The Philadelphia 76ers were officially eliminated when the Boston Celtics completed their sweep with a 110-106 victory on Sunday, and now the Sixers are heading into a challenging offseason where a number of changes could take place.
One place that change is likely to start is on the sidelines with current head coach Brett Brown, but the Sixers will need to do more than that to get back to where they were last season, when they were considered one of the Eastern Conference elite, and a legit challenger for an NBA title.
With the loss of key players on the roster, the Sixers looked like a shell of themselves, and now the entire organization must do some serious hard work to get things back on track.
“I don’t make the decisions. I’m here in Philly. Whatever happens, happens,” Sixers center Joel Embiid said, according to ESPN’s Brian Windhorst.
Embiid could be shopped this offseason, depending on where the Sixers want to go, and if they truly believe that Embiid and Ben Simmons can gel.
“I’ve always said that I want to end my career here, and if it happens, good” Embiid said. “If it doesn’t happen, well, you move on and all that stuff.”
Embiid hasn’t been shy about his belief that he can carry the team, and called to be the focal part of the team’s offense several times over the season. However, Embiid’s role in the offense would scale back, and he played fewer minutes as the 76ers tried to keep him fresh and healthy.
“I can be dominant down low, but then again, to help the team, it’s not always about me,” Embiid said. “And with the roster we have and — if it is the same roster next year — I gotta be able to space the floor.”
Embiid, like a lot of Sixers fans, knows that the front office kind of mucked up the trajectory they were on by making too many bad decisions in terms of roster.
“I just feel like, a couple years ago, when we made the playoffs for the first time, we had a bunch of great players that were drafted here or either formed in Philly and we had a bunch of guys especially that were in a great situation,” Embiid said.
“And then we, as you know, we decided to trade a lot of it with the picks and stuff for Jimmy [Butler], Tobias [Harris], and we got a bunch of great players in return. Like I said, it just didn’t happen. We could never find a rhythm this year. It is disappointing. There’s a lot of regrets. I felt like the focus was not always there. And we got to do better; we just got to look at ourselves in the mirror and just do better.”
