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You have to wonder if it is a bad omen for the Cleveland Cavaliers going forward that broadcaster Fred MacLeod introduced No. 1 pick Andrew Wiggins as Mitchell during Friday’s introductory press conference.
MacLeod tried to cover his tracks by saying, “I go back….Mitchell, you wanna make a comeback?”
Mitchell Wiggins, Andrew’s father, hasn’t played in the NBA since 1992 when he was with the Sixers.
Speaking of the Sixers, their top pick and Wiggins’s former Kansas, Joel Embiid, may miss the entire 2014-15 season while recovering from a stress fracture in his right foot.
“I’ve seen reported some four to six months,” Sixers GM Sam Hinkie said, according to Keith Pompey of Philly.com. “That’s not the number I heard. The number I heard from the surgeon himself was five to eight months.
“Guess what our approach will be? We will focus on the long-term health of the player. We had that discussion before. I don’t want that to sound glib, because it’s not. It is all that matters, honestly.”
A year ago, the Sixers acquired another injured big man, Nerlens Noel, in a draft day trade — and he also didn’t play his entire rookie season as the team looked to protect him for the future.
The team’s other first-round acquisition, Dario Saric, will spend the next two years in Turkey and won’t join the NBA until at least the 2016-17 season, as we reported here.
That means that it’s possible neither of the Sixers’ first-round picks will play a single minute in the NBA this season.
Of course, whenever the 7-foot Embiid does debut, his upside is huge, with Kansas coach Bill Self saying on draft night that the comparisons to a young Hakeem Olajuwon were “very fair.”
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