76ers host six 1st-round caliber big men

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Hosting six big men projected to go in the first round five days before the NBA draft isn't any guarantee of what the Sixers' will do next Thursday night, but it points in a rather obvious direction.

The team hosted Baylor's Perry Jones III, Kentucky's Terrence Jones, Mississippi State's Arnett Moultrie, St. Bonaventure's Andrew Nicholson and North Carolina's John Henson and Tyler Zeller on Saturday morning for a pre-draft workout at its practice facility at the Philadelphia College of Ostheopathic Medicine.

All six players are 6-foot-9 or taller and project as anywhere from stretch power forwards to centers at the next level. Perhaps even more telling, all six are projected as first-round selections, expected to go right in the middle of the round. The Sixers currently hold the No. 15 pick.

Its real deep," Jones said of this year's draft. "Its a lot of different bigs. Different types of bigs. Its a deep draft.

Zeller was the only pure college center in the group, while the others played a combination of forward and center.

Still, the Sixers made all six of them do a few things they weren't so accustomed to doing in college. Jones, who has been on something of a tour of these pre-draft workouts -- trips that have generally included the same crop that was on the floor at PCOM Saturday -- said this was the first workout in which a team had big men receiving, rather than throwing, outlet passes, a testament to Sixers' style of scoring in transition.

Then, of course, there was the three-point shooting, one of the vast differences between the pro and college game based on the sheer difference in distance between the two lines. Jones, Jones III and Nicholson have shown evidence of being able to shoot from behind the college arc, but for someone like Zeller, who hasn't attempted a three in a game since his sophomore season in 2010, shooting the long ball has been a bit of an adjustment.

Asked if he got to "showcase" his talents from range, he said, with a smile and laugh, "No. Not today. Theres been a couple other workouts I did, but not today. I was like 5 for 15, which is decent. But, no, not today."

His teammate, 6-foot-11 forward John Hanson, on the other hand, is looking forward to branching out a bit more. I can do a lot more than people saw in school," Henson said. "We have Big Z (Zeller) down there and Harrison Barnes. Those are our two main go-to guys. I didnt necessarily have to go out there and burn the nets up.

Of the six, Henson is the one generally presumed to be out of the Sixers' reach at No. 15. That said, with the level of talent in the draft, and just at the workout, there's always the possibility that things won't go as expected.

With so many big guys, dont expect to get a promise," Henson said. "There are so many options and so many things that could happen with the draft. Somebodys going to fall. Thats just how it is. If its me, Im going to make the best of it, and I guess the farther you drop, the better team you get on thats how it works with the draft so Id be OK.

Saturdays workout, a few of the players admitted, was one of the toughest they have participated in thus far, because of how familiar they've become with one another. Last season, Moultries Bulldogs played against both Jones IIIs Baylor team and SEC-rival Jones national-champion Kentucky squad. North Carolina and Kentucky also saw each other out-of-conference.

The draft process has only made them more knowledgeable of each others games.

Ive been to all my workouts with all these guys, so its getting harder for each of us, Jones III said. Pretty much we all know what were going to do, and we know our go-to moves. It gets more competitive every time we work out with each other but its also a good time.

Weve pretty much been at every team workout together, Moultrie added. "We just come in, push each other, and I look at it as were making each other better.

With so many options on the board, the Sixers will certainly have decisions to make about who to take and when, should they wish to trade up or down, to take them.

Sixers center Spencer Hawes is set to become an unrestricted free agent this summer, one that will garner quite a bit of interest from teams around the league, as its not exactly easy to find a legitimate center in a league trending toward greater depth at the guard and forward positions.

Then there's the case of Elton Brand, who, since the implementation of the league's new Collective Bargaining Agreement last winter, has been accompanied by near-constant amnesty speculation. Whether the team goes that route or not, Brand has just one year remaining on his contract with the club.

As for big men left on the roster, Thaddeus Young is under a long-term contract, last year's first-round selection Nikola Vucevic is locked up through 2015, and second-round pick Lavoy Allen is a restricted free agent expected to return. If the Sixers are indeed searching for replacements for Hawes or Brand or complements to the bigs already in place, Saturday's workout makes it seem like they have picked the right draft to do it.

E-mail Nick Menta at nmenta@comcastsportsnet.com.

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