What if Another Team Wants Joel Embiid?

There haven’t been any rumors regarding a trade for Joel Embiid, but if a team were to ask for him, what would be the price to move for the Philadelphia 76ers?

Joel Embiid is everything that is great about the Philadelphia 76ers this season. Looking at his on-court versus off-court numbers, it’s clear that the Sixers are not nearly the same without him, and that he really takes this team from being a bottom-feeder non-competitive team to a team that is actually competitive on a playoff level.

Playoffs. That word hasn’t been uttered about pro basketball in Philadelphia in a long time. But Embiid is almost singlehandedly changing that.

While the team has still had success without him, especially as of late — their win over the LA Clippers on Tuesday night was impressive — he is the most valuable player to the team’s future right now.

When Embiid is on the floor, the teams rebounding percentage goes up by over 5 percent, assist percentage goes up nearly 6 percent, block percentage goes up nearly 5 percent, and offensive rating goes up by 5.9 points per 100 possessions. The opponents’ rebound percentage, and offensive rating both plummet when Embiid is on the floor (the offensive rating by nearly 10 points per possession).

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A player like that should be valued and taken seriously. Very seriously. And he’s a rookie. I know we’re redundant in saying things like that about him but it really is hard to articulate with words just how special he is, so to make up for it it feels like we need to say the same things about him over and over.

The Sixers are one team that will be talking a lot come trade deadline time about many different players. Most notably, the team has three additional big men on their roster past Embiid — two of which who were also drafted in the lottery — in Richaun Holmes, Nerlens Noel, and Jahlil Okafor.

But what if a team were to call on Joel Embiid and ask what his value is on a trade?

After all, with what Embiid has shown he can do in his first season of playing professional basketball, teams should be incredibly jealous. Teams should be looking for a way to get a player like that, and fear the fact that they’ll have to play Embiid for a long, long time.

There’s a lot of teams — the Brooklyn Nets, especially — who are bad teams right now that don’t really have the means of going about a rebuild with draft picks. The only way for those teams to turn the corner is to wait until they finally do have a draft pick, to sign a superstar, or trade for a young nucleus or a superstar.

So what would a team have to give up if they wanted Embiid? For starters, a team would have to come up with a superstar type player for the Sixers to give up Embiid. Someone like a Klay Thompson, a Jimmy Butler, a Russell Westbrook. Not necessarily those players or those teams, but that’s what a deal for Embiid would have to start with.

Since the salaries won’t match up, the Sixers will have to throw in some cash considerations, trade exceptions, and potentially draft picks, thus rendering giving up the potential for a player like Embiid kind of useless for Philadelphia. So the opposing team may have to give up even more, offering role players, or bring in a third team to offer some players to build around whatever star is given up for Embiid.

With a deal like this, the Sixers do get immediate return, but forfeit their long-term potential. Some might say that this is the risk the Sixers make on a trade like this, and do still have some solid pieces in Nerlens Noel, Jahlil Okafor, Nik Stauskas, etc., for the long run, but that’s simply not how it should stack up. The Sixers are going to need draft picks, and may want to get some first-rounders from the teams they deal with, or potential pick swaps.

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The very finite bottom line is this — this is not a deal the Sixers will make. Yes, with the team now under Bryan Colangelo things have been fast tracked towards success, but he hasn’t ignored the pieces put in place by the man who once had his job, Sam Hinkie. Not even Colangelo can give up the enticing potential showed in Embiid for a guarantee at being competitive for one or two quick seasons. This is a long-haul type of thing, not a get rich quick scheme.

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Embiid is not on the market, nor will he ever be if he keeps playing like this and impacting the city of Philadelphia like he has in his first few months of playing.