What Is the 76ers’ Likelihood of Keeping Their 2025 First Round Pick?
The 2024-25 season couldn’t be going much worse than it has for the Philadelphia 76ers, as the franchise currently sits with a 20-34 record, tied for the sixth-worst record in the NBA with the Brooklyn Nets. With lackluster play from Paul George, injuries limiting Joel Embiid to just 17 games played this season, and a disappointing supporting cast around the team after it was widely thought Philadelphia ‘won’ this past offseason, the playoffs are looking more and more out of reach by the day. The 76ers have now lost seven of their last eight games and are currently one and a half games behind the 10th-seeded Chicago Bulls for the final spot in the Eastern Conference Play-In Tournament. Embiid recently came out and said he’d likely need another surgery and long recovery time, so it begins the conversation whether the Sixers should give up on this season altogether, especially when it comes to their first-round pick rights in the upcoming 2025 NBA Draft this summer.
Philadelphia doesn’t currently own its 2025 first-round pick, the Oklahoma City Thunder do. Back in 2020 during Daryl Morey’s first year as the general manager for the Sixers, he traded Al Horford along with this 2025 first-rounder for Danny Green. Although, the pick is top six protected, meaning if the pick falls between picks one and six in the lottery, Philadelphia gets to keep it. Back in 2020, it seemed highly unlikely this pick would have any shot at sticking with Philadelphia,as the squad was seen as a contender for years to come. Yet here we are, and there’s a realistic path for the 76ers to keep that pick.
The 76ers currently have the sixth-best odds to land the first overall pick in the draft at 8.3%. The team has an 8.6% chance to land the second overall pick, an 8.8% chance to earn the third overall pick, a 9.1% chance to earn the fourth overall pick, and an 8.6% chance to earn the sixth overall pick. Those odds skyrocket in the first half of the lottery as Philadelphia jumps to a 30.7% chance to earn the seventh overall pick. However, that’s meaningless in this conversation. Philadelphia essentially just needs to get past picks seven and eight, which sounds obvious, but the franchise has just a 4% chance to earn the number nine pick and a 0.2% chance to earn the tenth pick. If the Sixers can squeak past picks seven and eight, which they are most likely to earn by a vast margin based on the odds, they will get to keep their pick in a loaded draft class.
Now, that’s just how the odds stand as of today. Morey can now make a decision to sit Embiid out for the season, allow him to get that surgery and keep on losing to strengthen the odds of keeping the pick. The 2025 draft class is the best class we’ve seen in quite some time, headlined by Duke freshman phenom Cooper Flagg. Anywhere between the four to seven range, the Sixers could be looking at guys like Flagg’s teammate Kon Knueppel, Illinois’ Kasparus Jakucionis, or Baylor’s VJ Edgecombe, three elite scorers at the guard position to complement Tyrese Maxey on the perimeter and take some shooting pressure off of George. With just 28 games left to go in the regular season, Morey and the rest of the staff have a decision to make to keep fighting for the playoffs, or keep losing and increase the odds of owning their first-round pick in a loaded class.
