A few more thoughts on the Joel Embiid extension

One way to look at the choice the Sixers made in signing Joel Embiid to a five-year, $148 million contract extension is to look at what they might've done with the money if they'd ended up letting him walk. Granted, that wasn't a guaranteed consequence if they'd forced him to play out this season before agreeing to a new deal. If Embiid ended up playing 70 games and winning MVP, they still would have been able to match any offer he received in restricted free agency next summer. But they would have been risking him deciding to play out the 2018-19 season on a qualifying offer and then hitting unrestricted free agency and signing somewhere else. The posturing between Bryan Colangelo and Embiid's agent, Leon Rose, probably would have made for some fascinating listening. Maybe when the Sixers declassify their archives in 50 years. …

As it stands now, any argument for or against the contract depends in large part on its structure and the injury protections built into the deal. As of this writing, we do not have that information. But the deal will almost certainly leave the Sixers exposed to some level of risk above and beyond that which a team normally inherits in a multi-year contract.

Here are three points to consider:

1) The first question Colangelo and Co. had to answer was how they would have otherwise spent the money if they hadn't given it to Embiid. The answer isn't as simple as, "Sign a healthier superstar to five years and $148 million." If past years' markets are any indication, there won't be any superstars to sign. Over the last three offseasons, the only players who've signed with a new team for more than $20 million per year over four or more years are LaMarcus Aldridge (Blazers to Spurs), Gordon Hayward (Jazz to Celtics), Al Horford (Hawks to Celtics), Harrison Barnes (Warriors to Mavericks), Chandler Parsons (Mavericks to Grizzlies), and Ryan Anderson (Pelicans to Rockets). Obviously, any of those players would provide better value than a player who can't stay on the court. But there's no guarantee the Sixers could have convinced any of them to sign, certainly not the three players you could consider to be potential difference makers (Aldridge, Hayward, Horford).

Keep moving down the list of players who switched teams and it doesn't take long to move into territory where the contracts are almost as risky as Embiid's. For example, Joakim Noah got four years and $72.6 million to move from the Bulls to the Knicks coming off a season in which he'd played in just 29 games and averaged just 21.9 minutes per game. In the first year of his deal, he played in 46 games and averaged 22.1 minutes per game. Or how about Timofey Mozgov's four-year, $64 million deal with the Lakers? This was a player who'd averaged just 18.2 minutes per game in his career.

Sure, it's easy to cherry-pick bad deals. But that's kind of the point. Signing less-than-elite free agents is a wildly inefficient way to spend money in the NBA, to the extent that there's no guarantee the Sixers would have found a less risky way to spend their money than betting it on Embiid's upside.

2) With or without an Embiid extension on the books, the Sixers probably would have had more salary cap dollars than they could have reasonably spent over the next two offseasons. They currently have about $65 million in salary projected for nine players, including Embiid, in 2018-19. That would still leave them more than enough room under the luxury tax threshold to sign a max free agent, plus signing Robert Covington to an extension averaging $16 million a year.

3) The potential budget crunch comes in 2020-21, when you have to project that Ben Simmons will be in the first year of a max contract extension. Dario Saric would also be in the first year of any contract extension. In other words, this projects to be the first year that the Sixers confront some hard choices. Seeing as though Embiid, Simmons and Covington would likely account for at least 54 percent of the cap just for the three of them, any health problems by Embiid could inspire some serious regret. Which is why it will be interesting to see how, exactly, the contract is structured. In an ideal world, the Sixers would have an out after two seasons that they could exercise if Embiid has been unable to stay on the court. Given their salary-cap room, fully guaranteeing the first two years isn't much of a problem. It'd make a lot of sense if they could somehow limit that guarantee in Years 3, 4 and 5 based on the time Embiid spends on the court in Years 1 and 2, or based on some objective measure of the health of his foot or his knee.

Long story short, there are a lot of ways this deal can look a lot smarter than the overall terms might indicate.