Philly Front Office

After an abysmal performance in Saturday’s loss to the Nets, Joel Embiid and the Sixers have decided to look into “alternative treatment options” to help him recover from his lingering knee issues. The team and player have given conflicting diagnoses for the problem over the last month, but it looks like some surgery is going to end up happening.  He’s most likely, mercifully, done for the season. Whether this will actually help or harm the Sixers chances of retaining their draft pick is to be determined. What we do know with some certainty is that Embiid’s contract is the worst in the league at the moment.

Oh, no, I am not talking about his current contract, the one that pays him over $51m this year and $55m next year. Definitely not that one. I am talking about the early extension he signed this past summer. That contract pays him $193m between the 2026-27 and 2028-29 seasons. I have sympathy for the guy as he’s a shell of himself at the moment, but this has nothing to do with sentiment. This is purely a value and reality equation. Would anyone trade for this contract straight up?

Let’s go over some quick rules. Some guys are signed to contracts and are not worth the money they are getting. Those are just regular bad contracts. I am focusing on the worst of the worst, the team crippling contracts. Also, years matter. One more year on a 5-year monstrosity is bad, but it isn’t worse than someone on a slightly better contract with a few years left. Lastly, what about the aspirations of the team? A bad contract on a bad team is fine as long as it isn’t THE reason the team isn’t contending.

Graduated: Ben Simmons and Deandre Ayton

Here we pay homage to the friends we have made along the way, who have been with us for so long. Goodbye former number 1 overall picks Ben Simmons and Deandre Ayton, the Joel Embiid and Bradley Beal of yesteryear. Simmons went from All-NBA to barely playing (and playing badly) while Ayton was just…around, I guess? Simmons was just recently bought out of the final year of his 5-year, $177m max contract he originally signed with the Sixers. He played 148 games in five years on that contract, but only 90 in the last four as a completely different player.

Ayton has been the complete opposite. He signed a 4-year $133m offer sheet with Indiana and begged the Suns not to match it. They matched it anyway. He didn’t want to be there, and they didn’t want him but still had to pay him $33m+ per season. He was traded to Portland and despite playing regularly has been in obscurity ever since. Nobody wanted him.

Honorable Mention – Jordan Poole, Patrick Williams

These two are on bad contracts, but they aren’t on max contracts and their teams don’t matter. Jordan Poole looked like the perfect Warrior for a time, confidence for days and shooting that would fit in perfectly while Klay Thompson was out. They signed him to a 4 year, $128m contract. Then he got punched in the face by Draymond Greene, traded to Washington, and is just the least helpful basketball player you’ve ever seen. At least the Wizards have a 2030 first round pick from Golden State to show for it…except they don’t. It’s top 20 protected. Way to go guys!

Patrick Williams was drafted 4th overall and has shown no ability whatsoever on the court despite being the perfect mix of size and athleticism. He simply has no idea what he’s doing. After four years of showing this complete lack of ability, the always savvy Bulls decided they needed 5 more years of that. Instead of trying to play his way back into the league on a minimum contract, Williams will be making $90m. Just an absolutely absurd move from an atrocious front office.

5 – Zion Williamson

The only reason his 5-year, $197m deal isn’t higher on this list is because he is so overweight and injured that his deal became non-guaranteed. As part of the contract signed two years ago, there was language protecting the team from right foot injuries and periodic check-ins to keep him under 295 pounds. Neither would be met. He has two decently healthy seasons in his six years in the league. He has three with less than 29 games with this year possibly being the fourth.

So now he has roughly three years and $127m left on his deal and the Pelicans regularly have no idea what to expect from him. How can you depend on an incredible and singular talent with weight issues and foot problems? That sounds very familiar. They can’t trade him for two reasons. 1, when healthy, he is still very good. There is a solid chance that if he left, they would look like fools. 2, since his healthy moments are so irregular they could never get good value for him. What could New Orleans get for Zion? Maybe a bad team gives them a first-round pick? No good team is getting desperate and sending them the haul they would want though. He would cripple his new team like he has this one.

4 – Jimmy Butler

After seeing Jimmy force his way out of four teams in the most petulant ways possible, the Warriors decided to give this 35-year-old manipulating crybaby $111m over two years. Yes, they traded some bad contracts to make the deal happen (looking at you Andrew Wiggins), but they are now tied to him and won’t be able to make any more moves because of it. Before doing anything with Jonathan Kuminga, they already have $170m+ on the books for the next 2 years. You have to think Kuminga gets at least $25m and probably much more. They are going to be very close to the second apron and stuck with a mediocre and aging roster with Draymond Green and Butler seeing each other every day. That sounds like a lovely recipe for peace and calm!

The Heat had a hard enough time dealing Jimmy this season. Do the Warriors have any chance of moving him the next two years considering they would presumably want to do so only if Jimmy is doing his Jimmy sabotage thing? Using this scale as a barometer, the Warriors would trade him for Zion even just as a salary dump, but the Pelicans would never want Jimmy.

3 – Paul George

Yay! Sixers have two of the three worst contracts in the league. George is getting shit on a little too much right now considering he is playing through a debilitating finger injury that requires him to wear a splint 24/7. The problem is that the team stinks and he is still the apathetic PG he has been his whole career. It’s fitting that his only two game winning shots were against the Sixers and in a Gatorade commercial. The Sixers knew they were overpaying an aging 3rd option they hoped would fill all the gaps in the lineup, they just didn’t figure those gaps would include the center who is the focal point of the offense and defense.

At half his salary, good teams would probably give up a few assets for George. Unfortunately, he makes double half his salary for a total of $162m over the next 3 years. Damn. Not only is that way too much for what George gives you, but it’s not easy to move that amount. There is only one team and one player you could possibly imagine trading for him…

2 – Bradley Beal

Woof. Beal’s contract isn’t nearly as bad as it was, but it is still pretty bad. He is the opposite of Zion Williamson in that instead of a non-guaranteed contract, Beal is not only guaranteed but he also has a no trade clause. The Suns have been actively trying to move him, but Beal refuses to go just anywhere. Only bad teams will lease out their balance sheet for him, but he will only approve a move to a contender. Contenders want nothing to do with him. Because the Suns are a mediocre team and have capped themselves out the ass, they are completely stuck with Beal.

At this point in his career, Beal is basically Joe Harris but worse. He is a shooter who can’t move very well and has no interest in defense. At $111m over the next 2 years, no one wants that. Well, maybe not no one. Could the Sixers and Suns get together on a George for Beal trade? The Sixers would probably say no considering George is objectively better than Beal, but that one less year of contract could be the equalizer. Throw in a draft pick? Also, because Beal makes slightly less more than George next year, they could actually make the trade without violating the CBA 2nd Apron rules. No such luck with a Beal for Embiid trade.

1 – Joel Embiid

He is the reason this article was written. It was only 13 months ago that Embiid scored 70 points on Victor Wembanyama. He isn’t even half of what he was then anymore. It was shortly after that that Jonathan Kuminga landed on Joel’s leg and started a downward spiral for the big man. He didn’t look good when he returned for the playoffs and looked worse in the Olympics. Despite this, the Sixers signed him to the highest possible extension at the earliest possible moment. He is now barely playable. Making matters worse, he is at odds with the Sixers medical staff. They think he needs to play through the pain and get used to it while Embiid believes he needs surgery and looks like he has no confidence whatsoever in himself. That’s a terrible spot to be in, for everyone.

In total, his contract and the extension are worth four more years and $248m. There is no guarantee (or even likelihood) that he ever gets back to his previous level of play again. He might never be close to it. It’s pure speculation, but there is a serious chance he is closer to Ben Simmons over the last four years than Joel Embiid. As a Sixers fan, all I can say is thank God for the Eagles.

The Dallas Mavericks have been rightfully killed since they trade Luka Doncic at the deadline. It was a terrible deal. One part of it has stuck with me though. They simply did not want to offer him a 5-year, $345m max contract because they didn’t think it was a good investment. Again, the deal they made was shit, but if that was their reasoning, Philadelphia had to be their canary in the coal mine moment. The Sixers claim they had “ten doctors” advising that Embiid would get back to normal, that’s very obviously bullshit. The fact that they needed ten doctors should have been warning enough not to offer the contract extension. They offered it anyway and the Sixers are completely screwed as a franchise unless Embiid retires. Did the Mavericks see their own Embiid-esque warning signs and decide to pull the plug on Doncic? For as bad as that move was, is there any Sixers fan who wouldn’t trade with the Mavericks right now post-Doncic? Nope.