Philly fans are a wild bunch to begin with and once you dig deeper into the segment of fans that would actually attend a draft lottery party things start to get even zanier.
And it's fantastic.
Last night's Lottery Party at Xfinity Live hosted by the Rights to Ricky Sanchez podcast did not disappoint in these areas. There was the obviously ridiculous moment when they raised a Sam Hinkie banner to the rafters, putting the Process to bed for the final time (yeah right!). There were Shirley Temple beverages on special at every bar -- a couple extra bucks for vodka. There were temporary tattoos featuring a guy who was once a GM of a basketball team. People were actually putting them on their bodies. There were fans waiting in long line to speak to beat writers. There was a wedding proposal.
Sam Hinkie goes to the rafters. #Lotteryparty philly fans are fantastic weirdos. Props @SpikeEskin @RTRSPodcast pic.twitter.com/FSDEsOmYP3— Enrico (@The700Level) May 16, 2017
But perhaps the most hilarious of all of the nice little touches that were thought of for the big night was a giant cutout of Sacramento Kings GM Vlade Divac.
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And fans could pay $5 to take their photo with it. The money raised from the Vlade photos went to the Alzheimer's Association of Delaware Valley and the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
This, of course, was because of the now legendary #PickSwap. Our guy Andrew Unterberger wrote in detail about the magnificence of the #PickSwap that Sam Hinkie put in place actually coming to fruition and how truly wonderful that is, so read that.
But it was also amazing that Sixers fans, before they even knew the #PickSwap would go down, had the faith and just enough missing marbles to take their photo with the giant Vlade before the #PickSwap even happened. They were trolling before it even went down and trolling after. Nik Stauskas even got in on the fun and he was part of the trade!
As I said the other day, you can call Philly fans many things: passionate, intense, loyal, strange, quite strange, weird, very weird. Just don't say they don't have a good time.
Thanks, Vlade. You're going up on the wall.
Luka Mitrovic and Arturas Gudaitis. Never forget.— Derek Bodner (@DerekBodnerNBA) May 16, 2017
