The Philadelphia 76ers’ rebuild continues to be a very complicated process. The latest derailment is the news that Joel Embiid will miss the remainder of the season with a torn meniscus. Embiid played just 31 games this season after missing the entirety of the past two campaigns.
Joel Embiid’s injury means the 76ers can only sell hope. Again
With Embiid’s setback and Jahlil Okafor’s walking hibernation, Philadelphia is doomed ... for now. That sounds familiar.
Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images
The Sixers had Embiid playing limited minutes and sitting out back-to-backs to ensure his foot didn’t fall back into disrepair. His foot seems fine. The knee? Not so much. So, Embiid will complete the third year of his rookie deal having averaged 10 games per season for his career. (He may still pick up a Rookie of the Year award for his troubles.)
This news came shortly after the Sixers announced Ben Simmons would miss all of his first season in Philadelphia due to a foot injury suffered in preseason. It also came just days after the Sixers traded Nerlens Noel for a couple of second-round picks while keeping Jahlil Okafor, whose mythical disapproval rating in Philadelphia keeps falling.
Since Sam Hinkie took over the Sixers almost four years ago, the team has made four top-six picks: Noel, Embiid, Okafor, and Simmons. Three of them missed their entire rookie seasons. One of them missed their entire second season, too.
How unavailable have they been? Assuming Okafor plays all 22 games remaining this season, the four top-six picks will have played in 319 of the 820 Sixers games since they were drafted. (That’s four 82-game seasons for Noel, three for Embiid, two for Okafor, and one for Simmons.) Over a combined 10 player-seasons, that crew is averaging a collective 32 games per year.
That’s bad.
The other lottery picks of the Hinkie and post-Hinkie era haven’t been much more productive. Michael Carter-Williams, taken the same year as Noel, was jettisoned after a year and a half for a future lottery pick that’s yet to arrive. Dario Saric was drafted the same year as Embiid and like Embiid didn’t debut until this season. (The upside of that is that unlike Embiid, Saric just began his rookie deal. The Sixers paid Embiid to rehab but didn’t have to pay Saric to continue to develop in Europe.)
It gets more complicated this summer, when Embiid is up for a contract extension. There’s really no way Philadelphia can offer it since Embiid has played far fewer games than Greg Oden had at this point in his career.
Like Embiid, when Oden was available, he was awesome. Embiid’s a far smoother scorer, but Oden finished everything in the paint and was a defensive stalwart from Day 1. (Well, Day 83: Like Embiid, he sat out his entire first season.)
But Oden’s body was fragile, and after that third season — basically where Embiid will be this summer — he only played 23 more games in his entire career. He hasn’t played in the NBA since 2014 when he was 26 years old.
Embiid’s ailments are different than Oden’s, and the Sixers are in a much different place than the Blazers were circa 2009. But there’s no way you can offer Embiid a huge contract before you’ve seen him play 1,000 minutes in the NBA.
Another decision is going to come on Okafor, who has completely given up the ghost as a Sixer. On the one hand, it’s hard to blame him for being disinterested, but on the other, he’s fighting for his career. If he wants a fresh start, he should be working his tail off to convince other teams they need him. That he isn’t should concern any team interested.
Philadelphia avoided a summer decision on a new contract for Noel by making that decision now. They didn’t want to pay him $60-70 million when they have (in theory) Embiid, Saric, Simmons, and Okafor. That’s a reasonable decision undercut by the team’s inability to get much on the trade market for their most reliable lottery pick to date (not a high honor, admittedly).
Despite all this, the Sixers are still positioned well to add considerable talent in the NBA draft. This is thanks to Hinkie’s foresight and the Colangelos’ decision not to trade draft picks for veteran help in some Sisyphean scheme to make a run at the playoffs (or even respectability).
The Sixers will have their own high pick in this excellent 2017 NBA draft, somewhere around No. 5 unless they get lucky in the lottery. They also get a boosted shoot at a top-three pick because of a Sacramento pick swap option. If the Kings’ pick ends up better than that of the Sixers, Philly can simply trade them. Effectively, that boosts the Sixers’ odds of a top-three pick a little bit more.
The Sixers also pick up the Lakers’ pick if it’s not in the top three. L.A. should end up with the second- or third-worst record, which gives Philadelphia roughly a 50 percent chance of landing it at Nos. 4-6.
The best case scenario: Philadelphia picks Nos. 1 and 4, grabbing the point guard of the future (either Markelle Fultz or Lonzo Ball) and a high-level wing (like Josh Jackson or Jayson Tatum). The worst-case scenario is the Sixers win too many games down the stretch and end up with something like the No. 9 pick with L.A. keeping its own choice.
No matter what happens, the Sixers still have the Kings’ completely unprotected 2019 pick and if they don’t get the Lakers’ choice this year, L.A.’s unprotected 2018 pick. Those could both be top-three picks over the next two years that wouldn’t even require the Sixers to be bad.
This is what Hinkie sold for years, and what the Colangelos have to sell now: hope. No matter how terrible Hinkie’s Sixers were, he could point to all the loot still to be claimed. The Colangelos were brought in because Hinkie’s innovation ran up against norms. But they are selling the same thing with Noel gone, Embiid and Simmons out, and Okafor morose.
For Philadelphia, there is always tomorrow. Really, there is only tomorrow.
