Where is Nerlens?

[eagereyez]

If Noel is still here after the deadline, any offer sheet should be matched IMO. It's clear that even at a max deal there would still be a market for him. You won't get as much in return, but since the Sixers won't have any significant contracts until Embiid is re-upped in summer 2018, there's no reason not to match. It is folly to let an asset you control walk for no reason.

Yeah, I agree for the most part. If the 76ers were up against the CAP or had multiple players who needed to be paid soon, I'd think a little bit different. As the roster is currently constructed only, Noel and Covington will be making major money, when Embiid has to be extended.
A worse case scenario would likely be Embiid, Covington and Noel taking up 75 million of the anticipated 120 million dollar cap in 2019. In 2019 Noel would only have two years left on his deal, Simmons still would have two years left on his rookie deal and the 2017 rookies would still have 3 years left on their deals. Noel making 20 million per the next 4 years, would have minimal impact on anything the 76ers plan to get accomplished.

The salary cap for 2019-2020 is expected to be $109M. It's expected to rise to $114M in 2020.

http://www.basketballinsiders.com/nba-lowers-2017-18-cap-projection-to-102-million/

[sixers hoops]

http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/sixers/20161226_Noel_or_Okafor__Trade_scenarios_for_each.html?mobi=true

You have to love Pompey. An Article about trade scenarios for each player that doesn't mention a single trade scenario, just a bunch of words stating the obvious.


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Lol. I wondered if anyone else noticed this. However, he generally writes the articles but not headlines, so the crap headline was probably not his work.

[AdotSmoove]

Don't count on that. The cap goes up again this offseason. Brooklyn has more cap space than the 76ers, I believe. If Noel settles down and plays near what he's done his 1st 2 years, he will get Bizmack money from somebody. That's 18 per, for 4 years. Not only that, a team can sign him to a Crabbe-like contract that includes a trade kicker. So if Noel gets a 4 year 80 million dollar offer sheet, that includes a 15% trade kicker, that would take him up to 23 million per if traded. That may be distasteful to the 76ers since he will be a backup, and their ultimate goal may be to sign him and eventually use him as an asset to trade.

How do you know he's going to be a backup? Just because Brown can't see the possibilities of ways to integrate them doesn't mean that a more skilled coach won't. Your role model for Noel should be Marcus Camby. Do you think that Camby in his prime couldn't have played alongside an Olajuwon or Patrick Ewing in his prime?

Camby was a way more talented player offensively than Noel is. Noel is as devoid of offensive ability as Ben Wallace was. He can't do anything other than tip backs, and lobs. Anything beyond that is not worth trying to encourage.




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His jumper is way more fluid this year, but yo his free throw form.


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[AdotSmoove]

if you're a center, and you push and body up on a big defender to get position, and nobody throws you the ball, you're not happy. just like you're not happy if on the other end your guards play matador and let their man just fly into the paint. or put up no resistance to long range bombs that that fly off the rim if they don't land. we all know what Ish did for Nerlens and Jah, and what they had to say about it. same with what's going on with Davis and Jrue right now. ask Cousins what he thinks of the Kings last couple of drafts. (we already know how Nerlens feels.) Isaiah Thomas is correct about this.

yes, i want to see what a really good backcourt does for Nerlens and Okafor and Embiid. and i'd rather be patient and develop talent instead of giving it away, even i'm sympathetic to the chance that a couple of our bigs could prosper elsewhere.

Nonsense. Using the false comparison of the difference between the Pelicans w/without J'rue Holiday and Okafor w/without a good guard is pure subterfuge. That's for people who don't know any better. With or without J'rue Holiday, w/without Tim Frazier, Anthony Davis is great... and he was great when he had nobody on his team as a 19 year old Rookie... and he was MVP great at the beginning of this season without J'rue Holiday. And there is no worse coach in the league than Alvin Gentry. No matter who the guards are (and the Pelicans have had below avg players his entire career) Davis still shows the basic skills of a great player. Same for Cousins. They both came into the league as Freshmen, both surrounded by terrible teammates and Head Coaches and still showed greatness. Holiday doesn't transform Davis into a good player (he's always great without him). Holiday helps the team have a better chance to compete for wins. Good guard play would help the overall team competitiveness (just as Holiday has helped the Pelicans) but it will not magically transform Okafor's basic skills and weaknesses.

So stop with the ridiculous "it's the guards, it's the coach" BS. It's pathetic. Okafor is terrible on his own. If he was good or a great prospect, the basic skills would be obvious, just as those basic skills have been obvious with Davis, Cousins and the other big men in the league playing with terrible players.

Okafor isn't terrible. He is a dominant post scorer. Problem is nobody cares about post scoring. If he was a neutral defender he would be in high demand but he's not there yet. Maybe never will be, but he has legit NBA skills.


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[LloydFree]

if you're a center, and you push and body up on a big defender to get position, and nobody throws you the ball, you're not happy. just like you're not happy if on the other end your guards play matador and let their man just fly into the paint. or put up no resistance to long range bombs that that fly off the rim if they don't land. we all know what Ish did for Nerlens and Jah, and what they had to say about it. same with what's going on with Davis and Jrue right now. ask Cousins what he thinks of the Kings last couple of drafts. (we already know how Nerlens feels.) Isaiah Thomas is correct about this.

yes, i want to see what a really good backcourt does for Nerlens and Okafor and Embiid. and i'd rather be patient and develop talent instead of giving it away, even i'm sympathetic to the chance that a couple of our bigs could prosper elsewhere.

Nonsense. Using the false comparison of the difference between the Pelicans w/without J'rue Holiday and Okafor w/without a good guard is pure subterfuge. That's for people who don't know any better. With or without J'rue Holiday, w/without Tim Frazier, Anthony Davis is great... and he was great when he had nobody on his team as a 19 year old Rookie... and he was MVP great at the beginning of this season without J'rue Holiday. And there is no worse coach in the league than Alvin Gentry. No matter who the guards are (and the Pelicans have had below avg players his entire career) Davis still shows the basic skills of a great player. Same for Cousins. They both came into the league as Freshmen, both surrounded by terrible teammates and Head Coaches and still showed greatness. Holiday doesn't transform Davis into a good player (he's always great without him). Holiday helps the team have a better chance to compete for wins. Good guard play would help the overall team competitiveness (just as Holiday has helped the Pelicans) but it will not magically transform Okafor's basic skills and weaknesses.

So stop with the ridiculous "it's the guards, it's the coach" BS. It's pathetic. Okafor is terrible on his own. If he was good or a great prospect, the basic skills would be obvious, just as those basic skills have been obvious with Davis, Cousins and the other big men in the league playing with terrible players.

Okafor isn't terrible. He is a dominant post scorer. Problem is nobody cares about post scoring. If he was a neutral defender he would be in high demand but he's not there yet. Maybe never will be, but he has legit NBA skills.


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Slight difference of opinion. In my eyes Okafor is not useful, because he is a much "less than neutral" defender and a much less than useful rebounder. Not useful = terrible IMO. What he is good at, is not useful. He's talented, he's not good. There's a difference. He's talented in the same way Tony Wroten is talented, IMO. The skills that are necessary for their positions, they do not possess. The skills in which they excel, have minimal impact in the NBA.

[Sixerscan]

Hot take maybe the guy that was our best player the previous two seasons and currently has a 27.4 PER and the team is net +27.1 with him on the court in limited minutes this year should get to play more.

Sigh so what thats kind of like being the prettiest girl in Indiana. Being the best player on 10 win and 18 win teams isn't saying much.

As far as the PER goes he's played 35 minutes. He's still fundamentally the same player he was last year. And the year before. That isn't good enough to max. Someone will because he's young and he can run fast and he checks all the boxes of what a modern center looks like so they'll hope he'll grow into a max player. We already have Embiid. We have about 15 minutes to play with at C. Even if he somehow proves the complete abject failure of last year at PF wrong we have Simmons coming back what Jan-Feb?

I don't want to move him for pennies on the dollar either but it is what it is. Lets see what BC can do. I don't have high hopes. I saw him mismanage Bargs talks to such a degree and let on the offers stunk then Masai isn't there for a month and has traded him for a first.

Wasn't talking about long term. Right now Embiid is capped at 28 minutes and Simmons isn't playing. I don't think they should be doing the two center thing much more but if they are Noel should be more involved based on his career to date.

it's just extremely odd that Noel has to "earn" his minutes back in the context of the team bending over backwards to finding as many minutes as feasible for okafor and Saric after they both shat the bed as hard as they did to start the year. They've both played at sub replacement levels and it's weird that brown won't use a more proven available player to replace them. (Especially given that one of his "goals" is to be an above average defensive team).

This years PER and +/- are as I said, based on limited minutes, but indicates that he's not exactly in over his head right now.

Of course there's probably some extra basketball reason for this. At the very least the fact that he wasn't around and didn't understand the offense/defense. But that excuse makes less sense the longer he is back.

[hookshot199]

Hot take maybe the guy that was our best player the previous two seasons and currently has a 27.4 PER and the team is net +27.1 with him on the court in limited minutes this year should get to play more.

Sigh so what thats kind of like being the prettiest girl in Indiana. Being the best player on 10 win and 18 win teams isn't saying much.

As far as the PER goes he's played 35 minutes. He's still fundamentally the same player he was last year. And the year before. That isn't good enough to max. Someone will because he's young and he can run fast and he checks all the boxes of what a modern center looks like so they'll hope he'll grow into a max player. We already have Embiid. We have about 15 minutes to play with at C. Even if he somehow proves the complete abject failure of last year at PF wrong we have Simmons coming back what Jan-Feb?

I don't want to move him for pennies on the dollar either but it is what it is. Lets see what BC can do. I don't have high hopes. I saw him mismanage Bargs talks to such a degree and let on the offers stunk then Masai isn't there for a month and has traded him for a first.

Wasn't talking about long term. Right now Embiid is capped at 28 minutes and Simmons isn't playing. I don't think they should be doing the two center thing much more but if they are Noel should be more involved based on his career to date.

it's just extremely odd that Noel has to "earn" his minutes back in the context of the team bending over backwards to finding as many minutes as feasible for okafor and Saric after they both shat the bed as hard as they did to start the year. They've both played at sub replacement levels and it's weird that brown won't use a more proven available player to replace them. (Especially given that one of his "goals" is to be an above average defensive team).

This years PER and +/- are as I said, based on limited minutes, but indicates that he's not exactly in over his head right now.

Of course there's probably some extra basketball reason for this. At the very least the fact that he wasn't around and didn't understand the offense/defense. But that excuse makes less sense the longer he is back.

I wonder if Brown understands the offense and defense.

[AdotSmoove]

Nonsense. Using the false comparison of the difference between the Pelicans w/without J'rue Holiday and Okafor w/without a good guard is pure subterfuge. That's for people who don't know any better. With or without J'rue Holiday, w/without Tim Frazier, Anthony Davis is great... and he was great when he had nobody on his team as a 19 year old Rookie... and he was MVP great at the beginning of this season without J'rue Holiday. And there is no worse coach in the league than Alvin Gentry. No matter who the guards are (and the Pelicans have had below avg players his entire career) Davis still shows the basic skills of a great player. Same for Cousins. They both came into the league as Freshmen, both surrounded by terrible teammates and Head Coaches and still showed greatness. Holiday doesn't transform Davis into a good player (he's always great without him). Holiday helps the team have a better chance to compete for wins. Good guard play would help the overall team competitiveness (just as Holiday has helped the Pelicans) but it will not magically transform Okafor's basic skills and weaknesses.

So stop with the ridiculous "it's the guards, it's the coach" BS. It's pathetic. Okafor is terrible on his own. If he was good or a great prospect, the basic skills would be obvious, just as those basic skills have been obvious with Davis, Cousins and the other big men in the league playing with terrible players.

Okafor isn't terrible. He is a dominant post scorer. Problem is nobody cares about post scoring. If he was a neutral defender he would be in high demand but he's not there yet. Maybe never will be, but he has legit NBA skills.


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Slight difference of opinion. In my eyes Okafor is not useful, because he is a much "less than neutral" defender and a much less than useful rebounder. Not useful = terrible IMO. What he is good at, is not useful. He's talented, he's not good. There's a difference. He's talented in the same way Tony Wroten is talented, IMO. The skills that are necessary for their positions, they do not possess. The skills in which they excel, have minimal impact in the NBA.

You have a fair point. If Okafor wants to stay in the league he's gonna need to start playing a lot harder. He always looks as if he's just going through the motions.


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[PhilasFinest]

So when does this "dominant scorer" tag get taken away from Okafor???

Ive rarely seen any type of dominant scoring from Jahlil this season.

[JojoSlimbiid]

So when does this "dominant scorer" tag get taken away from Okafor???

Ive rarely seen any type of dominant scoring from Jahlil this season.

He looks 10-15 pounds heavier than he did last season. He was dynamite at times offensively last season, really efficient and actually tried to make plays when the team needed it. Now he's content making one strong move a game and staying at the 3 point line doing these horrible dribble hand-off/half hearted pick to our guards. At first I thought maybe it's still the injuries, but honestly I think dude is just going through some things and needs to get traded asap.

[TeamHigh]

So when does this "dominant scorer" tag get taken away from Okafor???

Ive rarely seen any type of dominant scoring from Jahlil this season.

He looks 10-15 pounds heavier than he did last season. He was dynamite at times offensively last season, really efficient and actually tried to make plays when the team needed it. Now he's content making one strong move a game and staying at the 3 point line doing these horrible dribble hand-off/half hearted pick to our guards. At first I thought maybe it's still the injuries, but honestly I think dude is just going through some things and needs to get traded asap.

He's statistically more efficient this year.

Okafor was a huge negative on offense last year. He's still negative this year, but improving. The problem with Okafor has always been the big disparity between the aesthetics of his post/offensive skills and the actual impact he has on the offensive end.

If basketball were a one on one game, I'm sure he would be an upper echelon player. But his skill set as it is now is simply too limited for him to be a positive offensive player. He needs to get better at spacing the floor, playing off ball, setting better screens, attacking the offensive glass, and passing out of the post.

There's issues with people citing Nerlens' offensive efficiency (e.g. 'efficiency' doesn't really measure what could have been achieved with a more skilled offensive player, etc), but he's statistically a positive player already. And he warrants more playing time/consideration in future plans.

[LloydFree]

Noel went from worthless insubordinate malcontent to conscientious objector, fighting the righteous fight, in one post-game interview. Embiid has magic powers

http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/sixers/20161228_Hayes__Noel__Embiid_and_the_case_for_insubordination.html?mobi=true

[rzzzzz]

Noel went from worthless insubordinate malcontent to conscientious objector, fighting the righteous fight, in one post-game interview. Embiid has magic powers

Brown says Nerlens will get his chance. no matter how we got here, he could be playing next to Embiid, just as Sam imagined it. if there's chemistry and if he'll stay for something just north of ET money.

[AdotSmoove]

So when does this "dominant scorer" tag get taken away from Okafor???

Ive rarely seen any type of dominant scoring from Jahlil this season.

He looks 10-15 pounds heavier than he did last season. He was dynamite at times offensively last season, really efficient and actually tried to make plays when the team needed it. Now he's content making one strong move a game and staying at the 3 point line doing these horrible dribble hand-off/half hearted pick to our guards. At first I thought maybe it's still the injuries, but honestly I think dude is just going through some things and needs to get traded asap.

Nah Jah looks to me like he slimmed down a bit and is much more explosive. Look at our game against Utah a few weeks back. Last year Jah wouldn't have slammed on the Gobstopper like that


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[Sportfan73]

I don't think it will take long for the coaches to realize that we can start winning a lot more games very soon with 48minutes of rim protection. Biid/Nerlens for the next 10 years is drool worthy.


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[XDevilBoiX]

I don't think it will take long for the coaches to realize that we can start winning a lot more games very soon with 48minutes of rim protection. Biid/Nerlens for the next 10 years is drool worthy.


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Rim protection means nothing if they leave 3 point shooters open, has been happening for pass few years.

[eagereyez]

The sad thing is Noel might be much improved this year, and we won't know thanks to the logjam. We haven't seen what Noel is capable of doing with 30 minutes 60+ games at C since his rookie year.

[Ericb5]

The sad thing is Noel might be much improved this year, and we won't know thanks to the logjam. We haven't seen what Noel is capable of doing with 30 minutes 60+ games at C since his rookie year.

True, but I think everyone knows that he can do well in that role.


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[PhilasFinest]

Noel needs more minutes until he is moved. Okafor is the one who needs to go.

I commend Okafor for the way he has handled the entire situation, but at some point he has to be held accountable for his poor rebounding and defense.

[LloydFree]

Noel needs more minutes until he is moved. Okafor is the one who needs to go.

I commend Okafor for the way he has handled the entire situation, but at some point he has to be held accountable for his poor rebounding and defense.

Okafor should be commended for handling the situation the way he has. He seems like a very nice young man. It's not his fault he was drafted into this situation and had unreasonable expectations placed on him.

But on the other hand, he does not really have any reason to handle the situation badly. He's continued to get his playing time and continued to play the position he's most suited to his style. Everyone else has had to sacrifice. He hasn't had to sacrifice much of anything. He's just had to endure social media criticism, which is what every player has to endure.