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In an uncertain draft, Sixers and Colangelo limit their risk | David Murphy

To separate the pick from the player is to talk oneself into absurdities, something Colangelo himself seemed to realize on Monday as he attempted to explain the trade without commenting on Fultz specifically.

First off, we're going to refer to this as the Markelle Fultz trade, because that's what it is. Bryan Colangelo wouldn't acknowledge it on Monday afternoon, but we're not bound by whatever arcane procedural regulations prevented him from acknowledging what had been clear to everybody in the NBA for the previous 48 hours.

The Sixers didn't trade for the No. 1 overall pick. They traded for Fultz. They Celtics did not trade away the No. 1 overall pick. They traded away Fultz.

To separate the pick from the player is to talk oneself into absurdities, something Colangelo himself seemed to realize on Monday as he attempted to explain the trade without commenting on Fultz specifically.

Give him credit for playing the good soldier and preserving the integrity of Thursday's draft telecast, but reality is reality, regardless of when it is officially announced. In packaging a future first-round pick with this year's selection, the Sixers decided that the consensus No. 1 overall player in this year's draft was a better bet than the player they projected themselves getting at No. 3, and that the difference between the two was large enough to warrant parting with an additional selection that seems likely to fall in the top 10, if not top five.

The Celtics thought the opposite.

Danny Ainge has accumulated enough political capital to get away with a mistake. For Colangelo, though, this decision will end up playing a significant role in his legacy as an NBA executive, and perhaps even defining it outright. There are some potential outcomes where that isn't the case, but not many.

If Fultz proves to be a top 30 player and either Joel Embiid or Ben Simmons lives up to his potential (health included), few will care whom the Celtics ended up taking with the two picks the Sixers gave up. If all three players reach their ceilings, Josh Harris wins Investment of the Century and Philadelphia is no longer a hockey town in the winter. But if Fultz turns out to be something less than the player Colangelo believes him to be — somewhere between a perennial All-Star candidate and a franchise player, reading between the lines of his comments on Monday — the GM will have nowhere to hide.

Whether that's a fair fate is another matter. The logic Colangelo used to make his decision was sound. He estimated that the top 10 of this year's draft would yield "five or six sure-fire All-Stars;" among them,"there may be one or two franchise players." Presumably, the Sixers believe that Fultz is one of those sure-fire All-Stars and has the potential to be one of those one or two franchise players.

"The odds are in your favor at No.1, more so than any other position in the draft, that the player chosen may end up being a franchise-level player," Colangelo said, "and it's a pretty significant spread."

To illustrate, consider the following groups of players:

Group A

1. Anthony Davis
2. Blake Griffin
3. Kyrie Irving
4. Karl-Anthony Towns
5. John Wall
6. Andrew Wiggins
7. Ben Simmons
8. Anthony Bennett

Group B

1. Jabari Parker
2. Victor Oladipo
3. D'Angelo Russell
4. Evan Turner
5. Michael Kidd-Gilchrist
6. Derrick Williams
7. Brandon Ingram
8. Hasheem Thabeet

Group C

1. James Harden
2. Bradley Beal
3. Joel Embiid
4. Otto Porter
5. Jahlil Okafor
6. Derrick Favors
7. Enes Kanter
8. Jaylen Brown

Say you are the coach of a basketball team, and somebody gives you two options to add to your roster: 1) Get one of the eight players in Group A randomly assigned to your team, or 2) Get two of the 16 players from Groups B and C randomly assigned to your team.

That's the essence of the choice Colangelo faced. The maximum price the Sixers will end up paying is a No. 3 overall pick and a No. 2 overall pick. Group B features the last eight players selected at No. 2 overall, Group C the last eight at No. 3.

Group A features the last eight players drafted at No. 1 overall. You can see why Colangelo chose what he did: the No. 1 overall pick in the NBA draft, the single most valuable and potentially defining position that exists in professional sports. Since 2009, the difference between No. 1 and No. 2 has been the difference between Davis and Kidd-Gilchrist, Irving and Williams, Wall and Turner, Griffin and Thabeet. During that stretch, only one of eight players selected at No. 1 overall has proved himself to be something other than a potentially generational talent. The jury's out on Simmons and Wiggins, but even if they end up joining Bennett as busts, No. 1 is still a significantly better bet than No. 2 or No. 3.

When news of the prospective deal leaked on Friday, you had to figure the price tag was going to hurt worse than a single first-round draft pick, let alone one with such crucial risk mitigation built in. Yet if we're going to credit Colangelo with driving a hard bargain with an executive of Ainge's renown, we must also take said executive's ambivalence about Fultz in the first place. The odds say the public consensus is not wrong about Fultz. But the Celtics surely looked at those odds, too, and still agreed to become the first team in 27 years to trade out of No. 1.

Given their divergent situations, both teams could end up being right. One argument says the Sixers couldn't afford to swing and miss with this year's pick. Their exposure to risk is already considerable. Okafor looks like a sunk cost. Nerlens Noel is gone. Embiid has played 31 total games in three NBA seasons. Simmons has yet to play his first. While Boston's roster composition gives it the flexibility to err on the upside of a Josh Jackson or De'Aaron Fox, the Sixers might be wise to prioritize certainty in an inherently uncertain process.

"There's very few situations that I can recall in history where you are putting two No. 1 picks on the court at the same time for the first time," Colangelo said. "I'm excited about that, but I'm nervous about that at the same time."

It should be a fascinating ride.