“The Process” may have started way before 2014, but the Philadelphia 76ers didn’t strike gold until that summer when they drafted Joel Embiid with the third overall pick. After years of hopeless losing, the team drafted Embiid knowing it would be a few years before they could reap the benefits he would provide.
It started the road of a journey that transformed the Sixers from lottery bottom-feeder to Championship contender.
But, in a recent article by Yaron Weitzman of Bleacher Report, Embiid was almost picked up by another team: the Cleveland Cavaliers. Here are the series of events that transpired during one particular workout ahead of the 2014 Draft.
On a Monday night a little less than two weeks before the draft, Embiid arrived in Cleveland to work out for the Cavaliers. He met the team the next morning at its practice facility in Independence, Ohio. Griffin tasked Vitaly Potapenko, a 6’10” assistant coach and former NBA player, to defend the nimble Embiid in the post. The Cavs figured Embiid would have no issue dancing around the older (39) and slower Potapenko. But then he began throwing the 275-pound Potapenko “around like a rag doll,” an onlooker said. He powered through him and easily moved him off the block. “The strength he had was mind-numbing,” the onlooker said. Any worries about Embiid’s back were dispelled.
It was more than his game that impressed the Cavs. It was his heart, his confidence, and his swagger on the basketball court that truly awed them.
The Cavs moved Embiid to the mid-range. His jumper was fluid and smooth. He finished the workout by stepping out behind the three-point line. He splashed his first shot from behind the arc.
“How could you not draft me No. 1?” he shouted at Griffin.
He swished another.
“Look how good I am!”
Another ripped through the net.
“You need me, Griff!”
A fourth make.
“Come on, Griff, you gotta draft me!”
A fifth.
“I’m so good!”
A sixth.
“I gotta be No. 1!”
A seventh.
“How can you not take me?”
Smiles swept across the faces of Griffin and the rest of the Cavaliers brain trust. Griffin would later tell people that it was the best workout he’d ever seen. “He was like the second coming of Hakeem,” he’d say. His mind was made. “He told us there he was taking Joel No. 1,” said Francois Nyam, one of Embiid’s agents at the time.
It was right then and there that the Cavs decided they would draft Embiid #1 overall, but a stress fracture in his foot would change all of that. Because the Cavs wanted someone who could make an immediate impact, knowing Embiid would miss time with injury was simply too much for them to pick him when the Draft rolled around.
We know the rest of the story. The Sixers would go on to pick Embiid and, later, Simmons, who would form the dynamic one-two punch we know them to be today. And while both players still have some growing up to do, there is a lot of optimism about how far “The Process” will get this team.
To think, a healthy Embiid could have changed all of that.
