Two things seem to be emerging:
1. Bender stock is falling, at least for now.
2. 3 pick is an over-pay for Okafor, and Philly will have to add juice to make trade work.
3. Philly is not in the driver's seat on the Noel/Okafor front.
It's not about the value. We all agree that the #3 for Okafor would be a pretty fair trade. It's that Philly (because of Hinkie) are in this pinch with 4 high-draft pick PF/Cs on the roster and the #1 pick in a draft where the top-2 talents are basically PFs.
When the other team has to trade...you are in power.
This is actually incorrect. What matters not is how many PF/C types Philly has and thus needs to trade, what matters is how many teams want young PF/C's, and how many are available.
If, for example, 10 teams want such a player, and there are only 5 surplus PF/C on the trade market or in free agency, then Philly is in the drivers seat, because they control the market, and demand is greater than supply. If, on the other hand, there are 10 such surplus PF/C available, and only 5 teams looking for them, then Philly will be in trouble.
(I'm using the term "surplus", because while Philly might trade any of their 5 such players, they'd only trade 3 at the very most. So while 5 could be on the market, only 3, or maybe just 1 or 2, would be moved. Again, this is a hypothetical, but I'm just trying to explain market power.)
I'm not sure it works this way. There would have to be an incredibly low number quality big men available in the league for Philly to gain an advantage by having a surplus, because the surplus on their roster (which is an imbalance) would take precedence. If the league was so lacking in big men Philly would just hold onto all three for now and wait (hope)for them to establish real value, and then they'd have an advantage just by being such a talented team and being deep. As it is, they are worried about poor fit and lack of development via overcrowding.
What I think is more important in this case is which team they're dealing with. If they're dealing with the Celtics the Celts are in a position of strength. 1. There are like 42 available centers in this draft to develop. 2. They have the assets to trade for a vet center. 3. they could sign a decent center (btw is Tyson Chanlder healthy and available). Not only that, but the Celtics would be doing the Sixers an enormous favor by allowing them to end their logjam by adding Dunn. Huge Huge favor. I hope Danny won't do that...make Philly a work a bit harder to get their leader for of the next 10 years.
Other teams in less good shape than the C's might tend to overpay (gamble) on a Sixer Center being a big time cornerstone piece. But only if they allow Philly to be the stronger party.
The market is the market. It is a collection of individual buyers willingness to pay. The price for each potential buyer is willing to pay is based on both utility gained by acquiring the player (in basketball this is wins) and the scarcity of said player (which can be aggregated if players are deemed similar enough to be homogeneous goods). Scarcity matters because failure to acquire a player creates a utility increase of zero, and all teams are trying to increase utility, again defined as wins.
The underpaying/overpaying notion is just wrong. In the NBA market, all teams pretty much know the most other teams are willing to pay, as well as what they're willing to pay, and so they pay just as much as they should to be the top bidder. Or they should. If they don't, then they've done a very poor job of gathering information and assessing their competitors. Where teams "overpay" or "underpay" is due to an incorrect assessment of many wins a given player will provide. As the impact of a given player can only be crudely estimated, some bargains or lemons may occur. The Nets, for example, overpaid for Pierce and Garnett not because they gave up more than other teams, but they incorrectly assessed how much of an impact those two would have on their team. They were willing to pay the most because they had a lot to potentially gain, entering Brooklyn and trying to usurp the Knicks primacy of the market.
Getting back to the Sixers, a buyers market is where there is more supply than demand, and a sellers market is one in which there is more demand than supply. In a sellers market, the entire supply should be sold to potential buyers, due to excess demand. Accordingly, the seller with the most market power gets to set the price, because they do not have to worry about being undercut, due to excess demand. They only need to make certain that they set a price that other teams are willing to pay.
To clarify my original statement, I'm only arguing that what matters is whether or not there is more demand or supply. You may think that there is ample supply to meet various teams' demands for bigs this summer. If so, you may be right, in which case it would be a buyers market, and the Sixers, necessary sellers, are in trouble. I'm not saying I know which way the market is going. All I'm saying is that the Sixers' necessity to move a player will not negatively affect the price they receive for said player if the demand for the type of players the Sixers are offering is greater than the number of such players available.