News emerged last night of Joel Embiid needing a second foot surgery meaning that he will miss the entirety of next season. For the most part Sixers fans had their head in their hands because, well..two injured seasons out of two is hardly an explosive way to leave your make on the league..
However, there is one silver lining that people are overlooking and he happens to be a very impressive silver lining. Jahlil Okafor. The first round pick in this years NBA Draft for the Sixers, Okafor would have been competing with not just Noel for minutes, but Embiid as well. Perhaps forcing the Sixers to trade one of the tree due to overcrowding. A lot of people were saying that Okafor should get the minutes over Embiid and now..the team don’t have a choice.
Last season, everyones favourite breakout center Nerlens Noel averaged 9.9 points, 8.1 rebounds, 1.9 blocks and 1.8 steals per game last season for the 76’ers according to Bleacher Report, making Okafor the perfect complementary player. Okafor struggles on Defence whilst Noel excels at swatting balls down. The roles switch on Offense, making the two highly dangerous coming into this season.
Okafor on the other hand, did this against Draft Rival D’Angelo Russell in the Summer League..https://vine.co/v/evrXbObvUWd
In that same game, Okafor posted up a double double…something’s telling me that this may have happened for a reason as Okafor looks to have a huge rookie year.
But for Jahlil, he has the perfect stage now. He won’t need to panic about performing under added pressure. There isn’t someone equally as talented waiting in the wings to get his own shot, he can focus on playing his game and putting numbers on the boards. The less worry for this Sixers team…the better.
For Embiid to be fully fit and competing with the 2015 first round pick AND Noel on top of that, there’s simply too much talent to distribute evenly. Two is a company, three is a crowd is what the saying goes. Now that Embiid is physically unable to play, both Okafor and Noel have a the perfect chance to secure those spots for seasons to come, and they are almost certain to go H.A.M this year.
You have to feel very sorry for Joel Embiid, after last seasons woes and now this, his career may not blossom for quite some time and he ma end up being traded soon. I think as Sixers fans we can all say we want him to succeed, it just appears there’s a mystical force telling us that that time is not right now.
