NBA Draft: 5 reasons 76ers should draft Brandon Ingram No. 1
By Tom West
1. Versatility and playmaking
Brandon Ingram isn’t someone the 76ers, or any team will use to run many offensive sets. He’s a wing, he’s a scorer, and that’s his identity rather than some freakish athlete like 6’11” Giannis Antetokounmpo who’s now playing point guard.
Nevertheless, Ingram is undoubtedly an impressive ball handler for his size and can facilitate reasonably well at times, too, whether he’s finding open cutters to the basket or sending the ball down low on pick-and-rolls. While it obviously won’t be the 76ers’ plan to make him a key distributor, him having that ability now and so much room to grow as an 18-year-old gives Philly a lot of encouragement as to the kind of diverse role he can play offensively.
“He’s very versatile,” 76ers president of basketball operations Bryan Colangelo said to Tom Moore of the Burlington County Times. “He plays multiple positions. He could actually play some 3, some 4 and probably some 5 in some situations the way the league is playing right now. The notion that he’s a ball-handling 4 puts him in a unique position with our team to be a distributor (and so on).”
Until he gains a lot more strength, it goes without saying that Ingram really doesn’t look like a center right now, even in rotations that feature him there for brief moments at a time. That being said, shifting between small and power forward is ideal for Ingram, given his speed and shooting to score over smaller wings (which is pretty much everyone in comparison to him) and the speed to take slower fours off the dribble. Plus, with that ridiculous length, he was solid on the boards in college with 6.8 rebounds per game.
When considering the body that he has to build on, the scoring ability, the versatility to shift between positions and the sky-high defensive potential, Brandon Ingram could grow into the face of the 76ers. And before he even reaches that point, he’s the correct choice instead of Ben Simmons right now.
For more NBA coverage, be sure to check out our NBA hub page.