Sixers

This SI Article Is Making Me Cry

By Kyle Scott

Published: Mar 1st, 2017 · 12:39 PM EST

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SI.com put together a little roundtable discussion on the foundering Sixers, and my eye ducts are now filled with a salty, viscous substance. No, I’m not blowing my way to the top of the two-man corporate hierarchy of which I am already firmly in charge– I am crying:

So while everyone wants to scream that The Process is over now that Colangelo is in office, I see it as a continuation under new management. Philly preemptively shut down Ben Simmons for the entire season. Joel Embiid may not play again this year. The team traded away one of its best pieces (Nerlens Noel) for a jar of walnuts and gave away another veteran (Ersan Ilyasova) for not much else.

So are the 76ers still tanking under Bryan Colangelo? Of course they are! Nothing has changed. Philly is still hopelessly at the mercy of ping-pong balls. Maybe Ben Simmons and Embiid get healthy. Maybe the 76ers get another lottery stud (or two) and morph into a contender by 2020. Or… maybe not. You might have trusted The Process under Hinkie, but do you trust it under Colangelo?

No, I don’t. They replaced a guy who turned useless cap space into second picks with a guy who turned NERLENS NOEL into second round picks. I have no idea how Sam Hinkie would’ve handled the trade deadline with Noel, but I am almost certain season ticket holders wouldn’t be hate-fucking their ticket strips right now had he been running the show last week.

More:

Colangelo offered that Noel was going to command starter-level salary as a restricted free agent this off-season, and those dollars simply didn’t fit into the Sixers’ cap figure when building a team around Joel Embiid at center. A worldly-talented, 7’2 behemoth… who has missed two seasons and likely won’t play more than 31 games this season.

Jahlil Okafor isn’t the team’s fail-safe at the position either, as Colangelo later added he hoped to one day soon trade the Duke product into a starting role similar to Noel’s greener pastures in Dallas. It’s a bold sacrifice that is highly complimentary of Embiid’s skillset, yet utterly devoid of pragmatism. And with no guarantee Embiid will ever surpass 40 games in a season, Colangelo dealt the only 20-year-old in NBA history to average 1.5 blocks and 1.5 steals per game for the same return as trading Ersan Ilyasova.

This is what I was saying last week– the Sixers doubled down on Joel Embiid as their centerpiece literally as his knee was beginning to swell up, a reality that I suspect will lead to yet another surgery.

Some argue that they are doomed anyway if Embiid goes down. Fair. But Ben Simmons, Nerlens Noel and a top lottery pick this year could’ve still made for one fine core around which the Sixers could’ve built. It’s not like you can’t build a winning team with Noel at center– your focus would just have to be elsewhere. Now they’re stuck with the doughy, lazy body of Jahlil Okafor and the unreasonably high expectations for small-sample-size-alert Richaun Holmes if Embiid loses a limb. Neat.