Embiid And The Sixers Just Got Left Behind…

Embiid And The Sixers Just Got Left Behind…

The Philadelphia 76ers are the strangest team in the NBA. They won just 24 games last year and locked into the third pick in the draft. But on paper, and everybody say it with me, for the first of many times, when healthy, they are a top three team in a very weak Eastern Conference. They should be a large part of the conversation for the upcoming season. They have an exciting young third overall pick prospect in VJ Edgecom. Tyrese Maxi is amazing. Jared McCain had a great, albeit short, rookie year. Even Quinton Grimes was amazing for them towards the end of the season. They have Paul George. They have former MVP Joel Embiid. This team should be a big deal, but they just aren’t. And the NBA agrees, leaving the Sixers off the Christmas Day schedule entirely this year for the first time in 4 years. Now, to be fair, being on TV for Christmas Day isn’t the most scientific way of determining how relevant a team is. And of the 10 teams playing, only two of them this year are from the Eastern Conference. But still, the Sixers have clearly been left behind. We have gone past hoping for the if healthy label to actually come true. The NBA has moved on from the Joel Embiid Sixers era. I don’t really think that’s debatable. But the real question is, have the Sixers done the same thing? Is it time or have the Sixers begun to start making decisions based off the assumption that the Embiid era is just over? Now, that might seem crazy for a guy that has won an MVP so recently, but when you consider the history of the league, how quickly big guys can get old, how short their primes are, if you’re the Sixers, you have to consider the possibility that he will just never be healthy again, and what that means for your future. Now, obviously, for this upcoming season, the Sixers are still Embiid’s team, partially cuz they just don’t really have a choice. They signed him to a three-year $193 million contract extension just a year ago, which keeps him on the books until the summer of 2029, which given his injury history is maybe the most untradeable contract in the entire league. I actually don’t think we talk enough about how bad of a decision that was at the time for the Sixers. Probably because they also signed one of the worst contracts in the league in the same offseason last year when they brought in Paul George. But looking back, the Embiid thing was truly an awful decision. He’d just gotten done playing for Team USA in the Olympics and barely looking healthy for most of the tournament and had played just 39 games the year before in the NBA. If you wanted to argue that Embiid was still an AllNBA caliber player when healthy, that’s obviously fine. But to even consider giving him a multi-year max contract extension at that point would require a very optimistic view of his durability moving forward. And obviously everybody agrees that Jool beat’s very good. and he won an MVP, but it was clear at the time that it was a massive risk to give him such a big contract, and it was a deal that they just did not have to do. His old contract would have taken him into 2026 free agency. But given where his career is at right now, if you gave the Sixers the choice, I’m sure they’d prefer to risk MB2 free agency in a year rather than be on the hook for paying him $60 million a year for the next three seasons. Now, at this point, some of you might be wondering, okay, then why don’t they just trade him? Well, frankly, there are zero teams around the league that would trade for Embiid on that contract right now, even the ones with a history of questionable decisions. So, if you’re wondering then, well, what are they supposed to do now? What they’re supposed to do now, or at least what the smart thing to do would be, is start making decisions, assuming that the Embiid era is over. The core of the team is now Maxi, Edgecomb, and McCain. If Embiid and Paul George, who I’ll get to here in a second, have a healthy season, then great. Maybe we can win some in the playoffs. But in the much more overwhelmingly likely event that they each play like 40 games, you can start building for the future. Now, that’s how I see things, but the Sixers might not agree, and it’s certainly a difficult situation for them to be in, back to the Sixers. If they were going to start making decisions as if this Jaw Limb era is just done, what is the first thing on the agenda to you? To me, apart from trading a beat himself, which we already discussed is impossible, would be getting rid of the Paul George contract. That is obviously much easier said than done. But going back to when they signed George last off seasonason, that was clearly an Embiid era move. I actually do think it’s pretty underrated how good George was in his final season with the Clippers, he played 74 games and had the most efficient scoring season of his career. And admittedly, if you go back and look at my channel, I made multiple videos talking about how I couldn’t believe that the Clippers were letting him just leave for nothing. And I was optimistic about the pairing of Maxi and George and Embiid all together in Philadelphia. And although I understood the risk of the injury stuff, I thought George would be at least worth the contract for the first two years of the deal. And then the next two, that’s just the price you pay to get him to come to Philadelphia from LA. And although now the decision obviously looks indefensible, at the time it seemed like an okay choice. Pairing Embiid, who recently won an MVP with an AllNBA caliber wing in between Maxi, the backourt set the Sixers up as a contender in the East. But much like the Embiid extension, right afterwards, things just completely fell apart for George. He had multiple nagging injuries, played just 41 games, which looking back, I I definitely thought it was a lot less than that. And even when he did play, he he just looked awful. Like his game just completely fell off a cliff. All of which of course led the Sixers to tanking towards the end of the season and ending up with the third overall pick, which immediately became this huge topic of conversation as it always is with a team that is good on paper and they get a high draft pick. Rumors were swirling about who Philly was going to be able to add by trading the third pick, which at this point we should probably just retire that storyline because when’s the last time a team in that position actually traded the pick for an impact player? Like the Blazers didn’t do it for Damen Lillard. They ultimately drafted Scoot Henderson. The Warriors famously did not trade the second overall pick when they tried to and selected James Wisman in 2020. And they have the whole Kaminga debacle over the last couple of seasons. Really, the last time this actually happened was when LeBron went back to the Cavs and they traded the first overall pick for Kevin Love. That was over a decade ago. And in this scenario, the Sixers predictably did the thing that the overwhelming majority of teams do in their situation. They kept the pick, which if you’re going with this mindset of planning for the future makes a lot of sense. Picking VJ Edgecomb rather than trading the pick gives the Sixers a real future to build around with him and Maxi and them keeping the pick was really the first sign to me that they might be shifting their thinking in regards to Embiid and Edgecom as a prospect I think got very misunderstood throughout the process as well not like the Sixers the process the draft process you know what I’m saying leading up to the draft a lot of the conversations for Philly was around whether they should take Edgecomb or Ace Bailey third overall with the case being that Bailey was this super high upside scoring wing and Edgecom was more of a high floor 2-way player, but in reality, Edgecom has a ton of potential as well and is a crazy good athlete. And that would have been my selection if I was in that position. And also, for what it’s worth, I would have kept the pick. Going back to the possibility of trading the pick, though, those weren’t the only trade conversations being had around the third pick because the Sixers also had the opportunity to trade it in an effort to get rid of Paul George’s massive contract, which is an interesting decision to try and make. Obviously, they didn’t do it, but what’s better for the future of the Sixers? Getting, let’s say, for example, Larry Markin back from the Jazz in exchange for a package around the third pick and the Jazz taking George’s contract in the process or keeping the third pick but still having the PG deal on the books. I was actually a fan of the Lowry Markin plan for Philly simply because it was a nice in between of them planning for right now and planning for the future. But obviously either the Jazz didn’t think that was enough or the Sixers valued Edgecomb more than that or both. And in any scenario in which the Sixers want to start building towards the future, the Paul George contract is obviously a massive obstacle in between now and when it expires in the summer of 2028. And the funniest part about this entire situation is although the George and Embiid contracts were giant missteps by the front office, they’ve actually done a lot of things right with this roster. Maxi has way outperformed his late first round draft value and is a legit star in the back court. McCain looked to be the favorite to win rookie of the year as a mid-irstround pick last year before getting hurt. And the Grimes trade looks like an absolute win. And having that kind of perimeter scoring and spacing along with Edgecomb’s two-way game is perfect around Embiid. Now, the further you go back with giving credit, the more front office groups you have to kind of involve in this conversation. Obviously, throughout Embiid’s career, they have not done a great job and they’ve had a ton of turnover, especially at the top of their roster. They had the Tobias Harris acquisition and contract and the Jimmy Butler team and then trading him shortly after and the Ben Simmons debacle and then the James Harden trade and now Paul George too. They’ve just not found a way through multiple front offices to build any kind of roster consistency. But that isn’t entirely the fault of the current front office, which I think is actually the most critical piece of all of this moving forward. Realistically, when you understand all of the context around this Sixers team, the correct choice for the franchise is to move on from the Embiid era. Give up on any hope that he might actually be healthy at any point. See if you can rehab his and George’s value enough to trade them for literally anything, and focus on developing the young guys. That is objectively probably the right choice. The problem is this front office is not objective, and understandably so. They’re not looking at this through the lens of what’s the best thing for the Sixers organization moving forward. They’re looking at this through the lens of how can I keep my job and still be someone that’s running an NBA team. Since Daryl my was hired in 2020, the Sixers have certainly had their ups and downs. But this season could be the pivot point that decides whether he gets to continue running the team, which obviously completely changes what decisions he will make with this roster. if he thinks there is any chance of a legit playoff run, he’s going to do exactly what he did this off seasonason, which is to just run it back with the roster and hope. Now, granted, he might not have had much of a choice in the trade market, but still, there’s no doubt that Mory’s decision-m will be biased towards anything that lets him stay in charge in Philly because honestly, this might be the last chance that he gets to run an NBA franchise if things don’t work out with the Sixers. And maybe the craziest part of all this is the Sixers do still have a chance. Even though the league has moved on from them and they have two of the worst contracts in the league and they can never stay healthy and their direction moving forward is unclear, they could still make a run this year. The East has been decimated by injury already. And if everything went right for Philly this year, they could theoretically be the best team in the conference this season, which is a crazy thing to say for a team that just won 24 games last year. It might be a less than 1% chance, but that’s all the Sixers and their fans can hold on to right now. That slim chance of a miraculously healthy season. Because without a massive change in direction, what else are they going to hope

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The Philadelphia 76ers are the strangest team in the NBA… they won just 24 games last year and lucked into the 3rd pick in the draft, but on paper and (everybody say it with me… “when healthy”) they are a top 3 team in a very weak Eastern Conference. They should be a large part of the conversation for the upcoming season – they have an exciting young 3rd overall pick prospect in VJ Edgecombe, Tyrese Maxey is amazing, Jared McCain had a great (albeit short) rookie year, even Quentin Grimes was amazing for them! They have Paul George, they have former MVP Joel Embiid, this team should be a big deal!

But they just… aren’t.

#embiid #sixers #joelembiid