The tears that streamed down Joel Embiid’s face after Kawhi Leonard’s incredible game-winning shot in Game 7 of the 2019 Eastern Conference semifinals was supposed to be an encouraging sign for the future of Philadelphia 76ers basketball.

The pain of being four bounces away from possibly knocking out the eventual NBA champion Toronto Raptors looked like it could be themotivation Embiid needed to get the Sixers over the hump in 2020.

Motivation to no longer take his conditioning lightly. Motivation to stop disappearing for long stretches in big games. Motivation to finally end the years of irrelevance for a franchise that hasn’t been to the conference finals since 2001 and prove to the rest of the league that the organization’s ambitious and controversial rebuilding efforts – “The Process” – was worthwhile.

A year later, the Sixers team that began the season with championship aspirations now is at a crossroads after being swept by the Boston Celtics in the first round and capping off one of the most disappointing NBA seasons in recent memory.

The Sixers, as expected, fired head coach Brett Brown last week after seven seasons with the team, but Brown was far from their only issue.

The far bigger problem for the Sixers has been the front office decisions over the past several years. Last offseason, the Sixers decided not to offer Jimmy Butler, an elite two-way wing player, who was the Sixers' best perimeter facilitator outside of Simmons, and the team’s go-to scorer in late-game situations, a five-year max contract offer.

Butler may have left for Miami regardless of the Sixers offer, but either way, his departure left a gaping void on the perimeter.

Instead, the Sixers opted to sign Tobias Harris to a five-year, $180 million max deal, to essentially replace Butler at small forward despite the fact he has never been an all-star or played that position in his previous eight years in the league. 

The original trade for Harris also forced the Sixers to send Landry Shamet, among others, to the Clippers in return. Through his first two years in the NBA, Shamet is a 40.2% 3-point shooter.

While Harris’s 19.6 points per game on 47.1% shooting during the regular season looked good on the surface, his mid-range heavy shot selection along with getting to the free-throw line only three times per game was often an inefficient way to score.

As expected, he often looked out of place playing small forward as opposed to his natural power forward position and was particularly woeful in the playoffs.

In 37.1 minutes per game, he averaged 15.8 points on 38% shooting from the field and just 2-of-15 from deep, further confirming a significant overpay by the Sixers.

The Harris signing also prevented the team from being able to re-sign JJ Redick, a 41.6% 3-point shooter for his career.

Instead of finding replacements for two excellent shooters, the Sixers opted to sign four-time All-Star Al Horford to a four-year, $109 million deal.

That left the Sixers with a starting five of Ben Simmons, Josh Richardson, Harris, Horford and Embiid with the idea of creating a bully-ball, defensive-minded identity.

The offense was problematic all year with the Sixers ranking 18^th in true shooting percentage and 14^th in offensive efficiency, as well as dead last in the Eastern Conference in 3-point shooting (26.4). Their eighth-ranked defensive efficiency wasn’t as good as expected and could not mask the clunky offensive structure.

Anybody who watched the Sixers all year long, particularly in the playoffs against Boston’s three-headed perimeter monster of Jayson Tatum, Kemba Walker and Jaylen Brown, knows their biggest need heading into the offseason is perimeter shooting and creation.

However, because of the Harris and Horford contracts, they may not have the financial flexibility to sign any high-level guard this offseason.

The Sixers top-four highest-paid players next year (Harris, Embiid, Simmons, Horford) will account for 81.84% of the team’s salary cap, the third-highest of any team’s four most expensive players in the league behind only Golden State and Houston.

The difference between the Sixers and those two teams? Golden State’s two highest-paid players, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, are two of the best shooters in the history of the game and have already won three NBA titles together. Houston, on the other hand, has James Harden, one of the best perimeter offensive players we’ve ever seen, along with Russell Westbrook, an eight-time All-Star and two-time NBA scoring champ and assist leader.

While Simmons is an elite passer and statistically creates more open 3-point shots for his teammates than anyone else in the league, none of the Sixers' four highest-paid players are considered great shooters.

Harris and Richardson both shoot a respectable 36% from 3-point range for their careers, but having those two as your two best perimeter shooters in your starting lineup for most of the year is not a recipe for an efficient offense in today’s NBA.

Everyone can agree the Sixers overpaid for Harris and Horford and they should look to trade both of them. Horford particularly was an awful fit with Embiid and Simmons, as shown by their historically bad 98.8 offensive rating when the three played together.

But with four years left on Harris’ max deal and the 33-year old Horford still owed $70.5 million over the next three seasons after his worst season since his rookie year, the Sixers very likely may not find any trade partners for either.

After one season of sample, it is safe to conclude the Sixers will be nothing better than mediocre for the next four years if they ride out the length of the Horford and Harris contracts with those four as their core.

With Harris and Horford likely untradeable the best way to address upgrading perimeter talent, unfortunately, might be to pursue a trade for Embiid. Obviously, it would be a very difficult decision for the franchise to move on from the centerpiece of its rebuild and fan favorite, but there are a few reasons why it would make sense.

First the perpetual durability concerns. Embiid missed all of his first two seasons with a foot injury and then played only 31 games during his rookie season. While he played 63 and 64 games in 2018 and 2019, respectively, he entered both postseasons not fully healthy and his play suffered, as a result. In 2020 that number dropped to 51 games.

For almost his entire career, Embiid has been frequently held out of practices and the second game of back-to-backs to minimize injury risk. Because of that, even when he is fully healthy, he almost never seems to be on top of his conditioning.

By the time the Harris and Horford contracts are over, he will be into his 30s, and no player, particularly a 7-footer with extensive injury history, suddenly becomes more durable after turning 30.

Embiid and Simmons’ production together has also declined in each of the last three seasons. After posting an offensive rating of 113.3 when sharing the court in 2017-2018, that number declined to 112.8 last season. This season when sharing the court without Horford, their offensive rating dropped all the way to 110.6.

In fact, Simmons was actually more efficient with Hordford (111.2 offensive rating) than he was with Embiid this season.

That would make sense as Horford (36.4% career 3P%) is a better shooter than Embiid (31.9% career 3P%) and an excellent passer for his position (2.6-1 career assist to turnover ratio).

As rare of a talent as Embiid is, his production mostly comes from posting up in the half-court and face-up mid-range jumpers. However, analytics have been front and center in implementing the modern pace-and-space NBA, prioritizing shooting and floor spacing while deliberately removing post-up play and midrange jumpers, meaning the game continues to move farther and farther away from Embiid's play style.

Embiid has posted up more than anybody since he entered the league, but post-ups on average yield just 86 points per 100 possessions, which is the lowest efficiency of any offensive play in basketball, according to Synergy.

However, posting up is what Embiid is best at, and he actually is the only player in the league who generates efficient offense out of the post. The Sixers scored 1.13 points per possession this season when Embiid posted up (including passes), according to Synergy. 

In fact, Embiid produced seven more points of the post than Nikola Jokic, who is the only person with numbers close to Embiid in the post, despite playing 22 fewer games. Embiid is really the only player in the NBA nowadays whose offense primarily comes from post-ups.

Conversely, the Celtics sweep was just more evidence that Embiid’s post-ups have been nowhere near as effective in the playoffs. It was a bit different than past years, with him scoring at a higher rate against a more favorable matchup this time around, but it still felt as if he wasn't as dominant as expected. 

In the three postseasons Embiid has played in, his post-ups have led to a score on 49.5% of possessions, which ranks in only the 54^th percentile, according to NBA.com.

Furthermore, in the Celtics series, his 30 points and 12 rebounds per game look impressive at first glance, but Embiid was a team-high minus-53 in the series while posting a pedestrian 46% field goal percentage and nearly three times more turnovers than assists.

Teams now more than ever are realizing that the post-up is the least efficient way to produce offense, which is why modern NBA offenses are largely abandoning it and why centers are becoming increasingly less valuable.

The last NBA team to win a championship with an All-NBA center was the Detroit Pistons in 2004 with Ben Wallace. Since then, only two teams with All-NBA centers have even reached the NBA Finals. Those teams were the 2009 Orlando Magic with Dwight Howard and the 2013 San Antonio Spurs with Tim Duncan.

Modern analytics have caused NBA offenses today to change so much since even seven years ago. 

Just look at this year’s Dallas Mavericks, whose 117.41 offensive rating set a new NBA record for single-season offensive efficiency.

Luka Doncic obviously is a huge part of that, but the other main puzzle piece was Kristaps Porzingis’ posting up less and spotting up at the 3-point line to create better spacing.

In New York, Porzingis averaged 4.6 shot attempts out of the post per game, fourth-most in the league. He averaged 0.96 points on those possessions (73rd percentile.), which is solid but nowhere near the Mavs historic 1.17 points per possession.

Porzingis’ continued to post up a lot at the start of the season despite the Mavs' coaching staff urging him to spot up past the 3-point line more. On Nov. 11 in a loss against the Boston Celtics, Porzingis shot 1-of-11 and was benched late. Six of those misses came from post-up situations.

Porzingis did not post up that many times for the rest of the season. The next month, he increasingly embraced the role Dallas pictured him filling: a stretch-forward whose shooting ability spaced the floor when he stood behind the arc and whose role was to catch and shoot from the perimeter or finish scoring opportunities at the rim as a cutter rather than create for himself via the post-up.

By the end of December, Dallas’ offensive efficiency had ascended not only to the top of the league but to a record-setting level, where it remained the rest of the season.

The problem with Embiid is he does not have the same skillset to emulate this more offensively efficient role Porzingis did. Porzingis is a career 35.8% 3-point shooter to Embiid’s much lower 31.9% career average.

Porzingis made 2.5 3s per game this past season, which ranked tied for fifth among all power forwards and centers in the league. Embiid’s 1.1 made 3s per game ranked 33^rd among such players.

Porzingis’ superior athleticism also makes him more valuable as an off-ball cutter and transition player than Embiid.

Brown was heavily scrutinized for his lack of pick-and-roll defense adjustments in Game 2 against the Celtics, continuing to have Embiid sag back in the paint and having the guard fight through the screen with no over-the-top help. However, Embiid does not have the ideal foot speed to defend a high ball-screen and then recover to the rim consistently.

As good of a rim protector Embiid is, he’s far less effective when asked to defend the pick and roll on the perimeter and cover more ground.

Pick-and-roll use among NBA teams has increased slightly in each of the last five years while post-ups are going extinct, another thing that doesn’t bode well for Embiid.

As productive as Embiid has been for the Sixers since he entered the league, he's becoming more expendable seemingly every year, and the Sixers are in far greater need of quality guard play, both from a shooting and creation standpoint.

Obviously, they shouldn’t just give away Embiid without a significant return, but what if the Sixers could land a package that includes a player like Bradley Beal or Devin Booker or CJ McCollum?

That would give Simmons a lot more spacing and a lethal complementary backcourt combination to pair with Harris, who can slide back to his natural position at power forward, and Horford, who can revert back to playing center, which he had done in every year of his career before this one. 

With Harris and Horford moving back to their natural positions, along with more shooting and playmaking in the backcourt, the Sixers offense should immediately see drastic improvement.

The Sixers could then bring Shake Milton, Furkan Korkmaz and Alec Burks (if the team re-signs him) off the bench, all of whom shot at least 40% on 3s this season. The Sixers would still need more depth, but each of those three would no longer be relied on to carry the perimeter offense, which they often unfairly needed to do this season because of a lack of quality options.

As mentioned earlier, Simmons is already the best in the league at creating open 3-point shots for his teammates. Imagine if the Sixers built a team around him with better spacing and more dependable shooters without a player like Embiid, who clogs the paint and slows the game down with his post-up heavy style.

Embiid is still just 26 years old and there are probably several teams in the league who'd be willing to trade for him. The Sixers would be wise to explore options for him while he’s still relatively young to upgrade their dearth of quality guard play.

This probably isn’t even a conversation if the Sixers hadn’t drafted Jahlil Okafor over Porzingis or Booker with the third pick in 2015, or Markelle Fultz over Tatum in 2017, or maybe even if they hadn’t traded Mikal Bridges to Phoenix for Zahire Smith (13 games played in two seasons) in the 2018 Draft.

But here they are. If the Sixers can’t move Harris or Horford, trading Embiid may be the only option to add quality perimeter shooting and creation. Even if they can’t free themselves of Harris or Horford’s contracts, trading Embiid still might be the best way to improve offensively.

Either way, keeping the current core of Simmons, Embiid, Harris and Horford for the next several years will only yield more years as disappointing as this one.