Arsenal wrote:Cavs GM David Griffin said immediately after the draft that there were no substantive offers for the #1 pick.
Woj, the NBA reporter with the most credibility said the Sixers never made a substantive offer for the #1 pick.
Hinkie is widely known to be an analytics guy, and almost all of his picks have had great analytics numbers (e.g. Reb/40, Stl/40, Ast/40, Blk/40, A/TO, etc.), while Wiggins had mediocre at best analytics numbers. Embiid on the other hand had great analytics numbers.
Hinkie described the Embiid injury as "I smelled opportunity".
It seems pretty clear the Sixers were never all that interested in Wiggins. All the reports beforehand were a desperate attempt by Cleveland to drum up a trade market, which ended up being non-existent.
Yes I remember the interview with David Griffin. He said most of the trade proposals that were floating around were non-existant, (likely falsely leaked by Cavaliers management).
Sam Hinkie also said, in his post draft announcement, that 76ers were largely receiving calls from others. Not making calls.
All this says is that 76ers and Hinkie are happy with Embiid. Doesn't tell us whether we wanted Wiggins or Embiid more.