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The Philadelphia 76ers are in serious jeopardy of missing the playoffs and don’t have full control over their first-round draft pick in the 2025 NBA Draft. They’re on a fast track to no man's land, a destination they can’t afford to end up at.
The Sixers only keep their first-rounder if it ends up being one of the first six selections. If it falls out of that range, it conveys to the Oklahoma City Thunder. Unless they can magically solve all their injury problems, it's going to be nearly impossible to make up ground in the standings. If they don’t lose enough games, they won’t have anything to show for their miserable campaign. Being out of the playoffs without a first-rounder is a special type of misery that the Sixers, a championship hopeful to start the season, are heading right toward.
One of Daryl Morey's very first moves as the 76ers' president of basketball operations was trading away this draft pick. In November of 2020, he used it as a sweetener to trade away Al Horford, a splashy free-agency signing that didn’t fit the team as well as the previous front office had hoped. The trade helped alleviate the clunkiness of the roster and also brought in Danny Green, whose contract and fit on the team made him a great addition.
It was a trade that rightfully received praise at the time and a reasonable price to pay to move the aging, expensive Horford to OKC. But Philly is paying for its mistake now in such a brutal way that no one could have seen coming all those years ago.
The 76ers are wedged between a rock and a hard place so tightly they can hardly move their shoulders. They either have to win games at an exorbitantly high rate to salvage the rest of the season or execute a very aggressive tank to keep its draft pick. The former option doesn't seem feasible with how injured and bad the team has been. The latter may ruffle the players' feathers and it might not even result in keeping the pick anyway.
Morey has to wrangle control of his team's 2025 pick away from the Thunder. Fortunately, a blueprint for such a plan was laid down not too long ago.
Revisiting a recent trade that tweaked protections on a draft pick
In February of 2022, the Thunder made a trade with the Miami Heat that looked like a nothing burger on the surface. Miami sent KZ Okpala, a second-round pick from 2019 who never materialized into an NBA contributor, to Oklahoma City in exchange for a 2026 second-round pick. But there was another wrinkle in this deal of substantially more importance: the Thunder agreed to alter the conditions of a protected pick to which they owned the rights.
The Heat's first-rounder in the 2023 draft was protected through the lottery. That protection continued into 2024 and 2025 and, if it hadn’t been conveyed by then, the pick would have become unprotected in 2026. Since the pick had yet to be conveyed, Miami was hamstrung when it came to trading future picks for roster upgrades. To fix this, they delayed the conveyance to OKC until 2025, which gave Miami the ability to trade its 2022 or 2023 first-rounders on top of giving the selection back in 2024.
Due to the Stepien Rule, the Heat couldn’t trade its 2024 first-rounder and had to wait until draft night to trade the one in 2022. Still, they gained two significant assets to use in potential trades for someone like, say, Damian Lillard. The Heat ended up using both picks to add young talent instead, selecting Nikola Jovic in 2022 and Jaime Jaquez Jr. in 2023. Even though no blockbuster trades materialized, the Heat got to add two solid youngsters to its roster sooner than they otherwise would have.
The 76ers would want to shed OKC's control over their 2025 pick specifically to use it for the draft. They must own their pick no matter where it falls because the cream of the crop in this year’s class may be too far out of reach.
Even if the Sixers end up with one of the six-worst records in the NBA, there's a legitimate chance they lose their pick because of the draft lottery. To guarantee that the pick won’t convey to OKC, Philly has to end the season with one of the two worst records in the league. Those spots in the lottery ensure that a pick stays at least in the top six. However, that’s much easier said than done.
Joel Embiid is still out but will be back at some point. With talents like him, Tyrese Maxey, Paul George, and Jared McCain, the 76ers should be much better than the other bad teams in the league. Embiid's injury makes it difficult to predict how well he can play (and for how long) but he's talented enough to lift the Sixers out of the basement if his body ever lets him.
Teams like the Utah Jazz, Washington Wizards, Toronto Raptors, and Portland Trail Blazers don’t have such an amazing talent waiting in the wings. The New Orleans Pelicans have someone pretty close, Zion Williamson, but they may be so throttled by injuries that it doesn’t matter. The Charlotte Hornets' injury-prone franchise star, LaMelo Ball, was healthy to start the season and played really well but they have a 6-14 record to show for it. Currently, Ball is sidelined for a few weeks with an injury.
Unless the 76ers rule Embiid out for the season soon, they will probably win too many games to be a frontrunner in the tank race. Even if they don’t, the trio of Maxey, George, and McCain could be good enough to make the Sixers better than other bad teams, especially if they make the right rotational tweaks.
The Sixers' pick seems most likely to fall right inside or just outside the top 10. Although they won’t win the Cooper Flagg sweepstakes or be close enough to land one of the other big-name prospects like Ace Bailey, they should have a lot of intriguing talent to choose from. They need that pick. Their future depends on it.
What would the trade between the 76ers and Thunder look like?
The Sixers' pick is under Thunder's control for a few more years. If it doesn’t convey in 2025, it's protected only through the top four picks in the two following drafts. Whatever way Morey and Sam Presti want to alter the later years of protections is up to them. What matters most is that Philly sheds the protections on its pick in the upcoming draft.
When the Thunder unlocked the Heat's picks, they still had enough draft capital to swim in (and they still do). In 2022, on top of possessing their own pick in one of the years they were openly trying to lose games, they had the unprotected pick from a Los Angeles Clippers team that was hovering around .500 by the time of the trade deadline. That pick ended up being the 12th selection and they used more future picks to trade into yet another lottery pick in that draft. In 2023, they had their own first-rounder.
The pick that the Thunder gave to the Heat was a 2026 second-rounder that isn’t super valuable. It’s the least favorable of three teams that should be in the playoffs (themselves, the 76ers, and the Dallas Mavericks). Nonetheless, they still surrendered draft capital for a player they ended up waiving days after the trade. They placed a bet on the Heat declining after 2022 and getting a better draft pick. Now, they’re about to collect their winnings.
A rebuild is on the horizon in South Beach. The Heat are a middling team that will probably want to convey its pick this season so that it has the possibility of starting from scratch with its own pick next season. The Thunder are looking at a 2025 pick that’s currently the 16th overall selection. If Miami suddenly decides to tank this season, OKC gets the 2026 pick unprotected.
Making a similar bet on the downfall of the 76ers doesn’t have the same upside for the Thunder. For starters, they would be allowing Philly to keep a pick that might end up in the top 10. Even for a team as spoiled with talent as the Thunder, they won’t give it up easily. Not only is that pick great but it could be used to add someone that worsens the value of the pick the Sixers eventually convey to them.
Even if the pick falls somewhere from the eighth to the 12th selection, Philly could add one of the better prospects in a great draft class to a core with an MVP, two dynamic, young guards (one of whom is already an All-Star), and whatever George has left in the tank. If Embiid's knee problems eventually become less worrisome — which is still a big “if” — the Sixers could return to being one of the top teams in the East for years to come, armed with young talent to keep winning well into the future.
For the Thunder to let the 76ers keep their 2025 pick, they’ll need to get something good back in return.
The Sixers have two first-round picks in 2028 — theirs and the Clippers' — and could offer the Thunder the more favorable of those picks. They own all of their second-round picks from 2027 and onwards and have some additional second-rounders in several seasons. One of them, the Milwaukee Bucks' 2027 second-rounder, could be pretty enticing.
Giving up control of the Clippers' 2028 pick is a big decision but well worth it to keep a pick in a draft that every expert claims is a great one. The value of LA's pick is too tough to gauge right now. Plus, the Sixers already have a spot in that year's first round. Ensuring its spot in 2025 is much more important.
Let’s say the Sixers let the Thunder choose a 2028 first-rounder and a 2027 second-rounder in exchange for cash and altered protections. Maybe the Thunder would also send a fake pick (a top-55 protected second-rounder, which makes it unlikely to convey). Both teams would benefit from such a deal.
If Philly can convince OKC to remove protections for 2026, Morey can use the 2025 pick as either a trade chip or a selection for a prospect. Even if not, Philly can sleep easier knowing that there’s a silver lining to this rough season. And the Thunder get to do their favorite thing in the whole world: accumulate draft capital. With the swap rights to the Clippers' pick and the Heat's potentially conveying, they’re set up just fine for this draft without Philly's pick anyway.
Using assets to get out of bad situations was one of the first things Morey had to do as the 76ers' personnel czar. In order to preserve the future of the team, he'll have to do it again.
