Ordinarily, when you come away with arguably the best prospect in the NBA Draft, your franchise had a good night. This is especially true if you didn’t have to break the bank in a trade or if you weren’t the team who tanked properly, lucked up and landed the top pick. The 76ers of Philadelphia may have done just that on Thursday night, which is exactly why their entire fan base should be in a world of panic today.
Former Duke center and recent National Champion Jahlil Okafor somewhat surprisingly fell to third overall, where the Sixers and general manager Sam Hinkie were waiting in the wings to pluck the 6’11” Chicagoan from the pool of prospects to make him the latest lab rat in Hinkie’s “Sambagging” initiative.
Offensively, Okafor is one of the most polished 19-year-old post players the draft has seen in recent years. The ACC Player of the Year and First Team All-American averaged 17.3 points and 8.6 rebounds in his lone season at Duke. Forget what you’ve heard: he’s a better talent than the last two big men Philadelphia acquired in the lottery on draft night 2013 and 2014, Nerlens Noel and Joel Embiid, in large part due to Noel and Embiid both suffering devastating injuries in college.
Jahlil was universally recognized as this year’s best pro prospect for roughly 90% of the college basketball season. Knowing this, Hinkie (and analytics guru) did not hesitate to pull the trigger on a “generational” talent in Okafor. On the surface, this is why he was the pick— the other reason that you’re less likely to hear in any press conference is the Sixers are all about “acquiring assets” and even if Philly did double-down triple-down on their big man picks, they can always move one or more of these players in a trade if necessary.
Keep this up Hinkie and it’ll be back to managing that Mattress Warehouse for you.
Here’s the problem with this line of thinking: there’s about 50 problems with this line of thinking.
For starters, the injuries to Noel and Embiid, and Embiid’s recent prognosis which may call for him to miss ANOTHER full season (remember last June when we said it would be a disaster if the Cavs took Embiid over Wiggins?) greatly erodes the trade value for these players. As talented as he might be…might be…Embiid’s injury history at this point won’t net any worthwhile asset for Philadelphia, should Hinkie decide to move on from him. Noel is coming off of a solid campaign, averaging 10 points, eight rebounds and two blocks a game, but he too missed all of his rookie season due to injury (and still lacks a refined offensive game). If he as so much as catches a cold next season, his trade stock is down the crapper with Embiid’s.
Sidebar: Embiid still might be the MVP of Twitter though. So all is not lost. Check out tweet immediately after Okafor was picked— that’s your other franchise center, Philly.
OK……….. Lol
— Joel Embiid (@JoelEmbiid) June 25, 2015
The 76ers will want to keep at least one of these guys, right? They certainty can’t keep them all since all three occupy the same space on the court. None of these players can shoot outside of 10 feet. In fact, Noel took 79% of his shots inside 10 feet last season, while Embiid took 80% of his shots inside eight feet as a freshman at Kansas. Therefore, any best case scenario involving these three players will almost automatically result in at least one of them being shipped out of town. This after the Hinkie sold the good people of Philadelphia a dream each of the last three draft nights.
What kind of tension might that create in the locker room? These players won’t be growing together with a common goal like Durant, Westbrook and Harden did. They’ll constantly be at each other’s neck in search of daddy’s approval. This is unhealthy competition at it’s finest, the result of which will serve as carbon monoxide to this impressionable group (who exactly is the veteran presence on this team again?).
Trades are all about negotiation; negotiations are all about leverage. Any team that may be up for rolling the dice on one of these young centers down the road — armed with the knowledge that they’ve already been beaten out for the job of Philly’s cornerstone big man, because Hinkie won’t be trading away “the good one” — will have the capacity to lowball the Sixers in any potential deal. Other GMs have been hip to Philly’s scheme since 2013— they’ll also know Hinkie will be desperate to make a deal because he knows Noel, Embiid and Okafor can’t play together. So what can they really expect to get in return? It won’t be third-overall-pick-in-the-draft value, that’s for sure. The other option is packaging multiple assets and potentially getting taken to the cleaners.
Sidebar: Oh, and the whole league seems to be latching onto this small-ball phenomenon. So if another team’s GM believes in that sort of thing, how many realistic suitors will there be for one of Hinkie’s rent-a-centers?
Under the current format, tanking is a wonderful thing. It’s how the Cavaliers landed LeBron James the first time. In football, it’s how the Indianapolis Colts found their heir apparent to Peyton Manning. What the Philadelphia 76ers are doing, tanking without a code or purpose, is diabolical and cheapens the integrity of the sport. For Philly’s plan of stumbling upon its franchise player like they’re searching for a hotel room light switch in the dark to work, so many things have to go rightly wrong, or wrongly right. It has to be the right draft with the right player(s); they need to land the right pick so that player is on the board when they pick, they have to make the correct pick and the player needs to be healthy (Ha!). And then that player needs to be groomed properly, with the right mix of coaches and veteran players in the locker room because every 19-year-old hot shot needs to properly learn how to be a professional basketball player.
Another center/player who won’t help them for 6 years? I hope dude is rocking this shirt ironically.
The Sixers big man mess is only the tip of the iceberg. Trading away a former Rookie of the Year (I was never a huge Michael Carter-Williams fan, though he did show me something in the playoffs), drafting a European project in the lottery last year and stashing, piling up second round picks for no real rhyme or reason and failing to find a point guard of the future in this point guard driven NBA are all factors that have contributed to their current predicament. And while Hinkie continues to pitch his Sambagging protocol, — with #TrustTheProcess actually becoming a thing — the fans are continuously charged good money to watch this management group throw away season after season on a strategy centered around magic beans and empty promises. With Phillies manager Ryne Sandberg stepping down amidst the worst record in baseball and Chip Kelly readily ditching every recognizable face on the Eagles roster this spring, you’d think the Philadelphia sports teams are being ran by Charlie, Mac and Dennis.
Jahlil Okafor was the correct pick by the 76ers, but his selection simply highlights the absurdity that has presided over this franchise the last three years. And there’s no end to the Sambagging in sight.
Update: Although the Jahlil Okafor-jersey drop situation may have been debunked, since this column was posted, a story has come about that this Philadelphia regime has been fined $3 million by the NBA for engaging in clandestine trade practices with the New Orleans Hornets in the Jrue Holiday deal that landed them Nerlens Noel. Keep doing what you do, Philly.