Sixers and NBA News and Notes: Philly favorites to retain Butler & Harris

Sixers News

Predraft Workouts

According to Keith Pompey of the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Sixers are in the process of attending agent-run predraft workouts throughout this week: two workouts on Monday in Las Vegas, five workouts on Tuesday in southern California, and one workout Wednesday in Los Angeles:

General manager Elton Brand and members of his front office are on the West Coast, attending agents-run NBA predraft workouts. They’ll be among NBA personnel at the Gary Durant Sports Management workout on Wednesday in Los Angeles.

[...]

Like most NBA teams, they attended five predraft workouts in Southern California on Tuesday and two in Las Vegas on Monday.

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The Sixers were at the Wasserman Media Group workout Tuesday morning. They followed that up by going to the Klutch Sports Group, the BDA Sports, the Roc Nation Sports and the Chris Johnson workouts.

That came one day after attending the Pensack Sports Management Group and Impact Sports Management workouts in Las Vegas.

Below are the clients entering the 2019 NBA Draft of each of the above agencies (I may be missing a few, the following players are just those that I was able to confirm).

Klutch Sports clients:

• Talen Horton-Tucker (Guard, Iowa State)
• Darius Bazley (Forward, N/A) (Bazley was a highly touted prospect who initially committed to play college ball at Syracuse, then announced he would skip college to go directly into the NBA’s G-League, and finally decided he would simply train on his own — i.e., not play in either college or the G-Leauge — in preparation for the 2019 NBA Draft.)

Gary Durrant Sports Management clients:

• Charles Bassey (Center, Western Kentucky)
• Hassani Gravett (Guard, South Caroline)
• Jalen Hudson (Guard, Florida)
• Mamadi Diakite (Forward, Virginia)

BDA Sports clients:

• Grant Williams (Forward, Tennessee)
• Jaxson Hayes (Forward, Texas)

Roc Nation Sports clients:

• Bennie Boatwright (Forward, USC)
• Zylan Cheatham (Forward, Arizona State)
• Tyus Battle (Guard, Syracuse)
• Kevin Porter Jr. (Guard, USC)
• PJ Washington (Forward, Kentucky)

Wasserman Media Group clients:

• Rui Hachimura (Forward, Gonzaga)
• Luke Samanic (Forward, Crotia)
• Nickeil Alexander-Walker (Guard, Virginia Tech)

Pensack Sports Management Group client:

• Terence Davis (Guard, Ole Miss)

I was unable to find client information on Chris Johnson & Impact Sports Management.

Vegas odds on Jimmy Butler & Tobias Harris

BetOnline, an online sports gambling platform, has listed betting odds for which team both Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris will be playing for on opening night of the 2019-2020 NBA season, and the Sixers are the favorite for both.

Jimmy Butler - 1st Regular Season Game of 2019-2020

Philadelphia 76ers 1/2

New York Knicks 6/1

Brooklyn Nets 8/1

Los Angeles Clippers 8/1

Los Angeles Lakers 8/1

Houston Rockets 9/1

Chicago Bulls 10/1

Miami Heat 12/1

Tobias Harris - 1st Regular Season Game of 2019-2020

Philadelphia 76ers 2/3

Brooklyn Nets 3/1

Dallas Mavericks 6/1

Los Angeles Lakers 6/1

Sacramento Kings 8/1

Utah Jazz 10/1

Indiana Pacers 12/1

Memphis Grizzlies 14/1

Atlanta Hawks 16/1

Two points for the run it back crowd.

NBA News

Schedule Changes?

The NBA is considering some schedule format changes inspired by European soccer, according to Marc Stein of the New York Times:

It’s the rare league, for starters, that pulls in a bigger global audience than the N.B.A. Another lure: England, as a soccer nation, provides its top teams, like Liverpool and Spurs, an opportunity to play for four major trophies every season as opposed to one.

Silver is more than intrigued.While acknowledging in a phone interview that a second “cup” for N.B.A. teams to chase every year remains “in the conceptual phase,” Silver said both he and various team executives pose the question regularly: Why does such a long basketball season offer only one true prize?

“It’s incumbent on me to constantly be looking at other organizations and seeing what it is we can do better and learn from them,” Silver said. “In the case of European soccer, I think there is something we can learn from them.

I find this to be a very intriguing development. One of the first posts I ever published online (it no longer exists) was a blueprint for the NBA to adopt a schedule that is similar to the way the English Premier League operates.

Maybe I’ll re-write a piece advocating for this sort of adoption and layout what that could look like. For now I’ll just say this: the NBA could make their regular season much more compelling if they sprinkled in a tournament in which players felt compelled to compete at a playoff-like level. There’s ways such a format change could have negative consequences, but the positives are worth considering. (Okay, I’m writing a piece on this.)

NBA Finals

The NBA Finals tip-off Thursday evening at 9:00 pm EST in Toronto. The Raptors are currently listed as 1-point favorites over Golden State, which I suppose is largely based upon the following conditions: the Raptors are the home team, Kawhi Leonard is certainly capable of being the most influential player on the floor in this series, and the Warriors will be playing Game 1 without Kevin Durant.

FiveThirtyEight’s CARMELO model lists the Raptors as 6-point favorites with a 73% win-probability for Game 1. 6-points seems... like a lot.

We’ll make sure to have a thread posted for discussion during Game 1.\

Anthony Davis & David Griffin to meet today

According to Shams Charania of the Athletic, New Orleans Pelicans disgruntled star Anthony Davis will meet with Executive VP of Basketball Operations David Griffin:

New Orleans star Anthony Davis will meet with new Pelicans executive Vice President David Griffin today, league sources tell @TheAthleticNBA @Stadium. -@ShamsCharania

I would imagine the conversation between these two will revolve around David Griffin asking Anthony Davis the question: “What do we need to do to convince you to give up the trade requests and stay here in New Orleans?”

Griffin should make sure to have a print out of Baxter Holmes’ fantastic and entertaining article on ESPN reporting on the dysfunction within the Lakers franchise, which reveals just how pathetic of a state the Lakers’ franchise is in.