Joel Embiid’s sorta, kinda trade request
“I just wanna win a championship, whatever it takes. I don’t know where that’s gonna be, whether that’s in Philly or anywhere else,” Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid said earlier this month.
Is it fair of Embiid, freshly anointed as the NBA’s Most Valuable Player, to have made such a deliberate statement of his intent and in doing so effectively put the Philadelphia 76ers on notice?
The Sixers, as currently constructed, are there or thereabouts in the title race. They’re a perennial if-they-can-put-it-all-together darling with a deep supporting cast, an emerging star in Tyrese Maxey and a general manager with a penchant for bringing in ace talent. Why would Embiid want to leave that?
On the other hand, after an off-season that many teams would consider tumultuous – the Sixers, for their part, might consider it pretty standard at this point – maybe Embiid has a point?
Just this off-season, Joel Embiid’s latest partner in crime in James Harden has, after an up-and-down playoff performance, made it very public that he wants out. The fact that he’s opted into the final year of his deal tells us more about the punitive nature of the new CBA on the NBA’s middle class than it does Harden’s intentions. Rather than signing a ‘suitable’ offer as a free agent, the dearth of mid-to-high tier deals available to fading stars, like Harden, has forced him to re-up with Philadelphia and attempt to force through a trade; a concept Harden is well acquainted with.
Where Harden has run into a roadblock is that Sixers General Manager Daryl Morey is – rightly – holding out for the maximum return for his man. The Los Angeles Clippers, at this point the only team showing serious interest, are putting forth offers–again, rightly–that are congruent to an aging star with a spotty playoff history and a less-than-ideal approach to maintaining his body.
This sort of drama has sadly been the norm for the Sixers throughout Embiid’s career.
The Cameroonian big man would likely have been the No. 1 overall pick in the 2014 NBA draft, despite having only played the sport for less than five years at that point, if not for some significant injury concerns. Those concerns proved well founded as Embiid missed not only his rookie but also his sophomore years in the NBA due to injury. He’s still yet to reach the 70-game plateau in a single season.
Whilst Joel Embiid was being wrapped in cotton wool, former Sixers GM Sam Hinkie implemented his dramatic plan, known as The Process, to garner as many peachy draft picks as possible. He traded away solid veterans like Thaddeus Young and former Rookie of the Year winner Michael Carter-Williams, as a result rolling out one of the worst teams of the modern era.
The reward for such ineptitude was another three top three draft picks: Jahlil Okafor, Ben Simmons and Markelle Fultz. Hoo, boy! Those three have all earned more column inches than could be measured over their NBA journeys.
Okafor, the No. 3 overall selection in 2015, profited from Embiid’s enforced absence posting 17 points and seven rebounds on his way to earning All-Rookie honours. It went downhill from there, though. On the court, his positional overlap with the clearly superior Embiid was very real with neither benefiting from the other’s presence. Off the court, it was ugly almost immediately. Okafor was picked up by the police for travelling at more than double the speed limit as a rookie, before getting into three separate altercations with fans, including one with a fan who told the player that the Sixers ‘sucked’. That fan, to be fair, told no lies.
Every day it appears more obvious that Ben Simmons enjoys the NBA lifestyle more than the actual NBA–or basketball in general. His first love is Australian Rules Football, a sport at which he would have excelled professionally, though he earned a fraction of the scratch he has as an NBA baller. That may explain Simmons’s apparent refusal to play through injury, to improve his game or to accept responsibility for his play. He’s got his money. His goal has been reached.
The tale of Markelle Fultz is simply bizarre. Depending on who you ask, Fultz either suffered a debilitating shoulder injury, suffered some form of mental breakdown that rendered him unable to shoot or, perhaps, neither. Whilst Fultz has turned himself into a solid starting point guard as a member of the Orlando Magic – he is undoubtedly one of the NBA’s feel-good stories – he’s not lived up to the billing of a No. 1 pick.
Outside of the lottery, the team made some disastrous draft moves, as well. Longtime coach Brett Brown – promoted to temporary General Manager under ridiculous circumstances that we’ll touch on later – drafted Mikal Bridges with the No. 10 pick in 2018. Nice work. Unfortunately, he then traded Bridges for hyper-athletic wing Zhaire Smith, who almost died on team premises due to an allergic reaction.
The Process aside, the team has made a series of questionable moves in building around Embiid. They signed an aging Al Horford who, if nothing else, eliminated one of the league’s best defenders of Embiid. He also eliminated the Sixers’ spacing.
The Sixers swung for the fences in getting Jimmy Butler for cents on the dollar from a desperate Minnesota Timberwolves. Butler came, saw, napalmed the bejeesus out of the place, and took off for South Beach. It’s turned out alright for Jimmy since. With Butler gone, the team chose to pay superstar money to a high-end role player in Tobias Harris.
Now, back to the reason that Brown was in temporary charge of the Sixers’ front office. Strap yourselves in before reading this one, folks. Back in 2018, The Ringer’s Ben Deitrich uncovered a Twitter account that was surreptitiously aligned with then GM Bryan Colangelo’s wife. Deitrich’s investigation then led to the discovery of five accounts sharing sensitive information with the public. To nobody’s surprise, Colangelo and his giant collars were never heard from again. Not that he was a great loss to the club: He was the man that traded into Fultz when he could have had Jayson Tatum.
For all of their calamities since drafting Joel Embiid, the Sixers have remained competitive. Five 2nd round appearances in the past six seasons, three of those going to a game seven, one of those a heartbreaker to the eventual champs in 2018-19, the Toronto Raptors. Many teams would love to be so unfortunate.
It also can’t be denied that at least part of the blame for the Sixers’ playoff failings lies at the feet of Embiid. Injuries, a lack of conditioning, some bizarre passivity and a little bit of old-fashioned bad luck have all restricted Embiid in his playoff career. For better or worse, where Embiid goes, the Sixers follow.
Still, Philly has repeatedly fallen short of expectations throughout Embiid’s career, under various coaches and Front Office regimes. With Harden wanting out and starlet Maxey unsigned as Morey dreams of max cap space in an era where that is less useful than ever, The Sixers seem set to fall short of the promised land once again.
Is it any wonder Embiid has put his team on notice?
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