How Jahlil Okafor can revive his career

It's impossible not to gawk at how much Jahlil Okafor's stock has dropped in just over two years.

Okafor won the NCAA tournament as the No. 1 freshman recruit for Duke in 2015. He decimated defenders at every level with a seemingly bottomless package of inventive post moves and seemed destined for superstardom. He declared for the draft and went third overall to the Philadelphia 76ers.

Two years later, Okafor is largely unrecognizable and on the verge of washing out of the league. He's so unwelcome in Philadelphia that the organization passed on his $6.3-million option for 2017-18 and is discussing a buyout to get him off the books as soon as possible. This came after the Sixers unsuccessfully tried to give Okafor away.

Okafor holds career averages of 14.7 points on 51.1 percent shooting at the age of 21 which surely warrants another opportunity. But while the ability to score is always valuable, Okafor's isolation style doesn't fit the modern game. He needs to reconcile that before he runs out of chances.

Here's how he can get his career back on track.

Lower expectations

Straddling the line between maintaining enough confidence to perform and being overconfident to the point of distraction is always tricky.

Okafor needs to retain whatever swagger he has left. But at the same time, he must also accept that the league simply isn't built to accommodate his style. It happens all the time to athletes in every sport - what got you into the league isn't necessarily what keeps you in it.

There's not one current example of a successful playoff team built around an isolation-focused center as its main option. Playing through the post is still a core staple of many teams in the league. However, Okafor is an unwilling passer, he doesn't defend, and doesn't stretch out beyond the 3-point line. He plays for himself.

Okafor doesn't make his teammates better and he's not nearly good enough to carry a team on his own. He posted up on a third of his possessions and scored 0.86 points per play while shooting 44 percent from the field. That's a huge reason why the Sixers scored at a league-worst rate when he was on the floor last season. Their rebounding, assist, steal, and block percentages also dropped.

The problem isn't necessarily that Okafor likes to post up, the problem is that he doesn't do anything else of value. He needs to play less like a star and more like a role player who capitalizes on scant opportunities to be useful within a larger context.

Embracing a sixth man role could be a way forward. Enes Kanter and Greg Monroe - two post-up players who don't defend that were drafted in the lottery - have carved out niches by making compromises in a bench role where their strengths are accentuated and their weaknesses are hidden.

But in order to reach that point where he can reinvent himself, Okafor must accept a lesser role.

Find the right situation

Given the turmoil in Philadelphia, Okafor is probably dying for a fresh start with any organization that will give him a second chance.

Okafor's tenure with the Sixers started poorly and only went downhill. The most notable moment of his rookie campaign, one in which he averaged 17 points per game, was his brawl with drunken fans in Boston. His team finished with just 10 wins that season, which might partially explain his frustration as a first-year pro. After all, Okafor had won at every level before coming to a Sixers team that was actively trying to be the worst team in the league.

The following year, Okafor was clearly exceeded by the emergence of Joel Embiid. Philadelphia made it clear that Embiid was its franchise center of the future, which meant Okafor and Nerlens Noel suddenly became afterthoughts despite their high draft stock. Playing its centers also proved impossible as they just cramped the floor and got into each other's way.

Philadelphia did not set up Okafor to succeed and both sides want to move on. The Sixers made their move by giving Embiid a maximum deal. Now it's on Okafor to make his.

He is no longer highly sought after, but he will surely get a chance to revive his career somewhere else. He can either take a bigger opportunity with a losing franchise in need of scoring (Chicago comes to mind) or join a winning program and accept a limited role to rehab his image (San Antonio could recreate the Boris Diaw situation).

Either way, in order for Okafor to succeed in his next opportunity, he needs to remember the painful lessons learned in Philadelphia. He isn't a star, but he can still be in the league.