Joel Embiid Is The Anti-Andrew Bynum

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Dec 22, 2015; Philadelphia, PA, USA; Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid (L) and forward Nerlens Noel (R) work out prior to a game against the Memphis Grizzlies at Wells Fargo Center. Mandatory Credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports /

The Center of Attention

The Philadelphia 76ers had elite players before. Charles Barkley, Allen Iverson, Dr. J. In the history of the Philadelphia 76ers, there was always the missing element to make the team with elite players into a championship caliber team.

The center position.

In the history of the Philadelphia 76ers, the ultimate test of a championship caliber team was the quality of the center position. This team has three. Can you truly blame them?

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Trade a center, and risk injury which derails the team. Trade a center and make a mistake, and watch another team flourish on our bad judgement.

And so it was that this team fell to the bottom of the NBA deliberately. To find the three diamonds needed to win it all, the team had no way of improving their accuracy of picking in an NBA draft – particularly when those draft picks were in the hands of other teams.

And so, the Philadelphia 76ers began to gather draft picks. Trades were an NBA house game, odds were stacked against the 76ers. Free agency was a waste of salary cap space – space that could be used to acquire more picks.

The Sixers chose the most certain of the routes to a championship team – similar to the path used by the San Antonio Spurs and the Golden State Warriors. Draft players and grow them.

It was that route that brought the Philadelphia 76ers to a center whose stock would surely have been the number one prospect of the 2014 NBA draft, but a series of injuries had dropped his stock. An injured center, named Joel Embiid, was a marvel on paper. The Philadelphia 76ers were once more desperate to begin building a championship team, and Embiid was the perfect cornerstone.

But, much like Bynum, he arrived too injured to do anything for the team.

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