Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

Smallwood: Embiid-Okafor perfect together? We still don't know

WITH ABOUT seven minutes remaining in the Sixers'season-opening loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Wednesday, Sixers swing man Robert Covington subbed in for center Jahlil Okafor.

WITH ABOUT seven minutes remaining in the Sixers'season-opening loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Wednesday, Sixers swing man Robert Covington subbed in for center Jahlil Okafor.

Okafor, who was limited during most of training camp because he is recovering from knee surgery, was on a 12-to 14-minute playing restriction, which Sixers coach Brett Brown had already decided to exceed by two.

The Sixers led 82-81 at the time.

The teams battled back and forth over the next few minutes and with 4:28 left and the Sixers leading 89-86 Brown put rookie center Joel Embiid back in the game for Richaun Holmes.

Embiid, the 7-2 star-crossed center who had missed the two previous seasons because of foot surgeries, was supposed to be limited to 20 minutes for his NBA debut.

He still had about 2 1/2 minutes of scheduled time left, which Brown would also end up exceeding by two minutes - none however with Okafor on the court.

Yeah, yeah, I know that winning games still isn't the highest priority in Sixerville - especially with most of your top young players nursing various injuries that are limiting their playing time or keeping them on the bench altogether.

Considering that Embiid and Okafor have yet to even practice extensively together on the court and that nobody knows how they will mesh as two centers trying to play as a center/power forward combination, the final minutes of the first game probably were not an ideal situation.

Still closing out a game was one of those situations that Brown had said he might consider playing Embiid and Okafor together early in the season.

This was a winnable game and as much as I understand the logic of playing things cautiously, I would have liked to have seen the Sixers take their best shot at winning it.

As the Thunder was outscoring the Sixers 17-9 in those final 4 1/2 minutes to pull out the victory, I kept wondering what might have happened if Embiid and Okafor had been on the court together.

Embiid was amazing in his NBA debut considering he had not played a game that counted since his freshman season at Kansas ended in March 2014.

"The Process" had 20 points, seven rebounds and two blocked shots in 22 minutes.

Okafor was still tapping off rust but had eight points, three rebounds and a block in 16 minutes.

As a rookie, Okafor averaged 17.5 points while shooting 50.8 percent.

The point is that teams know that he can score and it would've been interesting to see how OKC would have dealt with playing against two seven-foot scoring threats in the final 4 1/2 minutes.

Obviously, it was by design and considering minutes restrictions and such, it made sense, but Embiid and Okafor never played on the court at the same time.

Perhaps it won't work.

There are a lot of people who speculate that Embiid and Okafor will not be able to play together the same way that Okafor and Nerlens Noel - the Sixers' third young center - painfully showed that they could not play together last season.

I'd like to find out about Okafor and Embiid before writing them off as a tandem.

It's an extremely small sample but eight of Embiid's 16 shots against OKC were from beyond eight feet, including three three-pointers. The big man seemed comfortable playing from range.

Okafor took nine of his 10 shots from inside the paint.

Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part, but why couldn't Embiid play offensively as a power forward and then shift over to center on defense?

Unlike Noel, Embiid has offensive skills beyond dunking and catching a lob.

It seems to me that the only limitation to Embiid playing power forward is that you don't necessarily want the 7-2 guy to play that position.

Embiid and Okafor are natural centers, but if ever there was a time for experimentation it would be now.

If the Sixers are not willing to see if Okafor can play with Embiid, they might as well just close the door on him and trade him right now.

It would be the only logical move.

In my opinion, Okafor is not a backup center in the NBA. To utilize him as such would be a considerable waste of his talents.

Ultimately, using him as such is going to end up having the Sixers waste valuable salary-cap space. They are not going to get away with paying any of their young centers back-up money.

The market is going to put each of them in the minimum range of $75- to $100-million contracts.

I've said it before and will say it again; a team cannot commit that much money to one position and still put together the rest of a championship roster.

I understand the complications caused by minute restrictions, but at some point soon the Sixers are going to have to find out whether Embiid and Okafor can coexist on the court.

One way or the other, it is the only way to determine how they should move forward.

@SmallTerp