Since the news of Joel Embiid's setback/something different/slowdown in the healing process/rebreak/actually feeling no pain/running up and down stairs and shooting in Vegas/#trustmeortrusttheprocess broke I've heard more and more opinions voiced along the lines of 'At this point you just can't put him in your envisioned plan for the team going forward,' most recently in the only Sixers podcast The Second Rounders by Wesley Share (I think) and earlier this summer by Michael Levin in what I have to assume was a call-in to a local sports talk radio station. I'm sure you can find many others who share the same sentiment across the basketball blogosphere as well, largely because it's a very natural feeling.

As fans of a team (or apparently as basically anyone with an opinion on the Sixers) we crave certainty, and frankly, the Sixers have given us precious little in both their style of team building and in their approach to information sharing. We care about our teams to an absurd degree, so it's entirely natural to want to know what it is we are caring about and to feel unsettled when we don't. We very much want to have an image of the team in our minds.

"Watching Jahlil Okafor play in summer league was a true joy for me...merely because he was there. He was an actual player who took the court right after we drafted him. He was real and it was a huge relief."

Given that desire, when a team makes so many moves for future value at the total expense of the present, and asks us to literally wait years to find out who might become a franchise cornerstone, as the Sixers have done, once we finally get to a draft it's a very palpable feeling of relief to actually see who we select.

Watching Jahlil Okafor play in summer league was a true joy for me, and not even because of how apparent his gravity was when he had the ball (side note: I did freaking love that though; the whole of the defense just kept collapsing on him. I bet a pretty darn good working definition of a 'star' could be built off of players' gravity ratings when they have the ball). No, I felt joy merely because he was there. He was an actual player who took the court right after we drafted him. He was real and it was a huge relief.

Draft picks themselves offer no such relief. It's definitely exciting each time we acquire one, but they are still an intangible and distant idea. Excitement quickly turns to the anxious energy of hopeful waiting. It's not always a pleasant feeling, but as I described above, it's bouyed by the fact that relief is coming in the draft.

Except we've had no relief with Embiid. We're going to root for the team through three solid years of rebuilding and still not know if the best talent we've drafted in that time can even play. That's three years of losing and hopeful anxiety. I'm not complaining, but that is, well, a really freaking frustrating feeling. It makes all the sense in the world to want to simply let go of that feeling and move on with what we know with more certainty.

"...any time in the past when we said to ourselves 'when Embiid's healthy' we were already buying this illusion of certainty. It was always an 'if' not a 'when'."

However, the reality in the NBA is that the majority of the time our feeling of certainty as fans is an illusion. Whether you think you know the players who will make up your team or not, you just can't predict what's going to happen. After OKC lost in the Finals in 2012, if you'd have polled their fans you would have probably found one of the highest feelings of security in the league. Everyone knew they were a young team overflowing with superstars destined to be one of the greats. Except that isn't what has happened since then. That feeling is always an illusion until you see what happens. You never know. Layne Vashro wrote an outstanding analysis for Nylon Calculus in support of taking the best player available in the draft because statistically the NBA and team rosters are just too difficult to predict that's definitely worth your time on this point.

To make this a bit more concrete, any time in the past when we said to ourselves 'when Embiid's healthy' we were already buying this illusion of certainty. It was always an 'if' not a 'when'. Honestly it's a strong 'if' with almost any player you draft until you see them play for several years. Jahlil Okafor and Nerlens Noel are both still 'ifs' (albeit 'ifs' with less injury questions). That's just the nature of the NBA. You live with uncertainty. As fans, however I think we feel it more for some things than others, and it's not an entirely rational distinction. Having a player actually on the court makes us feel a lot more secure in the team than we actually are.

"I'd argue that at this point he pretty easily still caries a greater chance at becoming a star than what the team is likely to be offered for him, so a trade seems even less likely now than it was previously."

Having said all that, I don't want assume anyone's full opinion here, so my question to those who seem to have written off Embiid is this: What changes? What should the Sixers do differently now that Embiid needs a second surgery?

In my mind, very little. If anything a trade, for example, seems even less likely now because of the tendency for most teams to eschew uncertainty (this is a significant edge that the Sixers have over the rest of the league that's infrequently discussed btw). Because of this disinclination, I think Embiid's value in the market just took a big hit. His potential, however, remains largely the same. For the sake of argument, and recognizing that we have literally no idea what these odds actually are, let's put his ceiling at Olajuwan and say his chances of reaching it have dropped to 10%. Would you give up a 10% chance at Olajuwan for anything less than a very high pick? How many draft picks carry that sort of potential?

I don't mean to undersell the risk either. The downside is there is a substantial chance he can't play at all. Again, acknowledging we have no idea what we're talking about, let's put that at 50%.* For some teams, perhaps who have an established core of great players and only find themselves in the lottery because of a freak injury or something of the sort, I can see an argument that you take a player who is more likely to contribute. But for the Sixers, whose primary goal is to find a star, and who are sitting with a cabinet stocked full of additional future picks, several potential stars under team control, and a couple more trips to the lottery likely upcoming, I'd go with the 10% chance easily over the vast majority of draft picks. Embiid is far from the Sixers only shot, but he's clearly their highest caliber bullet.

Assuming that Embiid's value in the market just plummeted, I'd argue that at this point he pretty easily still caries a greater chance at becoming a star than what the team is likely to be offered for him, so a trade seems even less likely now than it was previously.

The team has him on his rookie scale contract for at least three more years. In my mind the way forward in that time is as clear as it always was: (1) Do everything you can to give him the best chance at having a long career medically, (2) Develop and play him as much as you can while accommodating goal (1), and (3) gather as much information on his health and basketball ability as you can in that time from which to draw when you decide how much you are willing to pay him when it comes time to resign. Lucky for us and the Sixers that's not a decision that has to be made yet. They can wait three more years to see where they stand.

"Hold the ball in the fullback's gut until you read the defensive end. Hold it as long as you possibly can." ~ Sam Hinkie

To quote the man himself, this is a situation where it's really important that the Sixers "Hold the ball in the fullback's gut until you read the defensive end. Hold it as long as you possibly can..." because "...you know so much more. Sometimes you don't. Sometimes you know exactly what you knew before. Sometimes the world changed and you know a lot more than you did." Embiid's potential is still just too high to do anything else. So what I do know with certainty is that they should not trade him just so that they 'know what they have' moving forward, because that is simply never the case. Thus far in Hinkie's tenure it has not been how the team has operated. I would be very surprised if they started operating that way now.

*Obviously there is a point at which the odds that he can ever play become negligible, however in that event teams would review his medicals/physical and simply not offer anything for him. I would expect the Sixers only option would be to cut him were this the case, so not doing so in my mind stands as evidence that we are not at this point.