Hayes: Have big tests strengthened Sixers' bigs?

THE BIG FIVE have overcome a lot and endured much criticism for such young men.

Perhaps it will make them stronger as they enter their first Sixers training camp Tuesday.

Joel Embiid has been through the most: injury, embarrassment, death. He was raw in college, rushed into the NBA, rushed back from an injury, and so spent the last two seasons watching the Sixers lose in historic fashion.

Fire tempers steel, and all have faced fire: skinny 22-year-old Nerlens Noel; doughy 20-year-old Jahlil Okafor; enigmatic Dario Saric, 22; buff Ben Simmons, 20; and Embiid, the 22-year-old giant from Cameroon. Embiid has endured the most. Should be the strongest.

"Now," he said, "I'm a much better man."

Embiid did not play basketball until 2009, when he was 15 and a promising volleyball player. He moved to America and played hoops in high school for two years, then went to Kansas, where he hurt his back and missed the postseason. Still, he declared for the 2014 draft and was projected as the No. 1 pick. He then broke his right foot preparing for the draft, so he fell to the Sixers at No. 3; then rebroke it a year later.

He spent his rookie season mainly eating and tweeting. He spent his second season in mourning; his 13-year-old brother Arthur died in a car accident in his native Cameroon.

Embiid revealed Monday that he never even wanted to leave Kansas.

"When I left college, I thought I wasn't ready for the NBA life. I had doubts about leaving college," Embiid said. "I was going to stay in college. Basketball-wise, I thought I wasn't ready, because I came out of nowhere. NBA life-wise, what people had told me about the NBA life, living on my own, becoming a man, I thought I couldn't do it."

Cameroon native Luc Mbah a Moute, who discovered Embiid, and other NBA veterans urged Embiid to leave.

"They changed my mind," Embiid said.

He refused to say exactly what argument the NBA players made for him to leave, but surely it pitted the chance of future injuries against the $34 million he was likely to earn in his first five NBA seasons if he went first overall.

Does he regret their influence?

"No. I made the right decision," said Embiid, who will make at least $27 million in five seasons as the third overall pick. He already has made $9 million and has yet to dress for a game. "You never know what can happen."

What can happen - that could have been the Sixers' slogan for the three seasons of Sam Hinkie.

The Big Five exist because of Hinkie's cunning, daring, innovation, patience . . . and his reckless disregard for growing young players at the expense of acquiring ever-more-valuable draft picks.

Hinkie's first significant draft acquisition was malcontent center Nerlens Noel, who sat out his first season with a knee injury, then spent the last two seasons as the highest-profile loser in basketball. He has no appetite for watching Embiid develop and, as a skywalking non-shooter looking for a big payday sooner than later, Noel believes he cannot thrive with two other centers, Embiid and Okafor.

Euro-star Dario Saric, a Croat, played in the Turkey pro league for two seasons, where he continued to develop, starred in the Olymic qualifiers, then sputtered in Rio.

Hinkie's last big draft pick was Okafor, a poor man's Charles Barkley: a savant on offense who is out of shape and uninterested in defense; but who, unlike Barkley, is an indifferent rebounder. Coach Brett Brown wants the team to defend first and run second. Okafor swore he would keep up.

Finally, all of the tanking paid off when the Sixers took Simmons with the No. 1 overall pick in June. Simmons said he packed 33 pounds of muscle on his 6-10 frame. Muscle doesn't help you shoot, which was Simmons' bugaboo exiting LSU, but, he growled Monday, "I can shoot."

Except for Noel, the Big Five were remarkably glib on the eve of their coalescence.

Okafor shrugged off his indiscretions from last season, when frustration from overwhelming losing early in the season pushed him to various miscreant acts.

"It's no secret I got in trouble. There's nothing really I can learn from it. I knew what I was doing was wrong at the time," he said. "It won't happen again."

Over the summer, Simmons, a LeBron James protégé, acquired James' addiction to the excruciating VersaClimber exercise machine. He also acquired a cat, which he named Biggie, a liberal variation of Bagheera, the black panther in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book.

Embiid, meanwhile, joked that his increased basketball IQ has rendered college basketball unwatchable for him. He also said that his health issues are so far behind him and that his skill set has evolved to such a degree that the sky is his limit.

He envisions one day being the first 7-2, 275-pound scoring point guard.

"From what it looks like right now, I'm going to have a 20-year career," said Embiid, with a smile. Seriously, though: "The first expectation I have for myself is to play one game."

For the Sixers, that would be big.

@inkstainedretch