The Philadelphia 76ers have asked fans to “Trust the Process” for four years. Before this season, the process has been mostly underwhelming as the 76ers went on to win a mere 22 percent of their games in an antagonizing long four years for the organization. With the rise of players such as Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, and Dario Saric, the 76ers hope to make the push for the playoffs and start contending in the Eastern Conference.
However, even with the amount of young and promising talent the 76ers have, the process won’t work. Serious adjustments will have to be made if they want to truly reward fans for their trust.
The main strategy for the 76ers during the process has been to accumulate as many top draft picks as possible while developing unknown players. As a result, their roster is completely loaded with young talent that expects a big payday when the time comes.
For Joel Embiid, that time has already come. Embiid’s rookie contract from 2014 ends this year, and he received a big payday. His contract will reportedly give him $146.5 million over the next five years. Embiid certainly is talented enough to receive this contract, but many people are skeptical of his extension.
Out of 246 possible games, Embiid could have played since being drafted, he has only played in 31 of them. He has battled through injuries his entire career and this contract is a risk for the 76ers. Embiid has been placed on a 20-minute restriction to start this NBA season.
The 76ers do have some protection in case Embiid is not able to regularly be on the court. His contract allows the 76ers to waive him if he misses at least 25 games and only plays 1,650 minutes in any of the seasons he’s under contract.
Embiid’s contract means that he is taking up a significant portion of the amount of cap space the 76ers have. Right now, this isn’t an issue since 9 out of the 17 players on their payroll are on rookie contracts. Another five of those players are taking up a tiny portion of the cap as each of them will make less than $2 million this year.
To put that into perspective, the salary cap for NBA teams this year is $99 million. The 76ers are comfortably only using $83 million of it right now.
What happens when the time comes to pay their young talent?
Ben Simmons looks like he will be one of the next NBA greats. The 76ers hope that Markelle Fultz will be their point guard of the future and Dario Saric is a reliable piece to their organization as he made All-Rookie First Team last season. Robert Covington’s a reliable starter they have on the floor right now and his contract expires this year. Saric and Simmons will be looking to get paid in 2020 and Fultz’s rookie contract expires the year after.
The 76ers will not be able to get away with paying these players anything close to how much they’re currently making. They’re going to be expecting deals similar to Joel Emiid’s, who will make $25 million dollars next year and will take up a little over 25 percent of the cap space.
Imagine the year is 2020. The 76ers have just given Ben Simmons a maximum contract where he is set to make about $30 million dollars for the 2021 season and Saric has received an extension where he will make roughly $20 million for the next season. Add that with Embiid’s contract where he makes $29 million in 2021 and that’s already a combined $79 million being taken up out of the $119 million in cap space for just three players.
The 76ers are required to pay nine other players to have a legitimate roster in the league and most of these players will likely not be on rookie contracts.
How do they give a contract that will satisfy Fultz when his time comes? If they do manage to give him the max contract he feels like he deserves, then how do they satisfy the rest of the roster? The other players will not take minimum contracts.
If they do manage to find players that will take those minimum contracts, chances are the roster won’t be good enough to win a championship.
This has happened before, with a different team. The Oklahoma City Thunder ran into this exact same problem with Russell Westbrook, Kevin Durant, Serge Ibaka, and James Harden in 2012. They didn’t have enough money to give Harden what he was worth. He left for Houston and became one of the best players in the NBA. Ibaka’s talents were wasted and Durant left for a better team out of frustration with the Thunder not being able to win a championship.
Another issue is that Simmons missed all of last season due to an injury and Fultz already sustained a sprained left ankle in the pre-season. There’s no guarantee that these players will become what the 76ers hope they will be. They have no elite shooters aside from J.J. Reddick, an aging veteran that is only under contract for this year. In a league where three-point shooting is becoming vital to winning, the 76ers can’t say that’s an asset for them like the Cavaliers and Warriors can.
All this being said, the process has made the 76ers a much better team than they were four years ago. They legitimately have a shot to compete in the Eastern Conference and make it to the playoffs with the amount of talent on their roster. They’re still a long way from getting to a championship level. If they want to get serious, the process is going to need some adjustments.
