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Murphy: Thinking out loud about Embiid, Okafor, Noel ... and Porzingis

Media members flocked to Stockton University this week searching for two things: parking spaces, and answers to the 76ers' big man conundrum. They found neither. One proved to be a minor inconvenience that is to be expected on most college campuses. The other: ample column material.

I was standing behind the baseline at Stockton on the first day of camp watching the Sixers finish their final controlled scrimmage when I started to think about Kristaps Porzingis. Sometimes I wonder whether the Knicks' budding star had more to do with Sam Hinkie's departure than we give him credit for.

A lot of the problems we're currently pondering would be easily solved by rewinding time to draft day 2015 and bodyswapping Hinkie with a general manager who announces Porzingis as the No. 3 overall pick instead of Jahlil Okafor. Put Porzingis at the 4, Ben Simmons at the 3, and suddenly Brett Brown has all the flexibility in the world to start Nerlens Noel as his defense-and-rebounding 5 man while he and the rest of the world wait to find out what to expect out of Joel Embiid.

There would still be a logjam, but not really a fundamental one. It's a lot easier to divvy up minutes among players of Simmons, Prozingis and Dario Saric's ilk than it is to figure out how to work a pair of one-dimensional players in with a guy who hasn't played in a game in 2 1/2 years and has yet to give us a reason to pencil him in for a lengthy career.

If we could just go back, it'd be so much easier, wouldn't it? Granted, at this point, that's neither here nor there. But it does make you -- or, at least, me -- wonder whether the 76ers would've been brazen enough to part ways with Hinkie given how perfect everything would seem to be set up for them with Porzingis in the fold.

While Hinkie certainly had a vocal contingent of detractors well before draft day '15, those detractors didn't really have any concrete ammunition to load into the this-guy's-not-a-basketball-guy bazookas that they had aimed at his face from Day 1 of The Process. They tried to make the drafting of Joel Embiid an issue, but the substance of such an argument evaporated on even cursory inspection, given their inability to identify even one player whom the Sixers no-doubt-about-it should've drafted instead of taking a chance on Embiid.

In a way, the Sixers' decision to draft Okafor was similar to their decision to draft Embiid. His flaws were well known. That draft was Karl Anthony-Towns on his own level followed by the levels featuring the guys with serious question marks. They didn't necessarily err in their evaluation of Okafor. They knew he had slow feet. They knew he would be difficult to pair with Noel. They knew he presented some serious matchup problems for defenses. But just like Embiid, whose health concerns were known to all, the probabilities said to take Okafor.

Except, this time, the probabilities quickly started to look demonstrably wrong as Porzingis emerged as everything his upside said he could be and very little of what his floor warned he could be (kind of like Carson Wentz vs. Jared Goff, now that I think about it). Whether that was entirely Hinkie's fault is another issue.

Everybody has a theory about how the Sixers really evaluated the 2015 draft class. There's a school of thought that says even if Hinkie had rated Porzingis as the No. 2 player on his board behind Towns, his ownership and fan base would not have allowed him to take a chance on another player who, like Embiid, was such a huge unknown.

Again, at this point, it's neither here nor there. All that matters is what we know now, which is that the only solution for the Okafor-Noel question is to find a mad scientist who can combine them into one complete player. Until then, the Sixers would be silly to trade Noel for an offer that isn't any better than one they could generate at the trade deadline. Like the Eagles with Sam Bradford, might as well wait and see if the offers improve.

If we knew Embiid was going to play 30 minutes a night for the next 10 years, things would be different. At this point, though, Noel still has significant utility for this Sixers team as it attempts to figure out what its identity is going to be. The only thing that might change things is time.