It’s rarely ever one thing that sinks you. Taken in isolation, Jahlil Okafor’s various flaws and transgressions aren’t so damning. He’s had trouble staying healthy at this early stage of his NBA career, but so did Bradley Beal, Kyrie Irving, and Anthony Davis. He got into a couple late-night scuffles during his rookie year, but drunk college-aged people, you might intimately understand, occasionally put themselves in bad situations. He’s a defensive minus, but plenty of one-way players before him have thrived. The league is moving away from slow, back-to-the-basket centers, but isn’t an efficient bucket-getter, no matter the style he employs, at least a little bit useful?
You can do this for a while, yeah, but-ing every criticism of Okafor’s game, body, and personality, and it all carries at least a whiff of validity because he’s only twenty-two and the armpit of The Process isn’t an Edenic developmental environment for any young player, but you know it and I do, in the way we know things that aren’t for sure, that Jahlil Okafor bound for bust-dom.
The Sixers apparently know this too, or at least they know Okafor has no future in Philadelphia, because Brett Brown has played him in just one of the team’s seven games, and Bryan Colangelo has declined the fourth-year team option on Okafor’s rookie contract, which is a harsh and certain judgment on a former third overall pick. It’s not unheard of, around this time of year, for NBA franchises to hand $80 million-plus extensions to lottery picks they’re not even entirely sold on. Okafor has slipped so far in the Sixers’ estimation that they didn’t so much as try to lowball him. They’ve essentially elected to terminate his employment with ample advance notice.
Of course, that notice itself is now the problem. Marc Stein has already reported that Okafor’s camp might push the Sixers to buy out the big man’s deal if he’s not going to get playing time. Stein surely has his sources, but it’s the sort of truth that’s obvious enough not to need journalistic corroboration. Okafor is officially done trying to make it work in Philly and will now audition for the rest of the league for the next six months. He needs a stage, and if the Sixers won’t provide him one, it’s best for both sides if he heads elsewhere. Colangelo will probably dust off the old let’s try to trade him before we release him trick, which, without looking anything up, has never in the history of the NBA netted an organization anything more valuable than a half-eaten bag of Fritos with protections that guarantee it won’t confer any time in the next three years. Such that there’s any drama here, it’s over whether the Sixers are going to have to pay Okafor to go away or not.
Players of Jahlil Okafor’s pedigree always get second chances. Anthony Bennett, who began his career 1-for-21 and has only technically improved since, played honest-to-god professional minutes for the Timberwolves, Raptors, and Nets after washing out of Cleveland in under a year. Thomas Robinson, Michael Beasley, and Wesley Johnson are all still kicking around after numerous disappointing stints here and there. Okafor inhabits that peculiar space that high-lottery talents do when they have failed thoroughly enough that the illusion of their future dominance is kaputt, but the league is still broadly, if temperedly, interested in what they can contribute. If he’s not franchise player, then what is he?
Here’s a rough grouping of non-star top-three picks (minus Okafor) over the past twenty years of drafts:
Complete Disasters: Michael Olowokandi, Stromile Swift, Darius Miles, Jay Williams, Darko Milicic, Adam Morrison, Greg Oden, Hasheem Thabeet, Derrick Williams, and Anthony Bennett.
Borderline Disasters: Raef LaFrentz, Kwame Brown, Andrea Bargnani, and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist.
We’ll See; There Might Be Something There: Jabari Parker, D’Angelo Russell, and Brandon Ingram.
Okay Players: Keith Van Horn, Mike Dunleavy, Emeka Okafor, Ben Gordon, Andrew Bogut, Marvin Williams, O.J. Mayo, Evan Turner, Enes Kanter, and Victor Oladipo.
More Than Okay Players: Tyson Chandler, Kenyon Martin, Derrick Favors, and Otto Porter.
You Tell Me What To Make Of Steve Francis: Steve Francis.
You can quibble with a couple of those. If you want to designate O.J. Mayo a Borderline Disaster, I won’t stop you, though I will cite that one dazzling season he spent in Dallas when he allowed himself to be coached. But the larger point illustrated by the above list is big-time busts have trouble finding their way in the world after it becomes evident that they’re not going to produce like a prototypical top-of-the-draft prospect. The reasons for this this are myriad and specific. Darko had no work ethic; Oden was a pasta sculpture; Bargnani played basketball like he learned the basic put-the-ball-through-the-net rule and stopped there. Even the players who cracked the More Than Okay echelon had their tribulations. It took Tyson Chandler four teams and ten seasons to truly shine. Otto Porter was abysmal in his rookie year and barely convincing in his second before growing into a rock-solid third option for the Wizards.
A lot of former high-lottery picks who ended up kinda-sorta making good found one or two things they could excel at and did the hell out of them. Andrew Bogut, in his post-Bucks injury-crippled but still helpful form, guarded the rim and dropped the odd pretty pass off to a cutter. Mike Dunleavy drained threes and elbowed dudes in the ribs when the refs weren’t looking. Derrick Favors is a strong, smart defender with a half-decent post game.
Which is all to say: what’s Jahlil Okafor going to do, now that his bloom is in the gutter, to keep himself out of the company of Bargs and Raef LaFrentz? He’s going to have to make a pointed argument for himself, and present-day evidence being what it is, he’s never shown much fight. In Jordan Brenner’s profile of Okafor that was published a few weeks ago, he cut a despondent, somewhat listless figure. I definitely feel like I’m the scapegoat for a lot of The Process issues, he says at one point in the piece. At another: I was kind of already thinking that I’m not really a part of this future. He sounds wronged yet not particularly fired up about it, though that might be an unfair reading. After all, if he were agitatedly popping off in the press, he would get tagged as a headache. Maybe it’s cautious diplomacy that makes Okafor seem like he’s taking two seasons of failure a whit casually.
But the Sixers are now being fully honest about what they think of him. He doesn’t need to do the same—teams can treat players disposably; players aren’t often afforded the same privilege—but he would do well to find motivation in it. Edge and intelligence, more than talent or class, are what’s going to get Okafor past this stumbling start to his career. It’s still eminently salvageable, but he has to know the severity of his predicament, the steep history he’s climbing. The clarity of his understanding, and the extent of his desire, as soon as he and the Sixers devise an exit, will determine the shape of his redemption. If he gives everything, Jahlil Okafor can still become something.
