Last night, hours before the 2016 Draft Lottery got started, former 76er Dikembe Mutombo sent out a tweet congratulating Philadelphia about winning the lottery that they hadn’t yet won.
Clearly it was an accident, but people love to conspire about the NBA Draft being rigged. The order of the draft lottery wasn’t known to anyone before the event, so this more nothing more than a coincidence. Commissioner Adam Silver told reporters that, “they were preparing in the hope that they won and Dikembe accidentally sent out a tweet.” He continued with, “what are you going to do?”
The tweet was one conjured up in an email to Mutumbo from the Sixers front office, who wanted him to acknowledge the team if they did, in fact, receive the number one overall pick.
“It was like maybe 30 seconds, then I realized, ‘Whoa! What did I do here?'” said Mutombo. “But it was too late. It was out in the air,” he continued.
With the league’s worst record of 10-72 last year, the Sixers had a 27% chance of getting the first pick, a feat that was only accomplished four times in the last two decades. Now that they have the first overall selection, reports indicate that the organization is ‘leaning heavily’ towards LSU freshman Ben Simmons.
