Well, here we are again, talking about backup center as a problem for the Philadelphia 76ers. You know how the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
It was predictable, yet at the same time, who saw it coming this quickly? In case you haven’t seen the splits by now, so far on the season the Sixers have a 112.3 offensive rating when Joel Embiid is on the floor and prior to Sunday’s loss to Detroit, the team was averaging only 92.8 points per 100 possessions with Embiid off the floor.
So, now what? Philly is again in need of a backup center and Ariel Hukporti isn’t magically going to be available. Players who signed free agent contracts this past summer are eligible to be traded on Dec. 15. By then, there are probably some more willing parties to negotiate with Mike Gansey on a trade. December is also when they could theoretically sign a veteran big still on the market on a prorated deal.
But the big question that we all have to ponder is if the Sixers can afford to wait just shy of two months before making a trade for another big man. There’s two paths that the Sixers can choose between now and the middle of December. They could opt to be more aggressive with Embiid’s minutes and overall availability than they would have if Hukporti was healthy. That seems unlikely. Perhaps the more plausible scenario would be Philly sitting on its hands and waiting it out, not altering Embiid’s minutes at all, losing some more games than anticipated early in the season, and making a trade when the NBA calendar is more trade-friendly. Are you willing to sacrifice your playoff seeding for this, Sixers fans?
Maybe the better question is, do the Sixers even have a choice here? This is where whiffing on Johni Broome, and Adem Bona not developing into anything more than he already is become particularly costly. Yes, those two players were recent second-round picks by the Sixers, and on some level all second-rounders are lottery tickets, but it’s also not impractical to want your second-rounders to become serviceable bench players.
If you’re unhappy with the status quo behind Embiid at the moment, maybe your only hope is that whenever Dominick Barlow gets healthy, he can be a functional small-ball 5. But again, is that a tenable option behind Embiid for what would be about 15-20 games at the bare minimum before more frontcourt help was brought in?
Philadelphia has not shot the ball very well from the three-point line to start the season. That could always be a remedy here as well. If the Sixers can have some lights-out shooting games, they won’t need a paint presence for the minutes Embiid isn’t available. Sure, maybe they’ll allow opposing centers to have big nights inside, but any team would trade 2s on defense for 3s on offense.
On some level, it feels like we’re just spit balling a bunch of scenarios and coping mechanisms here because it’s all we can do as we go through another season in which we’re routinely wondering what’s going to happen when Embiid isn’t on the floor.
It is interesting how much the narrative has ballooned up and down surrounding Embiid in the last 2-3 years. A little over one week before he suffered a brutal knee injury in January 2024, Embiid had a 70-point game against Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs. He came back from the knee injury and had a 50-point playoff game against the Knicks that spring. Then he won a gold medal in the Olympics only to have the knee injury plague him for all of the 2024-25 season. Just when it looked like he was becoming one of the worst contracts in the NBA, he went off against the Celtics in the 2026 postseason. We’re now again talking about how much he is missed when he’s not on the court again.
Sadly, it hasn’t seemed to matter who is running basketball operations for the Sixers or who the head coach is. The same problems come up regarding frontcourt depth behind Embiid. Right now, it doesn’t seem like there are any buttons for Gansey to push. Anything you get from Tacko Fall or other players you could bring in on two-way deals is a hope and a prayer.
But at this point, it looks like that’s all they can do until the middle of December.
