Always Darkest Before The Dawn
If you think about it, there are logical reasons why this team has bounced along the bottom of the NBA for three years. Drafting, usually a source of new energy and talent, has been placed on a “next year” cycle with the selections of Joel Embiid and Dario Saric, as well as the trade of rookie of the year Michael Carter Williams for a first round pick that has, to this date, not conveyed. And so the ability to put off rewards until tomorrow has become compounded each season in the previous two years. Finally, with the best player available in the 2015 third pick falling to none other than Duke freshman Jahlil Okafor, the team finally picked their first healthy “keeper” prospect.
But that created a different set of issues. With the Philadelphia 76ers sitting on center Nerlens Noel, and looking to bring on center Joel Embiid from rehabilitation, there is a glut of talent, first round talent, at the center position. Okafor, Noel, and Embiid cannot find enough minutes to play one position, which has forced the Sixers to audition both Noel and Okafor at the power forward role.
But as one center explodes on either the defense or offensive side in the attempt, the center turned power forward suffered from playing out of position. But that is just another in a long list of issues. The team also is challenged at the end of games by falling into patterns of vanilla offensive plays, and having too few wiley veterans who can dig out a shot in the waning minutes of a game. So too, the team needs to produce defensive stoppers who can shut down the all too many playmakers who have had season, if not career, offensive outbursts against these Sixers.
Pretty bleak, huh?
But this team is not so far from the mark. When you consider that the team is sitting on some surprisingly good prospects in T.J.McConnell, Nik Stauskas, and even the like of Robert Covington and Isaiah Canaan as contributors, you have the base of a solid, if not playoff bound, team.
They just need that rally, that one player who becomes the keystone and allows the remainder of the team to concentrate on those skills that best fit the scheme. Whether ready or not, the team has likely already adopted the build around Joel Embiid, and for good reason. He is a giant at 7’2″, had little formal experience in the game of basketball, but has the instincts and touch of a player who has been at it for many years.
Some point to his lack of formal basketball team training as a huge detractor. I don’t see it that way. He arrived to the Philadelphia 76ers very much a blank slate with command of basketball fundamentals. For two years, while his foot has healed twice over, he has been engaged by the trainers and coaches of the Sixers to set his basketball training to their style of play. I think he will be the right player to build around.
Next: Plant And Grow