Hinkie: Embiid's Health Played Role In Okafor Selection
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) --- With Nerlens Noel and the rehabbing Joel Embiid already a part of the Philadelphia 76ers' plan, there's no way general manager Sam Hinkie would draft another big man, right?
That is what fans were thinking on Thursday night immediately after the Lakers selected guard D'Angelo Russell second overall, and just minutes before the Sixers did indeed take another big man---the 6',10", 275-pound Jahlil Okafor.
Embiid, who is battling a "setback" in his recovery from foot surgery, was clearly on the mind of Hinkie when he selected Okafor.
"I'd like to think we would have had the courage to [draft Okafor] anyway," Hinkie said on Friday, when asked if Embiid's health came into play. "I really do. I mean it's kind of hard to know, because I knew and it's kinda hard to un-know where things stood with Joel, but I'd like to think we would have had the courage anyway."
It certainly sounds like the Sixers are concerned about Embiid, the 2014 third overall draft selection, who Hinkie announced will see Dr. Robert B. Anderson in Charlotte, North Carolina.
What will Dr. Anderson be asked?
"What do we do to give him the best chance to have the best, longest NBA career he can possibly have and what does that look?" Hinkie said. "And what is the range of those options and what is the upside and downside of each of those. And what is the likelihood of each of those. And let's talk through all of that.
"The way they are describing it to me is that, 'We would have expected it to be healed, even more healed than what it is showing now.'"
As for Okafor, a dominant low-post presence with savvy footwork and an uncanny ability to pass out of double-teams, the Sixers feel lucky to have him.
"We feel very good about what transpired," Hinkie said. "We feel incredibly fortunate, incredibly fortunate, to be able to have Jahlil and to be able to add him to our team. I spent so much time in Durham, North Carolina this year. If you would have told me part way through that we would get him, then we would have slept a lot more.
"But for him to be there and for us to have the chance to draft someone like that, we just feel incredibly fortunate."
The concerns with Okafor, or "Ja" as Hinkie stylishly calls him, include his speed and conditioning, his ability to guard a stretch-four aka defending in space, and his free-throw shooting.
Okafor struggled defensively in April's NCAA National Championship game when he was forced to defend high pick-and-rolls against Wisconsin's sweet-stroking center Frank Kaminsky, something NBA teams will certainly force Okafor to do.
Hinkie, however, says Okafor will dictate what the opposition does. Not the other way around.
"He's definitely a throwback in a real way and I think that cause a discussion about the kinds of things---today's NBA and what that looks like and how he fits there," Hinkie explained. "And you might hear some people say, 'You don't throw it into the post the way we did in an earlier era.'
"You don't see players like Ja in today's era," Hinkie continued. "Not very often. You don't see them. They don't come along in a way where you're looking to feed them over and over and over and have been commanding double teams since they were 12 and 13 years old, and been learning to deal with those. That's a style that was once common and is now less common. And now the question is, if someone comes back and enters our league that does that again, what happens?"
