A Bizarro Embiid Trade Thought
Damian Lillard has said he wants out of Portland because he wants to try to win a ring. It hasn't happened yet. Last weekend, Joel Embiid introduced a little doubt that he is confident he can win a title with the 76ers. Does this create an opportunity for the Blazers? What if they got aggressive and pursued Embiid?
Believe it or not, the Trade Machine blesses a deal that works for the Blazers to get Embiid without dealing Lillard or Jerami Grant (who can't actually be traded this summer). To wit:
Anfernee Simons, Jusuf Nurkic, and Shaedon Sharpe for Joel Embiid, is a trade that works. You can add in another one of Keon Johnson, Jabari Walker, Jeenthan Williams, or low salary player (up to $3 million, it seems), and the trade still works, if the Sixers want a fourth player tossed in. Obviously a number of draft picks would have to be involved as well. The Blazers have most of their own picks, so they could make something like that happen.
Would this ever happen? Almost certainly not. But let's entertain for a minute what the teams would look like and why they would do this deal.
Why the Blazers Do It
The Blazers don't really want to trade Damian Lillard. If they had a deal at the ready, it would have been made already. He's been there for 11 seasons, that's a long time! The dream would be for him to win there. And being able to upgrade from Nurkic to Embiid, you do whatever you need to do to make that happen. Sharpe and Simons and a bunch of draft picks are a small price to pay.
How the Blazers Look After the Deal
Portland would line up with a starting five Lillard, Embiid, Grant, Matisse Thybulle, and Nasar Little. Coming off the bench, you'd have Scoot Henderson, Kris Murray, and Kevin Knox. That's a pretty great starting five – you get two of the 15 best players in the league. Grant and Thybulle are good in their roles.
You'd probably like a better fifth starter than Little, and that could quickly become Henderson's spot, but you don't want to put pressure on him to start right away. The bench would be a little thin, and would come down to how good the two first-round picks are – Henderson and Murray.
Why the Sixers Do It
The Sixers have now had six trips to the playoffs with Embiid, and haven't reached the conference finals once. Is that really going to change this season? Why will this season be different? They lost Georges Niang, Shake Milton, and Jalen McDaniels – reliable bench contributors who didn't take a lot of things off the table – and replaced them with the combustible Patrick Beverley, and a guy in Mo Bamba who is not any better than the guys they already had in Paul Reed and Montrezl Harrell.
In other words, their playoff rotation is thinner right now than it was last season. And James Harden is already unhappy. Are they really winning a title this season? Daryl Morey is insisting he'll only trade Harden if it keeps them competitive. He managed to do the same with Ben Simmons, but at the time, Ben Simmons was 25 with three straight All-Star Game appearances, and in one of those seasons made third-team All-NBA. Harden will soon be 34, and hasn't played 70 games in any of the last four seasons. He wasn't an All-Star last season, he predictably fell apart in his team's two final playoff games, and he makes $35 million this season. It seems borderline impossible to suggest a legit player is coming back in trade for him, especially because his trade market is only a couple of teams, and may just be the LA Clippers.
In that scenario, you're left with trading him for 15 cents on the dollar, or keeping an unhappy Harden. Both are likely to lead to the same place – a lost season. And one more lost season with Embiid is probably the last. So why not blow it all up now? And if you are going to blow it up and trade Embiid, do you want to trade him to the New York Knicks, where you have to see him four to possibly 11 times per season, or do you want to ship him off to Portland, where you'd only see him twice per season? Furthermore, trading Embiid to a team like Portland whose other superstar is in his 30's introduces greater odds that the draft picks coming to you in three-five years will be good picks. Simons is a legitimately good player, and very similar to Maxey in that he's a shade shy of being an All-Star level player. Sharpe could be the same, and Nurkic is more than solid offensively. Maybe not as crazy as it sounds.
How the Sixers Look After the Deal
They'd be guard heavy. The starting five would presumably be Tobias Harris-Harden-Tyrese Maxey-Yusuf Nurkic-Anfernee Simons. You'd have Beverley, Harrell, Reed, Sharpe, D'Anthony Melton, and PJ Tucker coming off the bench. This is a) not a bad team, and b) a team with more guys you could sell off for parts if you're doing a teardown. Harden and Harris are on expiring deals, and Tucker only has one more year left. Nurkic is a moveable contract if you're not expecting a full return.
A guard core of Maxey-Simons-Sharpe-Melton is a really good guard core, but if you want to move one of them, they are all also all on moveable deals. In other words, Morey would have options to mold the team completely in his image, something he has been driving at by only have Embiid's as a significant salary on the books past this season.
Whether Morey is aggressive in tearing things down now or tries to make another run with the Embiid-Harden-Maxey core, or whatever rabbit he hopes to pull out of a hat in a Harden trade, this group is nearing its finish line. It strains credibility to suggest Harden will be here at this time next year, and unless Jaylen Brown refuses to sign his contract extension, the only real prize currently slated for free agency next summer is Nic Claxton, and he plays the same position as Embiid. You could squint and say DeMar DeRozan, but I don't think the Sixers would be any better off with him than they have been with Harden. I certainly wouldn't be excited about that possibility if I'm Embiid.
Blowing things up now would be aggressive, but Daryl Morey has never shied away from being aggressive. On the other side, if the Blazers could pick up Embiid without dealing Damian Lillard or Scoot Henderson, you have to do that trade seven days a week and twice on Sunday. It wouldn't make the Blazers the West favorite, but it'd make them a force to be reckoned with, and give them a solid two-three year window to win a championship. If I'm the Blazers, that sounds a lot more fun than pondering Tyler Herro's nightly wardrobe choices.