is helping the Magic consistently win.
• Zhaire Smith, 2018: With Brett Brown running the draft, the Sixers were proud of themselves for coming away with the tentative guard from Texas Tech, who lasted two seasons in the NBA, including his final one, when he averaged 1.1 points. So clever were they in acquiring that No. 16 overall pick that they would surrender their original choice at No. 10, Mikal Bridges, who has become one of the sport’s most intriguing young forwards. At No. 26, the Sixers did take talented Landry Shamet, who was woven into the deal to acquire
Tobias Harris.
After the Thybulle Initiative in 2019, there was a brief moment of competence when Tyrese Maxey was selected No. 21 overall in 2020. While Maxey has yet to prove he can shoot well enough to reach superstardom, his speed, energy, scoring explosiveness and locker room presence have made him a fabulous value pick.
But then ...
• Jaden Springer, 2021: The 28th overall selection has mixed in nine total NBA appearances while commuting from his day job as a G-League guard in Delaware. And what did the Sixers expect from a player who only started 15 of his 25 games at the University of Tennessee?
• De’Anthony Melton, 2022: Give Daryl Morey credit for finally giving up on the draft and sending his first-round pick, No. 23 overall, to Memphis for an NBA-ready two-way guard who has earned the right to start for a good team.
So that’s nine years of first-round follies, most disastrous. Only Maxey, Melton and Korkmaz remain. .Farewell, Matisse Thybulle. Next salute to failure in 365 days.