Another trade deadline came and went last week for the Philadelphia 76ers
without the kind of deal fans wanted. Then, the team announced Ben Simmons was
being shut down for the season and Joel Embiid limping off the stage right
behind him.
So when the best that GM Bryan Colangelo could do on the market was to swap
Nerlens Noel and Ersan Ilyasova for a couple handfuls of beans, out came the
pitchforks and torches and angry braying by the citizenry. In other words, a
typical day in Philly.
It’s been nearly four years since Sam Hinkie began The Process, a plan that he
admitted up front was going to be very painful. But he never gave an indication
of how long everyone would be asked to keep paying their dues for the House of
Sadism membership.
Hinkie, in fact, did not give much of an indication of much of anything at all,
preferring sequestration to letting the customers or the media know what exactly
he was up to besides stockpiling wounded big men and hording second-round picks.
Give Hinkie credit for the bold stroke of turning Elfrid Payton into Dario Saric
on Draft night in 2014, a move that could keep paying dividends for years to
come. But little else that he did has produced anything but questions that are
left for Colangelo to answer.
Of course, the answers that Colangelo can’t provide as yet are only the most
important ones going forward:
Will last year’s No. 1 Draft pick, Simmons, be able to fully heal from the
broken bone in his foot that cost him his first NBA season to become the tall,
long-armed, multi-talented weapon that leads the Sixers’ offense?
Can the exciting, engaging Embiid recover from his latest injury — a torn
meniscus in his left knee — to show that he can become more than a slam-dunking
Halley’s Comet whose brilliance is only visible on occasion?
Over the last four seasons, starting with his lone season at Kansas, Embiid has
had a stress fracture in his back, a broken bone in his right foot, a year-long
delay in healing of that fracture, as well as a bone bruise and a meniscus tear
in his left knee. While he did average 20.2 points and 7.8 rebounds in just 25
often-electric minutes per game, it’s also a glaring fact that Embiid played in
only 31 games before going back onto the shelf. You can’t contribute to the
games you don’t play.
Even if Embiid is fully recovered and ready to go for 2017-18 training camp, his
questionable durability is the dagger that hangs over the head of Colangelo and
the Sixers as free agency — and a decision to push all the chips into the
center of the table on the 7-2 bundle of talent and concern — approaches.
It wasn’t Colangelo that lined up Noel (2013) and the knee injury that cost him
his rookie season, the Embiid gamble (2014) and Jahlil Okafor (2015) in
consecutive drafts. That was a recipe that only could be swallowed by Hinkie,
who had certainly planned to swap them like trading cards, but was boxed in by
all of the injuries. By the time that Embiid showed his stuff this season,
Hinkie was long gone, Noel had openly expressed his discontent, Okafor had been
thoroughly exposed as one-dimensional and Colangelo might as well have been
peddling used furniture on Craigslist.
What Colangelo got for Noel was hardly what you’d expect for a talent that might
have gone No. 1 in the draft if not for the knee injury. What the deal for
Ilyasova brought was merely more loose change and the necessary room for Saric
to both grow in the lineup and feel secure about his place in the organization.
By the time he eventually unloads Okafor, probably before the 2017 Draft, it
will be another fire sale. But those are the ashes that were left behind by his
mum and reclusive predecessor.
There is plenty of reason to believe that Simmons can recover to still become
everything the Sixers hope — a linchpin, a leader, a franchise star. But it is
the determination on Embiid that will endure. Before the end of next season, it
will be time to decide if Embiid is a foundation to build upon or or just
brilliantly brittle.
Fran Blinebury has covered the NBA since 1977. You can e-mail him here, find his
archive here and follow him on Twitter.
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