Or Embiid could have been taken 1st and be playing with Towns and Butler now.
Maybe. Maybe not. Does Minnesota still trade Kevin Love in that situation? Probably, but I don't think that Embiid and Towns can necessarily play together, as that just seems like an either/or but not both kind of arrangement, and I'd much rather have Embiid in such a scenario. Who knows?
So did Cleveland. Imagine if they had Embiid right now with a Lebron?
I don't think that Lebron would have been willing to wait for Embiid, though, and I'm not even sure that they can play together. Like, Embiid can play with anyone, but Lebron, like Jordan and Kobe, can only, well, play with certain kinds of players, namely those who don't need the ball, because you know that he's never going to relinquish his control of it, which has always greatly limited the ceiling of his teams, imo, and it's too late at this stage of his career for him to change his style of play. I think.