Will Philly look like geniuses if: 1) Embiid comes back fully healthy and plays up to his potential. 2) Saric comes over. 3) We acquire Noel for Brooklyn 2016 and that pick winds up as the 2nd pick in the draft. 4) The Lakers wind up 4th in the lottery thus the pick is conveyed to Philly. 5)Philly wins the lottery with their own pick giving Philly 1,2 and 4 in the draft and get Simmons plus two other valued prospects. 6) With all their cap space they sign two high quality free agents. The difference between genius and fool is often just luck.
Assign a probability to each IF and then multiply them to get to the probability of this chain of events all coming out in the Sixers favor.
1) 25% - Generous. It's 50% that he's not a complete bust given his medical issues and far less that he lives up to his potential,
2) 33% - Saric should stay overseas to avoid rookie scale, which is what I think his Daddy has been planning. I suspect he'll be a Euro bust, but that's JMO.
3) 10% - It's really 0-1%, but I wouldn't get to prove a point
4) 32% - Moving from 2 to 4
5) 25% - Worst record winning the lottery
6) 10% - It's really 0%. Sixers could well be the worst team ever this year, they have a bad rep among players and agents, and there's nothing about Philly that's going to attract FAs unless they are from there, and are homesick for cheese steaks which are the worst abomination in the history of food.
Comes out to a little less than a 1 in 15.000 chance (being generous on 3 and 6). Nothing genius about that. If this scenario comes to fruition, they'd be the luckiest Fs alive except for Dan Gilbert and the Cavs having LBJ decide to come home to save the worst run franchise in the NBA.