Nick Piccone
The Sixers’ president of basketball operations and general manager probably hasn’t had much time to rest. With the health of Joel Embiid, Jahlil Okafor’s recovery from knee surgery and apparent disdain for rumors, and Dario Saric coming not coming coming not coming coming over next season, I’m sure he’s been a pretty busy man.
I’m also sure he’s been trying to work out a trade with another NBA team. He’d be silly not to. And he basically admitted as much on Sirius XM NBA Radio on Tuesday, saying the team has to figure out what to do with all of their big men and that other teams have been “trying to poach a big man from us.”
There’s no doubt the Sixers have a big man problem. There’s also no doubt the Sixers have talent now. Real, good talent. So the question is do they get rid of one of their big men because they’re kind of forced to with the leverage now on the side of other NBA teams trying to “poach” them from the Sixers. Can the Sixers really get as big a haul as they want for a Noel or Okafor? I’m not so sure. But Colangelo doesn’t seem like he’s budging. At least not yet.
Here’s what Colangelo said:
We’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do with everybody, and when you look at the calls that are coming in, quite frankly, everyone’s trying to poach a big man from us.
…
So when I say in a playful way I’m not comfortable, I think we can be a better basketball team if we could distribute that talent better, and maybe take one of those assets and address other needs on the roster. But I think right now, it’s best to say we like all of them, we want to see if we can make the most out of each of them in terms of their contributions to this team. But at the end of the day, the reality says probably one has to go at some point, but only if the deal is right.”
This isn’t surprising. Many have wondered what the Sixers are going to do heading into next season. They have an apparently healthy Joel Embiid [who won’t play in back-to-back games], Jahlil Okafor, Nerlens Noel, Ben Simmons and Dario Saric. Can all of that coexist on the same court? Nobody knows. But many think it can’t. And I can’t blame them. It sounds like neither can the Sixers’ general manager.
Listen to some of the audio of Colangelo’s interview below.
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