Today, we’ll be trading with the Portland Trailblazers. This is the perfect situation for us, as they’re a rebuilding team with a superstar. We’re able to get Damian Lillard for Tobias Harris, PJ Tucker, and a first, and while that trade will make us very weak at the forward positions, we’re going to have Embiid, Lillard, Harden, and Maxey on the same team, so I think we can figure it out. This is what our team will look like at the start of next season:
Paul Reed had a nice jump, and while Harden regressed a lot, Lillard will more than make up for what we’re losing. These are our season results:
If Embiid wasn’t injured in nearly half our games, we would have won a lot more than 54, but we still won enough for the 3 seed in the East, and we finished with the best offense in the league by a wide margin despite all the games Embiid missed. Fully healthy, we’ll be a terrifying force in the playoffs.
We sweep the team that wanted Lillard (Miami) in the first round before moving on to our second round series with the Detroit Pistons, who for some reason have Nikola Jokic now. Detroit wins both of their first two games, but then we win four straight by double digits. New York got the 1 seed but got swept by Cleveland in a rematch of their first round series this year, meaning we’ll have home court advantage in our first Eastern Conference Finals in 20 years.
We win Game 1, but then Embiid does the thing he always does in the playoffs and gets injured. Cleveland takes Game 2. We take Game 3 as Lillard drops 36 and Embiid scores 25 playing through a sprained foot. We take Game 4 in OT as Lillard gets 31/4/6 and Embiid gets 28 and 22. We then win Game 5 as Maxey leads all scorers with 34. We’re playing in the Finals against the Memphis Grizzlies, who have beaten us in the Finals already in this blog series and seem to win the championship every other sim. Let’s see if we can take it this time. Good news for us is that Embiid’s foot will be fully recovered by our first game with Memphis.
We blow Memphis out in Game 1 as Embiid gets 33 and 8. Memphis then beats us by 20 in Game 2. We win Game 3 behind 45 and 12 from Embiid. We win Game 4 as Embiid leads the team again with 28 points, 11 rebounds, and 4 blocks. The Sixers return home to a sold out crowd with a chance to win its first championship in over 40 years.
Embiid gets 27 and 14.
Lillard gets 33/5/4.
And the Philadelphia 76ers are your national champions!
Obviously, this trade was a success, and hopefully, we can find some way to make this one a reality, because this was easily our most dominant team out of all the sims I’ve done despite our record.
