Again, the 76ers were in a much worse situation than any of those other teams. We had almost no talent, no draft picks, our cap was destroyed and mgmt/ownership refused to change course until they hit the wall head-on. No one wanted to play here, it was a dead zone. There was no way to do a normal turnaround or remain with the status quo, both would not have worked in our context. It was a epic failure that required radical change.
The NBA is set up to punish teams in the middle as the 76ers experienced first hand for so many years before the new owners & Hinkie finally took over. They were too bad to win anything, but too good to improve significantly. Purgatory. The only way to get elite talent is the draft at that point (again no elite talent was coming here unless we vastly overpay them which we could not do with our cap leveraged to the hilt and we had nothing to trade any team was interested in) and the only way to hit the draft is to pick at the very top and have as many picks as one can to maximize the chances to get that elite talent.
The NBA is also setup to reward the worst teams with the best young talent via the draft. The only way out of the massive hole the 76ers were in was to become one of those bad teams.
The way we got Embiid, Noel, Okafor, Simmons, Saric et al. is by having assets other teams were interested in and positioning ourselves in the draft to maximize our ability to get elite talent.