The Philadelphia 76ers won’t keep Jahlil Okafor out of the season, probably he won’t be on the team in the next few weeks. How could the No. 3 pick fall so low within two years? And what happens next?
In retrospect, the 2015 NBA Top 5 reads like the ultimate cliché of the annual talent harvest. Hit or miss – you can be right with your picks, but you can also make completely wrong decisions. As a reminder, Karl-Anthony Towns, D’ Angelo Russell, Jahlil Okafor, Kristaps Porzingis and Mario Hezonja were bred from one to five.
Towns and Porzingis are unicorns and already stars, both will sign their first maximum contract within the next two years. Russell? He was sacrificed in Los Angeles and is currently playing pretty big in Brooklyn – there is no doubt about his talent. And certainly not because he will play a somewhat prominent role in the NBA for many years to come.
And then there’s Okafor and Hezonja. In both cases, the team decided during the week to give up the option for the fourth contract year. This is rarely the case with top 5 picks; although Hezonja has so far never been able to show the NBA suitability consistently, he is only 22 years old and brings (theoretically) a valuable skill package for today’s NBA.
For top 3 picks it’s almost unheard of. Okafor is only the third top 3 pick after the immortal Anthony Bennett and Hasheem Thabeet, who is “gone”early. The other two are among the biggest busts in NBA history – Okafor, on the other hand, rookie scored 17.5 points and 7 rebounds on average. So what prompted the Sixers to take this step?
When looking at the numbers, it is worth mentioning that Okafor’s numbers were “Empty Stats” – in his rookie year, the sixes won ten out of 82 games, with Robert Covington being the only major player in today’s squad. Okafor was allowed to take almost 15 throws per game, which explains the points.
He was therefore not effective or even valuable: with Big Jah on the court, Philly had a negative net rating of -16.6. It got almost 11 points better when he sat on the bench. In his second season, Philly was more than 12 points better when Okafor took a seat on the bench.
That’s why he was used less and less during the season and not only by Joel Embiid, but also by Richaun Holmes, who was drafted 34 places behind him in 2015, he was overtaken in the pecking order. Trade rumours were common – if Coach Brett Brown had something nice to say about Okafor, it usually meant that he would deal with the rumors “like a pro”. However, he hardly had any use for the NCAA champion of 2015.
It was a rapid descent for the Big Man who had left Duke with so much premature praise. In the run-up to the drafts, it was argued that Okafor and not Towns should be the No. 1 pick – “Jahlil Okafor will be a better NBA player than all Kentucky players,”said coaching legend Jim Calhoun at the time. In Kentucky, Devin Booker, Trey Lyles and Willie Cauley-Stein played in addition to Towns.
Today Okafor, who won several awards (including the ACC Player of the Year) in 2015, doesn’t even make it into the rotation of the Sixers. Injuries played a role in this, as did the big-man richness of the Sixers. Okafor’s main problem, however, is a different one.
It’s not like he doesn’t have skills. Okafor knows where the basket hangs, he has a good footwork. His play with his back to the basket is NBA-compatible. He is a miserable defender and rebounder so far, but 15 years ago there would have been no doubt that he would have found his role.
Today things are different. There is hardly any room left for Lowpost-Scorer, which don’t have many skills. The ideal image of today’s NBA looks like Porzingis or Towns: mobile giants who can dribble, shoot threesomes, play bully ball and protect the ring (although KAT has not yet done so). Unicorns, that’s all.
If you don’t have one of these rare creatures, it should at least be a specialist who ideally bags rebounds, protects the basket and limits himself to rolling hard and pushing praise through the ring. Clint Capela, for example, is gradually becoming a star with this job profile.
In any case, today’s big players who want to earn time in the game must be able to stand defensively their husbands and have a certain degree of mobility. In the current NBA, no play is more important than the pick’ n’ roll, so it is important to have big players who can switch competently or at least get in the way at the right moment. Or to help out when the defensive device has collapsed on the wing.
Okafor’s not doing any of that yet. He’s not very athletic, and he’s lame – these are players like Al Jefferson or Greg Monroe, who help their teams off the bench as low post scorers, but also. In contrast to him, however, they understand where they have to stand and what their role is, even if they are not declared good defenders.
Enes Kanter is also a lousy defender, but he’s got a good bet. And he’s rebounding like a berserker, just on the offensive board. Okafor has not even achieved an average result in this area. But he will have to change this if he wants to be more successful with his next team.
Since this week it is certain that Philly will not go on. Theoretically, the Sixers could still make him an offer after the season, but it is more likely that he will be bought out of his contract in the next few days. Maybe a team that has nothing to lose will contact Okafor in advance and get a dumping price via trade. According to ESPN insider Adrian Wojnarowki, Sixers-GM Bryan Colangelo only wants to have assets, i. e. late picks.
Maybe Okafor will be able to reset himself after overcoming knee problems and a new team and establish himself in the league. Russell seems to have just made this new start – but the 2015 No. 2 pick of 2015 also has a more suitable skillset for today’s NBA than Okafor. A buyer who gives Okafor another chance has yet to find himself.
“There aren’t many real centers in the league that need to be doubled once they get the ball. Okafor’s such a gambler. The league has changed since the days of Olajuwon, Robinson and Ewing, but only because such players were not available. Every coach wants a player like Okafor. He may not be a great defender, but his aggressive production will benefit any team that has him in its ranks.”
The assessment that an anonymous GM made of Okafor before the 2015 draft against ESPN reads like a prehistoric document today, although it is barely two and a half years old. The league has changed, correct. And much of this was related to some Big Men who were flushed into the NBA in 2015. But not with the one who was considered by everyone to be the greatest talent of all during almost the entire previous college season.
It seems Okafor has been overlooked by the revolution – an anachronism in a league of unicorns. It is up to him to change this perception.