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But to hear team president and general manager Ed Stefanski tell it, the important thing was that their guy was on the board last night when their turn came at No. 16, and they took 6-foot-10, 245-pound Marreese Speights, who played for two seasons at Florida.
Speights, 20, was a reserve on the Gators' 2006-07 NCAA championship team before he moved into the starting lineup last season. He averaged 14.5 points and 8.1 rebounds while shooting 62.4 percent from the field for a Florida team that finished 21-11 and made the NIT semifinals.
Speights made a great impression on the Sixers when he came in for a workout last week at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. Stefanski said Speights was a unanimous choice among his brain trust as the Sixers' choice, except for "one person, who had him second."
"That was the guy we were going to pick," Stefanski said. "We really like Marreese for his size. He's extremely athletic. He runs the floor the way we want to play. He can make a shot. He has a chance to be a back-to-the-basket type of player with either hand. We feel he'll be a piece of this puzzle, and a good one."
The knocks on Speights before the draft were that he wasn't exactly devoted to conditioning or playing at the defensive end. But Tony DiLeo, senior vice president and assistant general manager, said Speights had been doing a fine job training with Joe Abunassar, a coach who works with draft picks in Las Vegas.
"We got great reports from Joe on how hard he's been working out there," DiLeo said. "A lot of things people were saying about him were exaggerated. Joe confirmed to us about his work ethic, about his motor, about his conditioning.
"We talked to a lot of coaches who played against him in the [Southeastern Conference], and we talked to his coaches. So we are very comfortable with him. But like any other rookie, he'll need some structure. He'll need to learn the NBA, and that will take time."
DiLeo said he liked Speights' versatility, his ability to run the floor, and his talent for being able to score close to the basket with either hand. He said Speights could be a good "pick and pop" player, having the ability to hit the 18-foot jumper, and the potential to step out to the three-point line. DiLeo also liked him for his post-up ability, something the Sixers desperately want.
"He's one of the better post-up players in this draft," he said. "He can score with his left hand or his right hand. When he gets a little stronger and gets more established and defined, he will be a good post-up player, and that's what we need."
The Sixers don't expect Speights (rhymes with weights) to make an immediate impact.
"He needs to be nurtured," Stefanski said. "We don't need him to come in and be a star of the team. He has a very big upside."
The Sixers said all along that they were pleased with the depth of big men in the draft, and they were believed to have six to eight (or more) big men on their list of potential draftees. But only three of those players thought to be available by the 16th pick had been selected by the time it was the Sixers' turn.
Jason Thompson, of Lenape in South Jersey and Rider, was the first to go, heading to Sacramento with the 12th pick, the first four-year player to be drafted.
Two picks later, the Golden State Warriors selected 6-11 Anthony Randolph of Louisiana State, another player thought to be under consideration by the Sixers. Robin Lopez of Stanford went next, to Phoenix, leaving the Sixers with plenty of options.
According to DiLeo, Speights also was someone the Sixers liked as a person.
"He's a good person," he said. "He fits in with the chemistry on our team.
*"He had to fit in on the court, and he had to fit in with his personality. Because we have a good group with good chemistry, and we didn't want to disrupt that. So he fits in in both areas."
Stefanski said the Sixers were very active toward acquiring another pick late in the first or early in the second round, "but it didn't happen." They did not have a second-round pick.
Marreese Speights, 20, 16th overall pick, 6-foot-10, 245 pounds, sophomore at Florida.
He averaged 14.5 points, 8.1 rebounds, and 1.36 blocks in 24.3 minutes per game last season.
He posted the ninth-
highest field-goal percentage (62.4) in the nation last season, and would have ranked second all-time in school history but fell just short of the minimum qualification of 500 career shot attempts.
He scored 20-plus points nine times last season and recorded 10-plus rebounds 11 times, including 10 double-
doubles.
He blocked two or more shots 16 times, including seven games with at least three blocks. Over the final nine games of the season, he averaged 17 points and 8.9 rebounds in just 27.7 minutes per game.
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