PHILADELPHIA — Josh Hart remembers the name, though he can’t pronounce it properly, and as a result, won’t say it.
The 76ers traded up to get pick No. 25 from the Orlando Magic in the 2017 NBA Draft.
Hart, who had just finished his final season at Villanova, just a 33-minute drive from the Wells Fargo Center where the Sixers play their home games, was still on the board.
“Yeah, I wanted to go here,” Hart said after the Knicks’ morning shootaround ahead of Game 3 against the 76ers on Thursday. “They were at [pick No. 25].”
The 76ers didn’t select him.
Instead, after trading a first and a second-round pick to move up, they drafted Anzejs Pasecniks, a 7-2 Latvian center, and kept him overseas before renouncing his rights in the summer of 2019.
Pasecniks signed with the Washington Wizards and played 27 games in the 2019-20 season and one game in the 2020-21 season before his NBA career came to an end.
“They were at 25 and did a draft and stash, some European guy that I can’t pronounce the name,” Hart said. “But nah: Yeah, this [Philadelphia] is the place I wanted to go. It was right down the street. But unfortunately they felt [the need] to do a draft and stash. Draft night I was a little bummed that 25 came and I wasn’t there.”
Hart wasn’t the only Villanova product the Sixers passed on.
They drafted Mikal Bridges 10th overall in 2018, only to immediately trade him to the Phoenix Suns. Donte DiVincenzo went 17th in the class of 2018, and the Sixers could have taken him with the pick they received from Phoenix in exchange for Bridges.
Instead, they chose Zhaire Smith.
And they could have selected Jalen Brunson with their final first-round pick — No. 26 — of the 2018 draft.
Instead, they chose Landry Shamet, a sharpshooter out of Wichita State.
Hart agreed it’s “weird” the 76ers didn’t draft any player from Villanova considering the Wildcats won two NCAA championships in the three years leading up to the 2018 draft.
“I think so,” he said. “With the pedigree that we were coming in with, the discipline, the winning mentality that we had. So it was probably a little surprise. Us being right down the street the pipeline is there. But they felt their organization wanted to go in a different direction.”
Brunson went 33rd to the Dallas Mavericks, DiVincenzo 17th to the Milwaukee Bucks, and Hart, a year earlier, went 30th in a draft day deal from the Utah Jazz to the Los Angeles Lakers.
Hart, DiVincenzo and Brunson are now Knicks teammates hoping to stick it to the same 76ers organization passing over one Villanova product after another in years past.
“Yeah, of course [I wanted to get drafted by the 76ers],” DiVincenzo said after morning shoot around on Thursday. “You’re going through the process. You go to school. You go to school here — or in a suburb or Philly or whatever. But when you’re going to school here, grew up in Delaware, half hour away, obviously that’s kinda where you wanted to go. Then you go through the whole process. You meet with different teams. I’m thankful where I started my career. I think God has a plan, and I’m on the exact plan that he has for me.”
Hart said he worked out for the Sixers as part of his pre-draft process. Things are working out differently for the Nova Knicks than they had anticipated right out of college.
“Yeah, I had an OK workout,” Hart recalled. “It was at the old facility, that was in that college or whatever. I did work out for them, but they didn’t want me.”
