Things are going well for the Philadelphia 76ers this offseason, so I think it\u2019s safe to touch on a topic from a time when things were much more\u2026turbulent. The reason? Former Sixers president of basketball operations Bryan Colangelo has been hired as an advisor by Italian professional club BC Roma.<\/p>\n
First off, it\u2019s nice for Bryan to still get the \u201cTwo-time NBA Executive of the Year\u201d lead-in and not, you know, the other stuff which we\u2019ll touch on momentarily. If you\u2019re recalling a strong tie between Colangelo and Italy, you are correct. While the lead executive for the Toronto Raptors, he famously selected Italian Andrea Bargnani with the first overall pick in the 2006 NBA Draft, rather than seven-time All-Star LaMarcus Aldridge, taken second overall by the Chicago Bulls and traded to Portland. As Sixers fans unfortunately know, poor decisions with the first overall pick were not limited to Colangelo\u2019s time in Toronto; in 2017, he traded with Boston to move up and select Markelle Fultz first overall, with the Celtics taking Jayson Tatum with the third overall pick.<\/p>\n
In addition to getting absolutely schooled by Danny Ainge, Colangelo made a pair of trades during his time in Philadelphia that if not for divine intervention and other people picking up the pieces, would have cost the Sixers Tyrese Maxey. Back in 2016, he traded Jerami Grant and a top-20 protected 2020 first-round pick to Oklahoma City for Ersan Ilyasova. Of course, Mike Muscala\u2019s heroics in the bubble meant that the Thunder moved up into the top-20 and the Sixers were able to retain that pick and select Maxey.<\/p>\n
However, Colangelo had even traded that top-20 protected pick away in 2017 in order to draft Anzejs Pasecniks 25th overall (!!!!). Pasecniks played 28 career NBA games (all for the Wizards), while the Sixers could have drafted Derrick White or local favorite Josh Hart. Thankfully, in 2019, Elton Brand would get that Thunder pick back by trading Fultz to Orlando, cleaning up two Colangelo messes in one fell swoop. In my opinion, Brand does not get enough credit for ensuring Maxey eventually arrived in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
Before we go though, one more Colangelo-Italy connection to recall. His wife, Barbara Bottini, is from Northern Italy (as a side note, Colangelo\u2019s famous high collars were credited to his wife\u2019s Italian fashion influence). It\u2019s strange that every Sixers fan reading this knows the name of a former executive\u2019s wife, but then, she\u2019s the only one I know of who ran secret burner Twitter accounts disparaging players and revealing team-sensitive information. We can take Bryan\u2019s word that he knew absolutely nothing about the activities by Barbara (aka Eric Jr, Honest Abe, and Still Balling), but I\u2019ll personally always be skeptical. Still, he had to resign as a result in one of the more embarrassing NBA sagas in recent history.<\/p>\n
With that strong draft record and drama-free home life, I can see why BC Roma came to Colangelo in search of advice. I\u2019m just glad the Sixers have brighter days ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Things are going well for the Philadelphia 76ers this offseason, so I think it\u2019s safe to touch on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":889361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,84395,82],"class_list":["post-889360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sixers-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=889360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/889361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=889360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=889360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=889360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}