The Step Back Composite NBA Draft Big Board: The best 30 draft prospects of the 2010s

No. 3 overall pick, Philadelphia 76ers, 2014

How should we factor injury into this discussion? That’s a very tough question, and that made Joel Embiid very tough to place on this board. Ultimately, his back and foot issues that arose during the draft process kept him from the No. 1 pick, and they kept him from the top tier of this board as well. But make no mistake — without them, Embiid would have a very strong case for the top spot on this board. 7-foot-2 with ball-handling ability like Embiid’s just doesn’t happen, and certainly not with the nearly all-time great defensive impact Embiid had in college.

Wiggins took a lot of the headlines that year, but it was Embiid who was the driver for that team’s success, creating offense out of the post and face-up game and providing a backbone for Wiggins and company to funnel opponents to. Comparing Embiid’s skill-set to Hakeem Olajuwon wasn’t farfetched, and the expectation was that he could even grow beyond what he showed at the college level given his comparative lack of experience.

The caveat that he might not hold up was a significant one though, and even if he got healthy, the question was for how long. And fit with Simmons aside, this Sixers run could all go up in smoke at any point if Embiid’s back or foot flares up again. But if healthy, Embiid was almost certainly going to be a life raft to competitiveness for the team that drafted him, and that was made as clear as it could be by how immediately he turned the Sixers from the Process to a playoff-level team.