With 16th pick, there are very few opportunities for 76ers in this NBA draft

There are a million reasons to love sports: the passion and excitement, the chance to see something you've never seen before, the opportunity to be dazzled by greatness.

And then there are drafts, which offer absolutely none of these things. In a cultural climate where people watch reality TV shows about pawn shops and tattoo parlors, though, it shouldn't be surprising that these bits of administrative busy work are not only televised, but watched. Indeed, drafts in all the major sports are keenly anticipated by a particular subset of sports fandom, which provides an audience for legions of self-appointed media experts.

Where will your favorite college player go? What will your favorite NBA team do? How come you've barely heard of half these guys?

With the 16th pick in Thursday night's NBA draft, the Sixers are almost certain to have their pick of several guys you've barely heard of. It may seem sarcastic to suggest they'd be better off trading that pick, for absolutely anything, but it's probably also good basketball advice.

The truth is, depending on how you choose to look at it, the draft is the most or least important tool for building a championship-caliber NBA team.

Why? Take a look at the makeup of the last few teams to win championships. It is pretty clear that, in the NBA, you don't really build a team through the draft. You need to strike gold once - usually with a top pick in a year with a true superstar - and then fill out your rotation through trades and free agency.

This year's champions, the Dallas Mavericks, acquired Dirk Nowitzki in a draft-day trade in 1998. Another starter, point guard Jason Kidd, entered the league as a Mavericks pick way back in '94, but he spent most of his career elsewhere. How many of the other starters and rotation players were picked in the draft? Try zero.

The Lakers, who won back-to-back titles in 2009 and 2010, acquired Kobe Bryant in a draft deal with Charlotte. On the 2010 team, only three of the top nine players, in terms of minutes played that season, were draft choices: Bryant, Derek Fisher, and Andrew Bynum. The year before, five of the nine rotation players were originally drafted by the Lakers.

That was the highest total in several years. The 2008 Celtics had Paul Pierce as the cornerstone acquired through the draft. Five of the nine top players, as measured in minutes played, were brought in through trades or free agency. Same with the 2007 San Antonio Spurs: Tim Duncan was the drafted anchor, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili were also draft picks, and most of the rotation was acquired in other ways.

The Miami Heat epitomized this dynamic, both in 2006, when Miami won the title, and this year, when the Heat lost to the Mavs in the Finals.

Miami took Dwyane Wade with the fifth pick in 2003. He was the only Heat draft pick in the eight-man rotation in '06 and the only draft pick in the eight-man rotation this year. And that's not just because Wade helped attract LeBron James and Chris Bosh, either. Mario Chalmers, James Jones, Carlos Arroyo - again, even the role players were picked up through other means.

Ultimately, the Sixers' problem is not having that cornerstone player. They had one in Allen Iverson, but were never able to assemble quite the right cast of complementary players. They treated Andre Iguodala like that type of star, but it has become apparent he just isn't that guy. Maybe young players like Jrue Holiday, Thaddeus Young, or Evan Turner will blossom into such a star.

If so, then the challenge becomes trading and signing for pieces that fit around that star. More likely, though, the Sixers still don't have that Wade/Bryant/Nowitzki/Pierce puzzle piece. And they are almost certainly not going to find him with the 16th pick of a rather shallow draft.

So the choice seems to be a gamble on an undeveloped college big man or a dice roll on a European player. (This assumes they won't take another swingman type, as SI.com's mock draft has them doing with 6-foot-9 Texas forward Jordan Hamilton. That would be like the Eagles taking another interior lineman. Oh, wait.)

As Sixers president Rod Thorn said the other day, the best the Sixers can realistically hope for at 16 is a player who cracks their rotation in a couple of years.

Yawn.

It would be better to trade the pick for a first-rounder in 2012. Or 2013. Or whenever. If your best chance to make a real score in the draft is to have a top-five pick in the right year, then you may as well amass as many raffle tickets as you can.

Once every 20 years or so, you just might get lucky.