Sixers likely to trade Jahlil Okafor or Nerlens (Rumor)

[max215]

If we could trade AB for Nerlens, I'd be beyond thrilled.

[elcotte]

Not interested in another non-shooter.

But I'd happily do the #3 for Okafor, especially if the temptation is to waste it on the Euromistake.

So, you'd rather the non defender....very interesting.

He (and I) would rather have the scorer over the guy who makes us play offense 4 on 5.

So, you'd rather play defense 4  on 5. Very interesting.

[alldaboston]

If we could trade AB for Nerlens, I'd be beyond thrilled.

smh. Cmon people. AB can actually be productive on offense. And he's coming off a first team all NBA defensive selection. Noel, as best, can only get the defense down. He will never be able to be as productive as AB on offense.

[alldaboston]

Not interested in another non-shooter.

But I'd happily do the #3 for Okafor, especially if the temptation is to waste it on the Euromistake.

So, you'd rather the non defender....very interesting.

He (and I) would rather have the scorer over the guy who makes us play offense 4 on 5.

So, you'd rather play defense 4  on 5. Very interesting.

Not really. We played sully and KO big minutes this year. Would you call that 4 on 5 defense?

If so, then maybe it's not that bad, considering we had the 4th best defense in the league (and were 2nd before Jae's injury).

[max215]

If we could trade AB for Nerlens, I'd be beyond thrilled.

smh. Cmon people. AB can actually be productive on offense. And he's coming off a first team all NBA defensive selection. Noel, as best, can only get the defense down. He will never be able to be as productive as AB on offense.

Nerlens is already a pretty elite finisher at the rim, and he might be able to evolve into more than just an elite rim-runner. He's also a special defensive talent, and defense at the center position is more important than defense at the guard positions.

[Evantime34]

If we could trade AB for Nerlens, I'd be beyond thrilled.

smh. Cmon people. AB can actually be productive on offense. And he's coming off a first team all NBA defensive selection. Noel, as best, can only get the defense down. He will never be able to be as productive as AB on offense.

Nerlens is already a pretty elite finisher at the rim, and he might be able to evolve into more than just an elite rim-runner. He's also a special defensive talent, and defense at the center position is more important than defense at the guard positions.

I'm not sure about elite finisher at the rim. He catches lobs but if he isn't in position to dunk the ball he's not great at the rim.

My issue with Noel is that if I'm trading for a guy who will need to be paid big money next year, I want that built into the price of the trade. Okafor is more valuable because he has a lot more years left on his rookie deal than Noel

[PickNRoll]

If we could trade AB for Nerlens, I'd be beyond thrilled.

smh. Cmon people. AB can actually be productive on offense. And he's coming off a first team all NBA defensive selection. Noel, as best, can only get the defense down. He will never be able to be as productive as AB on offense.

Nerlens is already a pretty elite finisher at the rim, and he might be able to evolve into more than just an elite rim-runner. He's also a special defensive talent, and defense at the center position is more important than defense at the guard positions.

I thought Noel was the worst finisher in the league among ~7 footers.  Up from 46% to 52%.  I guess if you only count lobs the numbers are better?

[colincb]

Well that's called great GM'ing. Draft three centers and not wanting to keep neither of them. lol sixers

Great plan to draft them all and not support their development properly with a PG.

[PickNRoll]

Well that's called great GM'ing. Draft three centers and not wanting to keep neither of them. lol sixers

Great plan to draft them all and not support their development properly with a PG.

You have to trade the pgs to get the centers. Lol.  Holiday and mcw

[max215]

If we could trade AB for Nerlens, I'd be beyond thrilled.

smh. Cmon people. AB can actually be productive on offense. And he's coming off a first team all NBA defensive selection. Noel, as best, can only get the defense down. He will never be able to be as productive as AB on offense.

Nerlens is already a pretty elite finisher at the rim, and he might be able to evolve into more than just an elite rim-runner. He's also a special defensive talent, and defense at the center position is more important than defense at the guard positions.

I thought Noel was the worst finisher in the league among ~7 footers.  Up from 46% to 52%.  I guess if you only count lobs the numbers are better?

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/n/noelne01/shooting/2016/

71. 6% at the rim.

[PickNRoll]

If we could trade AB for Nerlens, I'd be beyond thrilled.

smh. Cmon people. AB can actually be productive on offense. And he's coming off a first team all NBA defensive selection. Noel, as best, can only get the defense down. He will never be able to be as productive as AB on offense.

Nerlens is already a pretty elite finisher at the rim, and he might be able to evolve into more than just an elite rim-runner. He's also a special defensive talent, and defense at the center position is more important than defense at the guard positions.

I thought Noel was the worst finisher in the league among ~7 footers.  Up from 46% to 52%.  I guess if you only count lobs the numbers are better?

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/n/noelne01/shooting/2016/

71% at the rim.

OK, so just counting dunks.  I guess that's a thing, but that heat map is UGLY.  From 3+ feet he is Greg Kite.

[LarBrd33]

Well that's called great GM'ing. Draft three centers and not wanting to keep neither of them. lol sixers

Its a sound strategy and I would have done the same thing.  Big men traditionally are a premium in the NBA.  Philly just took the best player available with two goals in mind.  First and foremost, they wanted to keep losing so that they could have an outcome like this season (#1 pick).  Second, by taking the best player available they hoped that the player would maintain trade value when they were ready to finally construct a real roster.  They could have very easily taken lesser players who would have helped them win. That would hurt them in two fronts.  First, they wouldn't be sitting with the top pick.  Second, the player might not have the trade value of a super prospect like Okafor. 

Right now the general consensus seems to be that Philly's worst case scenario is to sell low on Noel by trading him for Marcus smart or sell low on Okafor by trading him for the #3 pick.   Let's see if that Intel is correct, but the next couple months will go a long way towards cementing whether Philly's method was foolish. If they sell them for less than assets like Smart and the #3 pick, you can call the method bad.  But if that's the type of assets they can flip Noel and Okafor for, you can certainly make a case that Philly made excellent big-picture decisions in the draft.

[max215]

If we could trade AB for Nerlens, I'd be beyond thrilled.

smh. Cmon people. AB can actually be productive on offense. And he's coming off a first team all NBA defensive selection. Noel, as best, can only get the defense down. He will never be able to be as productive as AB on offense.

Nerlens is already a pretty elite finisher at the rim, and he might be able to evolve into more than just an elite rim-runner. He's also a special defensive talent, and defense at the center position is more important than defense at the guard positions.

I thought Noel was the worst finisher in the league among ~7 footers.  Up from 46% to 52%.  I guess if you only count lobs the numbers are better?

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/n/noelne01/shooting/2016/

71% at the rim.

OK, so just counting dunks.  I guess that's a thing, but that heat map is UGLY.  From 3+ feet he is Greg Kite.

Something tells me Brad wouldn't let Nerlens shoot too many mid-range jumpers .

[LarBrd33]

Well that's called great GM'ing. Draft three centers and not wanting to keep neither of them. lol sixers

Its a sound strategy and I would have done the same thing.  Big men traditionally are a premium in the NBA.  Philly just took the best player available with two goals in mind.  First and foremost, they wanted to keep losing so that they could have an outcome like this season (#1 pick).  Second, by taking the best player available they hoped that the player would maintain trade value when they were ready to finally construct a real roster.  They could have very easily taken lesser players who would have helped them win. That would hurt them in two fronts.  First, they wouldn't be sitting with the top pick.  Second, the player might not have the trade value of a super prospect like Okafor. 

Right now the general consensus seems to be that Philly's worst case scenario is to sell low on Noel by trading him for Marcus smart or sell low on Okafor by trading him for the #3 pick.   Let's see if that Intel is correct, but the next couple months will go a long way towards cementing whether Philly's method was foolish. If they sell them for less than assets like Smart and the #3 pick, you can call the method bad.  But if that's the type of assets they can flip Noel and Okafor for, you can certainly make a case that Philly made excellent big-picture decisions in the draft.

A team with a focus on treading water would have kept Jrue Holiday and kept trying to plug along as a 35-40 win team.   Let's ignore that possibility and talk about the post-Holiday strategy.  They moved him for the 2013 Pelicans pick and a 2014 pick (which became Elfrid Payton - which they traded for Dario Saric and a future pick)

Noel was their target at #6, because he was going to miss the entire season.   I guess a short-sighted GM would have taken the next player (Ben McLemore) instead?

Perhaps Ben McLemore would have done enough to help them win a few extra games (since having something is better than nothing)... and maybe the would have made a concerted effort to add vets on the team instead of intentionally tank... so the next season, instead of having a top 3 pick and being able to draft Joel Embiid, maybe they would have fallen in the 8-12 range and taken Noah Vonleh.   Or perhaps they only would have slipped a couple spots and taken Dante Exum out of PG need.

Then in 2015, instead of having a top 3 pick, maybe a non-tanking Philly team would have made enough incremental improvement to finish outside the bottom 8, and filled their center void by drafting Frank Kaminsky... or if they still were bottom 5, they could have taken Willie Cauley Stein since Okafor and Porzingus would presumably be off the board with a non-tanking Philly team.

So had they taken the short-range approach, instead of having Noel (baseline value is Marcus Smart) and Okafor (baseline value is the #3 pick), they might be trying to trade Ben McLemore and Frank Kaminski (or just trying to add more talent around those two role players)... and instead of being on the verge of drafting Ben Simmons or Brandon Ingram, they might be looking at a tier-5 prospect in the late lotto.   They could be winning more games, but further away from building a contender.

[ssspence]

Well that's called great GM'ing. Draft three centers and not wanting to keep neither of them. lol sixers

Its a sound strategy and I would have done the same thing.  Big men traditionally are a premium in the NBA.  Philly just took the best player available with two goals in mind.  First and foremost, they wanted to keep losing so that they could have an outcome like this season (#1 pick).  Second, by taking the best player available they hoped that the player would maintain trade value when they were ready to finally construct a real roster.  They could have very easily taken lesser players who would have helped them win. That would hurt them in two fronts.  First, they wouldn't be sitting with the top pick.  Second, the player might not have the trade value of a super prospect like Okafor. 

Right now the general consensus seems to be that Philly's worst case scenario is to sell low on Noel by trading him for Marcus smart or sell low on Okafor by trading him for the #3 pick.   Let's see if that Intel is correct, but the next couple months will go a long way towards cementing whether Philly's method was foolish. If they sell them for less than assets like Smart and the #3 pick, you can call the method bad.  But if that's the type of assets they can flip Noel and Okafor for, you can certainly make a case that Philly made excellent decisions in the draft.

Except that they should have taken Porzingis over Okafor. And I simple don't buy Okafor for 2016 #3 pick as an Ainge trade... he virtually never gets taken advantage of in trades. Sixers leverage = poor. Celtics leverage = not poor. 

Meanwhile, since you raised it, I reiterate the same old discussion from the 2015-16 season: who wins in a Smart-Noel swap? Both teams? Maybe thats just wishful thinking on my part. But I suspect with some small assets sprinkled in, Philly would be interested in that deal. And the Celtics absolutely should be.