FanPost

Man Down - Man Up - SIXERS are still in Great Shape

Relax - don't let the Embiid injury or worrying about Wiggins not being there get you down, the SIXERS are still sitting in a great place. Don't believe, consider these 10 key facts:

1. The SIXERS have great management and coaching in place for the first time in years

2. The SIXERS have the reigning rookie of the year in MCW, and a healthy Nerlens Noel coming back to fill the 5 spot, which will immediately improve both their interior defense, and let them focus more on the perimeter, both glaring weaknesses last season.

3. The SIXERS have other returning players, including a versatile, outstanding 6th man in Thad Young, whom they can either keep or move for other assets. They also have some young guys with a chance to get better in Wroten, Thompson and Sims; one of these guys at least will turn out to be a useful rotation guy on our next playoff team. They also still have Kazemi stashed overseas.

4. The SIXERS have 7 picks in a deep draft, including 2 in the top 10, and 4 in the top 40.

5. There is still some chance that Wiggins falls to the third pick; Cleveland may well pick Parker, and Milwaukee needs a point guard more than a young athletic wing - they already have one of those that they like.

6. If Wiggins and Parker are both gone and we can't make a reasonable deal to trade up, there is great depth in this draft at the PF position in Vonleh, Randle, Gordon, and McDermott at the top, and a number of others who will be there later in the draft as well.

7. There will be plenty of choices and options at 10 for a quality SG, with Stauskus, Harris, Young and Lavine among others - whatever your preference may be in terms of the type of player you want for that spot, there is a good choice waiting.

8. There will be good players available at 32, 39, and 47 at least, to fill in depth, take shots on upside, stash foreign prospects, etc...

9. There will still be tons of options to trade up or trade down, and we have enough pieces to be in the middle of it all if we so choose.

10. We have a ton of cap room, which we can use for any of a number of different things:

A. We can go after the premium free agents like LeBron or Carmelo same as everyone else without worrying about being able to offer max deals, unlikely as that may seem, or

B. We can slightly over pay for high quality restricted free agents, giving us a better than even chance of making the deal, while also making it more expensive for our competitors - everyone else - to retain their own quality guys, or

C. We can eat some contracts from other teams desperate to free up space, such as Houston and Chicago, and extract additional assets from those teams, for this draft or for the future, to keep the pipeline humming.

In short, there is no need to panic about Embiid and Wiggins; in fact the only thing to do is to let someone else panic, and take advantage. The SIXERS still have nowhere to go but up, and a lot of pieces in place to make it happen rapidly.

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