The Philadelphia 76ers won the NBA Draft Lottery on Tuesday night, and they reportedly already know what they intend to do with the pick.
According to Kevin Ding of Bleacher Report, the Sixers are “leaning heavily” toward selecting LSU’s Ben Simmons first overall ahead of Duke’s Brandon Ingram.
The Sixers know Simmons well. Their director of performance research is from Australia, where Simmons was born and raised, and coach Brett Brown coached Simmons’s father in Australia in the early 1990s. They are, in general, more enamored with Simmons’s upside than they are with Ingram’s, though they will still do their due diligence and work out Ingram before the draft.
This news apparently won’t upset the Los Angeles Lakers much, as they reportedly covet Ingram with the No. 2 pick. The Duke star’s intangibles, says Ding, made Lakers brass fall in love with him during a Combine interview. Ding also notes that the Lakers will look into trading the pick, but they may prefer Ingram to Simmons anyway, and he makes more sense as a fit with their current roster than Simmons does.
Simmons would apparently prefer to go to L.A., though for off-court reasons. It sounds like he might not get the chance – and moreover, that the Lakers are perfectly fine with how things may play out.
