Sixers fans are surely gushing over the possibility of Cooper Flagg coming to Philadelphia while watching the Final Four. But there are a few other draft prospects on Duke that are worth discussing.
We’re down to just three more games left in the NCAA Tournament as the Final Four tips off in San Antonio on Saturday night. Auburn and Florida will get things started just before 7 p.m. ET. Duke and Houston will follow with the winners squaring off in Monday’s National Championship game. We highlighted Auburn’s Johni Broome and Florida’s Alex Condon as possible targets for Philadelphia early in the second round of this summer’s draft. We also discussed Duke’s Sion James as a second-round target.
There are a few Duke Blue Devils who will hear their names called well before James in this June’s draft though. The most notable name is Cooper Flagg who has been the consensus No. 1 overall pick since before the college season started. Kon Knueppel appears to be a lock to go in the lottery thanks in large part to his shooting stroke. But perhaps there is no more polarizing target for Philadelphia in the first round than the center for the Blue Devils, Khaman Maluach.
Let’s first acknowledge that if Maluach is seriously in play for the Sixers, it means they had a middling result in next month’s lottery. Should Philadelphia go into the lottery with the fifth-best odds at retaining the first overall pick, that slot would also come with a 42.1% chance of moving into the top four. There would be a 64% chance that the Sixers hold on to their top-six protected first-round pick if they occupy the fifth lottery slot. With the top four looking more and more likely to be Flagg, Dylan Harper, Ace Bailey and V.J. Edgecombe, Maluach would probably come into consideration for the Sixers if they land the fifth or sixth overall selection.
Of course, having this discussion at all would still be a good thing as it means the Sixers avoided the doomsday scenario of sending the seventh or eighth overall pick to Oklahoma City. But it is a complicated conversation if the Sixers land at five or six in the first round. Should they spend a highly-coveted asset that they did not expect to have at the beginning of the season on a center?
There are two pretty clear schools of thought on what the Sixers should do with this pick, if retained. On one hand, 2024-25 was a season from hell and things can’t possibly go as bad for Philly in 2025-26. In a bad Eastern Conference, the Sixers could definitely get back to the playoffs next season. In this scenario, the team had better injury luck in 2025-26 than it did in 2024-25 and of course some of that might involve increased productivity from Joel Embiid.
On the other hand, 2024-25 was a very clear signal to Daryl Morey and the rest of the front office that it must continue to get younger and view future contributions from Embiid and Paul George as bonuses. The more you operate under this assumption, the less of a consideration returning to the playoffs in 2025-26 becomes and drafting the best player available with this pick is the easy choice.
In other words, the Philadelphia 76ers are at a pivotal crossroads. Do they go all-in on ushering in a new era for the organization or is a quick fix in play? It’s a very hard question to answer when you don’t have any idea how Embiid’s arthroscopic surgery is going to go or what further medical decisions might need to be made concerning Embiid. In a perfect world, the Sixers could opt to send Oklahoma City a 2025 first-rounder and guarantee themselves a high pick in 2026 when there’s more clarity on Embiid’s status. But the world we’re living in will likely have the Sixers drafting in this summer’s top six, and then sending a first-rounder to the Thunder in 2026.
Imagine if the Sixers passed on Maluach, he became a stud, potentially for teams they see a lot of like Brooklyn or Toronto, Embiid’s career fizzled out and the player Philly drafted became a bust. On the flip side, even if Embiid doesn’t return to being his old self, a player at another position coupled with the returns of Tyrese Maxey and Jared McCain and some form of Embiid could have next season looking kind of fun.
It’s also entirely possible that Philadelphia’s draft board rates a wing player like Tre Johnson out of Texas, or even Knueppel, higher than Maluach and this entire discussion is much ado about nothing. It’s one thing to take an insurance policy for Embiid in the back half of the first round. But if you’re taking one in the top six, you are either more negative about Embiid’s future than you’re telling everyone publicly, or you love Maluach that much.
With a very limited offensive arsenal at the moment, Maluach is very clearly a center at the moment and him sharing the floor with Embiid would be a work in progress. But standing at 7-foot-2 he’s an elite rim protector and a switchable defender to where he’s almost certainly to be one of the first 10 picks in this year’s draft.
If you want my two cents, I would draft Maluach if he’s the best player on the Sixers’ board at five or six. It’s too hard to rely on anything from Embiid that would merit passing up the best player available this high in the draft. Maluach is the only player that poses this kind of a conundrum as most of the other top prospects are guards and wings. But that’s why he’s the most polarizing draft prospect for Philadelphia as we close in on one month before the lottery.