Doesn't he have like 3 or 4 more years on his contract?
A line up of:
Newman (Lakers Pick)
Saric
Simmons
Noel
Okafor
with possibly a healthy Embiid at some point, could easily be .500. Thats a really nice young team there.
To clarify, Nerlens has 2 years left after this season. Currently he's on the bench on a bad team, so logic would question if he'll even provide a significant enough impact to get them to .500
Noel has started the last two games. He clearly doesn't fit next to Okafor. One of those guys will need to be traded. He has a minimum of two years left on his contract after this one... essentially locked up until at least Summer 2018, but that's assuming they don't extend him... I don't consider restricted free agency to be "free agency"... I'm going to guess you're assuming that Philly doesn't extend him and he ends up playing for his qualifying offer in 2017-18. Far-fetched, but we'll pretend.
The premise of this thread has to make the assumption that Okafor is the one who is traded... why else would Noel still be on the roster in 2018? It clearly doesn't work. One needs to be cashed in. So if Noel stays and Okafor leaves, what do you suspect Philly got for Okafor in this hypothetical?
I'll turn to my fellow Celtic fans... what's your best offer for a 19 year old beast who is averaging 18.4 points, 8 rebounds, 1.7 blocks with 48% shooting... and just torched the #1 rookie for 25 points,12 rebounds and 2 blocks? Clearly you'd give up Sully for him. Would you also include Avery Bradley? Would you give up Marcus Smart + additional 1sts? Go ahead... tell me your godfather offer for Jahlil Okafor. Until someone gives me a better answer, I'll just pencil in Avery Bradley and Sully (Philly says hell no)... But if we were to think outside the Boston box... You got teams like Orlando who are overloaded with SFs... Okafor for Harris... who says no? You got teams like the Bucks who are possibly overloaded with SFs (Middleton, Parker, Giannis).. Okafor for Parker... who says no? But lets stick with Boston since it's what we know.
You now have Avery Bradley, Jared Sullinger and Nerlens Noel. Let's just pretend Embiid's career is over even though it probably isn't... so let's pretend they get zero assets for Embiid. They still have a guaranteed top 4 pick this year, meaning they are getting Ben Simmons, Skal, Brown, Ingram, Murray... They get the Lakers pick if it falls outside the top 3, so they might end up with two of those guys coming over... otherwise they get the Lakers unprotected 2017 pick. They have Saric coming over at some point before 2018. They have oodles of cap space. They have two more 2016 1sts coming this year from Miami and OKC. They have prospects with some value like Wroten, Stauskas, Grant, etc...
Yeah, I'd bet on them being a .500 team before 2019. A good GM could turn that team into a .500 team pretty easily. If they can't turn all of those assets into a .500 team over the next few seasons, that's a failure.