April 20, 2026
The Sixers own the No. 22 overall pick in the 2026 NBA Draft after winning a tiebreaker on Monday.
This selection comes to the Sixers via the Houston Rockets. The Oklahoma City Thunder traded it to the Sixers alongside three future second-round picks in February in exchange for second-year guard Jared McCain. Sixers President of Basketball Operations, in the press conference during which he infamously stated his belief that the team had been "selling high" on McCain, said that the Sixers hoped to use that pick to upgrade their rotation before the trade deadline passed, but nothing ever came to fruition.
After finishing the season at 52-30, the Rockets were tied with the Cleveland Cavaliers for the eighth-best record in the NBA. That prompted a tiebreaker between the Sixers and Atlanta Hawks, owners of Cleveland's first-rounder.
This is the Sixers' third recent first-round tiebreaker victory: in 2024, they won a four-way tie for the No. 16 overall pick to select McCain; in 2020, they won a three-way tie for the No. 21 overall pick to select Tyrese Maxey.
Both at the top and in terms of depth, the incoming class of rookies is believed to be elite. A pick in this region of the board should be considered more valuable in 2026 than it would be in the average year. But that does not mean the Sixers will be using it to draft somebody.
"[W]e do think this draft is a good draft, but we're not necessarily using the pick in this draft," Morey said in February. "It could be used for moves around the draft. The three seconds that we got with it, we think could be used to move up in this draft. I and our front office have done a lot of deals over the years, and this just gives us more tools to make the moves that we think will help our future more than we saw in Jared, who we gave up. But that's not a comment on Jared."
The Sixers' own first-round pick, which heads to the Oklahoma City Thunder to complete the Al Horford-for-Danny Green trade of 2020, finished second in a three-way tie for the No. 16 slot, which means the Sixers will send the No. 17 overall pick to the Thunder to complete what was Morey's very first trade in Philadelphia.
