Joel Embiid's Injury Won't Set Back the Philadelphia 76ers' Long-Term Plan

Years from now, Joel Embiid's latest setback could mean any number of things to the Philadelphia 76ers. They might remember it as a nocuous, albeit surmountable, bump in the road or as the brutal blow that discredited, and doomed, the franchise's rebuilding project.

Immediately, though, this is a letdown the Sixers cannot harp on, and Embiid is the promising prospect they can no longer plan around.

After missing the entirety of the 2014-15 campaign, Embiid is expected to sit out all of 2015-16 following a second surgery on his problematic right foot, as first reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer's Keith Pompey. General manager Sam Hinkie confirmed the bad news in a team statement, saying that the procedure will likely "result in Joel missing the upcoming season."

For all intents and purposes, the Sixers must now move forward without Embiid, forever hoping last year's draft-day gambit pays off but acting as if it won't.

One source told Pompey that the team is worried Embiid's latest injury could be "career-threatening," and the organization has been deliberately inhabiting the NBA's underbelly much too long to justify another delay.

Fortunately for the Sixers, Hinkie, with all of his controversial cachet, has armed them with enough prospects, picks and options to carve out an effective recourse.

Building the New Frontcourt of the Future

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Even without Embiid, the Sixers are faced with the same problem they already have up front: how to successfully blend the talents of players who, in theory, shouldn't be playing together.

All along, the plan has been to somehow slot Nerlens Noel, a center by craft, alongside Embiid, a center in size. And now the Sixers will try to partner Noel with rookie Jahlil Okafor, the No. 3 pick of this year's draft whom they scooped up as part of their best-player-available formula, and perhaps because they suspected a Noel-Embiid dyad wouldn't even get a chance to mesh.

Noel and Okafor do complement each other on a specialty level. The former is a defensive dynamo who anchored a points-preventing unit that tied for 12th-best last season; the latter is being touted as one of the slickest back-to-the-basket scorers to come out of college in recent memory.

But today's NBA gives way to pace and space, and a Noel-Okafor coupling stands to be a paint-packed nightmare on the offensive end, where the Sixers have ranked dead last in efficiency in each of the last two campaigns.

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Noel, for his part, isn't worried about the spacing issues. As he told the Associated Press (via ESPN.com): "I think we'll be able to do a lot of great things on the court—we all have different abilities and do different things—as we get more acquainted with each other."

Six percent of Noel's minutes came at power forward in preparation for accommodating Embiid at center, an experiment that should help smooth out Okafor's arrival. More than 25 percent of his total shot attempts even came outside eight feet of the basket.

At best, though, Noel is just a power forward in training. He shot 26.3 percent when stationed more than eight feet from the hoop, and the absence of a post game—he ranked in the 13th percentile of back-to-the-basket efficiency in 2014-15—makes him a borderline offensive liability even at center.

Still, the familiarity of this problem is almost comforting. Okafor isn't nearly the defender or shot-blocker Embiid projects to be, but he's more polished as a scorer, both in the post and off the dribble.

There are concerns over whether Okafor can space the floor enough to coexist with Noel. Embiid boasts the kind of range on the perimeter that suggested he could function as a hybrid forward-center on offense, diminishing the need to stretch Noel's touch beyond eight feet. Okafor, quite simply, doesn't.

Nor is there any perception-swaying evidence to suggest he will anytime soon. He shot 51 percent from the charity stripe at Duke, and free throws are usually a good indicator, if an imperfect one, of jump-shot potential. So while more than 38 percent of his shots were classified as jumpers in college, of which he drilled 50 percent, according to Hoop-Math.com, Okafor won't enter the 2015-16 season primed to eliminate Philadelphia's interior traffic jam.

Sixers coach Brett Brown will instead have to milk Okafor's playmaking chops. He sees the floor well whether he's facing up or backing down, and it's becoming wholly apparent during the NBA's Summer League exhibitions that he could end up as the Sixers' second-most important passer.

It's equally clear that Okafor will be the offensive focal point. The Sixers don't have another candidate to be their No. 1 option. They'll force-feed Okafor in the post, as the Summer Sixers are already doing, and have everyone else play off of him—a directive he's completely comfortable heeding.

"It doesn't. My role is to dominate," Okafor said of how his role changes without Embiid, per Pompey. "I'm one of the centerpieces of this team. So my role is the same."

Noel's ability to create space off the ball will be paramount to this duo's success under the assumed offensive model. The Sixers need him to not just set screens for roving shooters, but to ensure Okafor's post practices aren't mitigated by idleness.

As Bleacher Report's Dylan Murphy detailed:

"

Maybe the most crucial piece of the Noel-Okafor combination will be how Noel moves off the ball in isolation post ups. There's no doubt that Brown will feed Okafor the ball down low, and he proved at Duke that he's a capable passer in tight quarters.

Finding these crevices in the paint—particularly in two-big lineup combinations—is crucial to maintaining the integrity of an offense's spacing. Hover too close to a post-up player with the ball and you've effectively brought a double-team without providing an outlet. Sit too far away and you're not able to be seen.

"

These adjustments aren't easy to make. Especially when, regardless of the employed tweaks, the Sixers will always be asking one of Noel and Okafor to step outside their comfort zone.

But this is the frontcourt foundation they have and must build around. And luckily, insofar as the Sixers can be lucky in this situation, it's one that poses the same problems and promise as the version Embiid was supposed to headline but can't anymore.

Finding a Real Answer at Point Guard

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Trading then-reigning Rookie of the Year Michael Carter-Williams ahead of last February's deadline remains a bittersweet pill—even though it's one most would maintain the Sixers needed to swallow.

"That last one is hard to argue against entirely, even if you felt, like I did, that the Sixers needlessly moved an asset before they had to," wrote CBS Sports' Matt Moore. "Their return [the Lakers' top-five protected pick in 2015, which is top-three protected in 2016 and 2017] made it too good to pass up."

Carter-Williams' stat line was inflated by the Sixers' elevated pace, and a floor general who is barely shooting 40 percent for his career while piloting consecutive league-worst offenses isn't an ideal cornerstone.

Point guard remains the NBA's deepest position, though. The Sixers cannot expect to improve much on the offensive end without one. And, right now, they don't have one.

Experimenting with the combination of Isaiah Canaan and Tony Wroten Jr. is fine for now. But, in all likelihood, neither is the Sixers' long-term solution.

Canaan was unloaded by a Houston Rockets team in desperate need of secondary playmaking last season and has failed to truly impress during what little court time he's earned. He's undersized at 6'0", and of 145 guards to log at least 1,000 total minutes since 2013-14, his assist percentage (17.6) ranks a middling 86th.

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Wroten has a Carter-Williams-esque red flag attached to his name, though, in that last season's numbers were bolstered by playing heavy minutes for a truly bad team.

Wroten led the Sixers in points per game and was third in assists per game among those who played at least 25 contests, but he partially tore the ACL in his right knee in January, and at 6'6", he's really more of a shooting guard. His three-point shooting (23.4 percent for career), however, won't do anything to help the Sixers' spacing warts.

Now, it's relatively impossible to map out an exact answer to Philadelphia's point guard problem. Short of spouting off vague cliches of the "Develop Wroten's outside game" and "Hope Canaan's playmaking improves with time" persuasions, there's really nothing else left to say.

Except that maybe, just maybe, it's time the Sixers started breaking character and took to the trade market as a buyer, not an unwanted-salary sponge.

Holding True to the Original Plan 

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To that previous point, the Sixers are still positioned to make the most of their current rebuilding model. They have assets to either trade or develop, so their fortune could change on a whim.

Grabbing the Lakers' 2016 top-three protected pick looks important after Philadelphia failed to snag any marquee names in free agency. The Sixers also own the rights to the Miami Heat's (top-10 protected) and Oklahoma City Thunder's (top-15 protected) selections next year.

And that heist of a trade pulled off with the Sacramento Kings looks better by the day. Not only did Philadelphia land Nik Stauskas, last year's No. 8 pick and a legitimate shooting guard prospect, but the Kings are sending them a goodie bag's worth of first-round dap.

The Sixers will have the right to swap first-round spots with Sacramento in 2016 and 2017, and they'll own the Kings' first-rounder in 2018, so long as it falls outside the top 10.

Dario Saric, meanwhile, is still stashed overseas. If not for a "no-out" clause in his current contract with the Turkish franchise Anadolu Efes, the 12th overall pick in 2014 would be stateside in time for this upcoming season, according to David Pick of Basketball Insiders.

With Noel, Okafor, Stauskas, Saric and Robert Covington all on the team in some form, the Sixers could feasibly have four of five long-term starting slots already filled. And with as many as five first-rounders next year, plus a ton of cap flexibility, they have the means to find a point guard and decent supporting cast.

If the Noel-Okafor pairing doesn't work out, or if Embiid ever gets healthy and starts producing, the Sixers, at worst, have one or two tasty trade chips to dangle in hopes of filling other needs. 

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What they make of these options is up to them. But they at least have all of these options.

Losing Embiid through next season, perhaps longer, is unfortunate.

To both the Sixers and Embiid himself, the 21-year-old kid whose career is in jeopardy before even officially starting, it's unfair.

It is not the brutal blow by which the Sixers' rebuild will be defined.

Stats courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com unless otherwise cited. Draft-pick commitments from RealGM.

Dan Favale covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter: @danfavale.