Philadelphia 76ers general manager Bryan Colangelo made the clearest assessment yet of the team’s plans for their three young big men — namely, somebody’s getting traded.
Colangelo told SiriusXM NBA Radio on Tuesday that the team isn’t comfortable having Nerlens Noel, Jahlil Okafor, and Joel Embiid all on the roster. He also said, however, that the Sixers wouldn’t make a trade just for the sake of making a trade.
“Absolutely not,” Colangelo said when asked if he was comfortable with all three on the roster to start the season, via ProBasketballTalk’s Dan Feldman. “But I think what we are comfortable doing is saying we’re not going to make a bad deal just to make a deal. So when I say in a playful way, ‘No, I’m not comfortable,’ I think we could 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, again, 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 when the deal is right.”
The Sixers have a clear surplus of bigs, and they’ve been reportedly shopping two of them. With Colangelo’s admission, we wonder if Okafor will be regretting some of the things he said recently.
