Just being on a nothing coached , losing program thats set up for losing ..... Alone is enough to bring a person down. You can't be part of something like the 76 's are doing long and most winning ball players attitude would go to pot pretty quick.
Scorching hot take. Really hard hitting stuff.
This is old stuff. Embiid apparently was pretty frustrating to the training staff earlier, to the point where they sent him home on a road trip. That was also around the time the reports about his weight came out. Since then he's been fine.
Howard Eskin is a moron who whines about the Sixers because Sam Hinkie won't give him an interview.
Embiid isn't going anywhere until he at least plays a game.
SAQATTACK has a point, not only for player development but also for building a legit contender. If you are a quality free agent this summer, would you ever consider signing with Phili who is on all-out 5 year long tank mode and keeps trading the players they draft in a year or two, or would you sign with Boston who has been one of the top teams since the all-star break with a young , brilliant head coach , lots of assets with draft picks and cap space, and a winning atmosphere?
Philly isn't looking to sign big time free agents right now. They aren't trying to be a FA destination. They're trying to build through the draft.
Are they? They traded away their #2 pick in Evan Turner for nothing, and then traded away their top pick in MCW after a great season for nothing. That's not exactly building through the draft.
1. Evan Turner is a bad player, and was picked by the previous regime 5 years ago. Stop.
2. MCW was traded for a pick that will be in the to 10 this year or next barring a miracle. That's not nothing, facts matter.
MCW was a #1 pick, an almost unanimous ROTY selection, and a 6''6" PG who has put up career averages of 15.7 points, 5.8 rebounds, 6.5 assists and 1.8 steals at the age of 23 on a team who doesn't have another starting caliber PG.
They traded him for a first round pick that they might not even get (the Lakers have the 3rd worst record in the league, and the pick is top 5 protected).
So they may have, in hindsight, traded him for nothing...and if they do get the pick, what's the probability of a 1st round pick outside of the top 5 being as good as MCW? Possible, but not likely.
I think Philly dumped MCW purely because he's too productive, and there was a risk he would hurt their tanking efforts. How bad are you when your are so obsessed with tanking that you are willing to give up the very player you acquired by tanking in the first place, just to strengthen your future tanking?
This is like the 'inception' of tanking - it's a tank within a tank lol
Also if you want to trade away a guy you tanked for, why trade away the PG that you have a genuine need for? Why not trade Embiid or Noel, knowing you don't need both of them?
The funniest part of all is that by the time Philly actually have enough talent (from the draft) to start actually winning some games, guys like Embiid and Noel are going to be reaching the end of their Rookie contracts and will probably leave in free agency. After all, it's not like Philly are selling a "winning" environment.
It's hard to see all of this paying off to be honest...
If the Sixers don't get the Lakers pick this year, they'll almost certainly get it next year. So they didn't trade MCW for nothing. MCW was the starting PG while the Sixers were losing all those games before he was traded. He wasn't leading them to victories. The Sixers actually played better late in the season with Ish Smith as the starting PG. The Sixers rookies will be restricted free agents at the end of their contracts so they can't just leave in free agency.
Yeah but what happens if Embiid or Noel (or both) fail to become the star players people initially thought they'd be? What if some team offers them max contracts - will Philly match, or will they let them walk? They cold be in a lose-lose situation regardless. If they match it, then they are paying max contracts to guys who don't deserve it, purely because they don't want to lose them for nothing. If they don't match it, then their young talents walk and all this tanking was for nothing.
The 'pro tanking' guys all look at Philly's situation as of this team has two certain stars on the roster, but Noel has not proven he can be anything more than a defensive role player, and Embiid hasn't proven anything. MCW had already proven he was a good player, and that he had the potential to be a very good starter (maybe a star) in the NBA. It's entirely possible that, after all is said and done, Carter-Williams could prove to be the best player they got out of this entire 'tanking' process.
Also what if they don't get the Lakers pick this year, and they Lakers end up with a top 4 pick who turns in to a star, plus gets Kobe back, plus gets Randle back, and then ends up making (or just missing) the playoffs next year? Then Philly gets a pick in the 15-20 range. Or even worse what if the Lakers get even worse and finished last or second last (in which case they are guaranteed a 4th or 5th pick at worst) and Philly gets no pick at all next year or the year after?
None of these scenarios are out of the realm of possibility.
Philly took a big risk - a silly risk IMO.
There's an old saying in Poker that you always play the RIGHT hand. Sometimes you might choose not to chase that flush, and then the extra heart comes up, and you think "[dang], I could have had that!". But then you remind yourself that even though you may have won, the odds were against you, so you made the right decision.
I believe the odds are against Philly because they traded a former #1 pick (who WASN'T a bust) for a future pick that has zero possibility of being a #1 (or even top 5) pick. In my eyes, that's just bad management.
For argument's sake, lets look at the 2014 draft. There is not a single guy in this (apparently super-deep) draft that put up the kind of numbers that MCW put up in his rookie year. The closest is Wiggins, who put up similar scoring numbers but nowhere near as good overall numbers. Even if the three guys who got hurt (Randle, Embiid and Parker) all turn out to be all-stars in the future, two of those three guys (plus Wiggins) were all drafted in the top 5.
Looking at the guys who fell from 6th onwards, if you had MCW on your roster, wich of those guys (in hindsight) would you consider trading him for? Maybe Smart and Payton. Maybe that guy in Chicago (forget his name). On a stretch maybe Randle. Probably nobody else would even get consideration.