Interesting debate around the two questions:
- Is the Philly "plan" working?
- Are Noel, Okafor, Embiid individually valuable assests
As to the Philly "plan", I think it started with a really good trade with NO and from there they drafted the best player available (in their opinion) 3 times and ended up with 3 players that appear to not fit together (or in the case of Embiid, may not ever even play). I didn't have any real problem with the individual moves. Noel slid because of injury, as did Embiid so you could view that as a value play. There is no sure fire way to rebuild a team from the bottom. Losing and drafting worked great for OKC, not so much for CLE (until they signed LBJ), and not so much so far for PHI. Not sure what the alternative was for PHI though.
Now as to the individual assets, it does not seem as though any combination of 2 of these players is going to work well together. There seems to be evidence that Okafor-Noel does not work well (there could be a coaching factor in that, I don't know) and it doesn't seem that Okafor-Embiid or Noel-Embiid is going to be any better. I think they could trade either Okafor or Noel and get plenty back for them (for example, the Celtics would probably trade Smart and/or BRK 2018 pick for either). Not sure how to value Embiid right now.
Would the discussion about the Sixers be all that different if they had taken Porzingis or WCS? Or Marcus Smart over Embiid? Or someone else over Noel? I don't think so. My point is I think Philly has done about what they could with the situation. It is not clear that Plan B or Plan X would be any better.