Tank Time? Three Questions About the Sixers' Future

MOC gets real about the 11-games-under-.500 Philadelphia 76ers.

The Sixers’ season from hell continues to grow progressively more infernal. They are 15-26, they have an absolutely brutal schedule coming up, and they will be without Joel Embiid until at least next week due to more swelling in his left knee. In light of recent developments, I figured it would be a good idea to delve into three key questions about the Sixers future. Let’s begin.

Is it time to tank?

Yes, but here’s the unfortunate reality about a potential Sixers tank job: it’s going to be almost impossible for them to tank their way all the way to one of the very worst records in the league. As it stands, they have the NBA’s eighth-worst record, but they are still four wins ahead of fifth ranked Charlotte. The odds of them out-tanking the teams in the top five to such an extent that they move past them in the standings feel very slim. The only teams that I’d say the Sixers could maybe surpass are Portland and New Orleans. So, the sixth-best lottery odds feels like the best case scenario.

If they do manage to get the sixth spot, the chances of them keeping their pick would be 66%, and the odds of getting a top-four pick would be 37.2%. As it stands currently, with the Sixers sitting at eighth, they can only keep their pick by jumping into the top-four on lottery night, the odds of which are 26.3%.

It’s important to note that the Sixers can still make a trade with Oklahoma City to amend the protections on their pick, and it doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing deal – they could, for example, trade Guerschon Yabusele to the Thunder in exchange for making the pick top-7 protected instead of top-6. Given that the Sixers have an abundance of future picks, including the Thunder’s own first round pick in 2026, the possibilities there are limitless. (Ed. note: Sources tell Rights to Ricky Sanchez that due to other picks/swaps that were later traded and could be affected by the outcome of what happens with this pick, the Sixers would actually not be allowed to have the protections amended on this year’s pick.)

I suppose one could still make a case that the Sixers shouldn’t pull the plug on the season yet – that they should still be playing their stars every night for major minutes, perhaps make a minor win-now move at the deadline, and avoid shutting Embiid down for the season. The 10th seed, still just 2.5 games away, is certainly there for the taking.

But I really think it’s hard to overstate how important it is that the Sixers keep this pick; barring something wildly unforeseen, like Embiid’s knee magically returning to pre-2024 form, this pick may be their only chance at being at all relevant in the next few years. If they lose out on this pick, they will go into next season with roughly the same roster, which has proven itself unable to achieve even a play-in level track record without Embiid on the floor to carry them on a nightly basis. They have practically no other avenues of adding another high-level talent; they are cap-strapped with Embiid, and even if they eventually decide to trade George, he’s not netting you a monster, franchise-altering return.

If, somehow, they manage to win the draft lottery, they would turn this horrible season into a franchise-altering talent in Cooper Flagg that could anchor them for the next 10 years; it would set them up for a legitimate two-timelines scenario with Flagg, Maxey, and McCain, plus George and Embiid. That potential reality, compared to limping into the 10th seed, losing the pick, and maybe having the chance to get blasted by Cleveland in the first round, is really a night and day outcome for the Sixers’ future. To me, it’s pretty simple: can either keep and nail this draft pick or they are staring down the barrel at four years of mediocrity or worse.

Should Daryl Morey be on the hot seat?

No. He absolutely should not. I’ve been critical of Morey quite a bit in the past, but I’d happily defend the overall performance that he had this off-season.

The reality of this season is that if Joel Embiid had been the player we’ve known him to be for the past several years – that is to say, a top-tier talent who plays ~70 percent of the games – the Sixers would have yet another 50-plus win team and no one’s job would be in jeopardy. It’s very, very hard to build a winning team when you have the second-highest paid player in the league, taking up more than a third of your salary cap, and that person does not play. We’ll talk about the extension in a moment, but as far as this year is concerned, the season is cooked because Joel isn’t playing – not because Morey blew the off-season.

Let’s re-examine the entire off-season, starting with the draft. Morey deserves a ton of credit for drafting (and keeping) McCain – he plucked a likely future All-Star out of a pick that almost everyone expected the Sixers to trade for spare parts. He also got Adem Bona in the second round and Justin Edwards as an undrafted free agent, both of whom have shown flashes of real NBA rotation worthiness for years to come. Coming out of draft night with an All-Star and two other actual contributors is a huge, huge win.

The Guerschon Yabusele signing was also a slam dunk. Caleb Martin, despite his struggles early on, is a good player who is absolutely worth his very reasonable contract. The Andre Drummond, Eric Gordon and Kyle Lowry signings were all pretty bad, but realistically, failing on a few minimum or near-minimum signings isn’t grounds for dismissal.

The Sixers Are Boring and Mediocre

Paul George, despite his sagging stats, still undoubtedly holds positive value as a trade asset; they could get off of that contract tomorrow if they wanted to. They were going to use that cap space one way or another. Thinking back to what the alternatives at the time were – trading for Brandon Ingram, trading several firsts (including the one that became Jared McCain) for Mikal Bridges, or overpaying a bunch of role players in free agency, I still think that PG is and was the best possible outcome there. Even if they executed some sort of part one to a two-part procedure to trade for Jimmy Butler – like signing a bunch of placeholder salaries in order to be able to trade for him – I don’t know how anyone could make the case that that’s a better outcome than signing George outright in free agency. Not only would you have to trade for him, but Butler is currently seeking a max extension that will take him through his age 38 season. Given Embiid’s health status, would that really be a better outcome than signing George?

Truly, the only undeniable L that Morey took this off-season was giving Embiid his contract extension. While it may prove to be a crippling disaster long term, I can’t ultimately blame Morey that much for it if the feedback from doctors who examined the knee was generally reassuring. Sure, it would have been great in hindsight to wait a year before negotiating that deal, but that’s generally not how teams treat their franchise players in the NBA. I suppose the question is, how many general managers in the NBA would have told Embiid “no” in that situation? Very few, most likely.

Morey is not a perfect GM, but you could do far, far worse in this league. I have no inclination whatsoever to suggest he should be fired.

Can rest or another procedure fix Embiid’s knee for next year? And if not, what happens then?

The answer to this is obviously impossible for me to know, but I can just say from looking at the history of it that it’s not very likely. Even if Embiid were to get some sort of meniscus transplant – something Lonzo Ball did, which is not possible in all cases – that would most likely take him out for all of next season. There are other less invasive, outside-the-box procedures, such as stem cells or the Orthokine procedure in Germany that Kobe Bryant popularized, but it’s unclear if Embiid is even open to that or if they would address his particular condition. I would have to imagine, though, that after the disaster that this season has been, that Embiid will try something other than rest before next season rolls around.

As tragic as it is, it’s probably time to accept that Embiid is likely going to continue to deal with issues like this moving forward; he will probably continue to miss more than half of every season and will continue to lose his effectiveness on the court. It’s a terrible, but not unprecedented outcome, and it’s a reality that we should all probably start to wrap our heads around.

The most concerning thing to me is that things just continue to trend in a negative direction. It’s incredibly alarming that the best that we’ve seen Embiid after his surgery was the Knicks series – that was eight months ago, and he was moving at maybe 85 percent of his pre-injury mobility. Still, he put up monster numbers, and he was able to play major minutes for that entire series and the two weeks leading up to it. Now, approaching a year later, Embiid finds himself unable to play more than a handful games in a row without knee swelling popping up and forcing him to sit out. His knee is in a worse state now than it was two, three, or even six months post-injury in the Olympics. Why should anyone assume that it will get better?

If things continue along this path, it is a truly tragic end to the Embiid era, and that contract extension is an absolutely franchise-crippling mistake. Embiid is owed $67 million in the 2028-29 season; if he’s continuing to play less than half the season at a non-elite level, that is borderline impossible for the franchise to overcome. It is the second coming of the John Wall contract.

Perhaps the most helpful mental framework to have is to write off this season and blindly hope that somehow, some way, Embiid is able to improve the health of his knee during the off-season. If they keep their draft pick and make a few decent moves this off-season, the Sixers should theoretically be able to trot out a team next year that can go .500-ish without Embiid. I suppose the hope then would be that Embiid can heavily load manage the regular season and that he can be as healthy as possible when the playoffs come around.

However, if next October rolls around and Embiid is still barely able to get on the floor, it’s probably time to accept that he’s just never going to be an impactful NBA player ever again. And, at that point, it’s probably time to trade Paul George and start building the best team possible around Maxey, McCain, and hopefully this year’s draft pick. Only time will tell what that type of team’s ceiling can ultimately be, but suffice it to say, that type of pivot would effectively be their only option if the Embiid era as we know it is over.

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Mike O’Connor is the best O’Connor in basketball writing. Previously of The Athletic, you can find Mike on Twitter @MOConnor_NBA. Mike’s writing is brought to you by Body Bio, supplements based on science, focusing on your gut and brain health.