This was somewhat similar to last year's scenario when they held the No. 16 pick and Marreese Speights emerged as the highest-rated player remaining on their board. This time, they tried to move up what senior vice-president/assistant general manager Tony DiLeo termed "a little bit, but we couldn't."
The Sixers did not have Holiday in for a workout, but did interview him during the predraft combine in Chicago. When his advisors believed he would be a top 10 pick, he canceled coming to Philadelphia.
"I heard different things," Holiday said during a telephone interview session. "I had no expectations of where I was going."
He also said, "At the beginning of this whole thing, [I was hearing] late first, early second. I'm satisfied and blessed where I got chosen."
The Sixers seemed genuinely pleased, even more so than with last season's selection of Speights.
"He's an athletic kid who will play at both ends," president/general manager Ed Stefanski said. "One thing you know if you're going to play for Ben Howland at UCLA, you're going to play defense. For a young rookie here, if you play defense that can get you on the floor."
Said coach Howland, in a statement released by UCLA, "Seventeen is not a bad place to be. There are a lot of things that have to take place. Every team is looking for different things. He had been projected as high as eight down to about 15 . . . Jrue is in a great situation in a nice town with a good history for basketball."
At 19, the 6-3 freshman is one of the six youngest players in the draft. He is also the first UCLA player to be selected by the Sixers.
"For him to drop to us, we're ecstatic," DiLeo said. "He's exactly what we wanted, a big guard. People didn't really see his point guard skills [at UCLA]."
