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Your latest update on the Philadelphia 76ers' silly center logjam: A day after saying that it would be "an extreme challenge" if the front office kept centers Joel Embiid, Jahlil Okafor and Nerlens Noel around rather than trading one or two of them, coach Brett Brown told reporters that Noel is completely out of the rotation for the forseeable future, according to the Philadelphia Daily News' Bob Cooney.

Brown said the Sixers will continue to start Embiid and Okafor together, and Noel would only play if one of them were in foul trouble or otherwise unavailable. At this point, it's fair to wonder if Noel has played his last game for the franchise, even though he's saying that he's going to be professional and deal with this the best way he can:

Nerlens Noel briefly back with the Sixers
Nerlens Noel is the odd man out in Philly. USATSI

A few thoughts:

  • Noel is one of the Sixers' best players, so this should have been avoided. The writing, however, has been on the wall for a while. In the middle of the last offseason, it seemed a little crazy that all of these guys were still on the roster. The day before media day, Noel directly criticized the front office for not getting anything done, saying it "doesn't make any sense" to have three young centers who need playing time. On Friday, after playing just eight minutes in Philadelphia's loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, he said -- correctly! -- that he's "too good" to get that kind of treatment and the team needs "to figure this s--- out."
  • It's easy to vilify Noel here -- unlike Okafor, he has now complained about his situation to the media multiple times, and Brown has said publicly that he wished Noel had been around the team more when recovering from knee surgery earlier this season. If you want basketball players to put the team first 100 percent of the time, then you're probably not thrilled with any of this. Imagine you're Noel, though, and you a) have known nothing but extreme losing in the NBA, b) have been told that the organization would find a way to balance the roster, c) are heading toward free agency. Noel might not have handled this perfectly, but Philadelphia has not exactly done right by him.
  • The best thing about this is that it makes Brown's job a bit easier. It has been no fun to watch Okafor and Embiid try to play together, but at least the Sixers can now experiment with that without worrying about finding minutes for Noel and stretch 4 Ersan Ilyasova. Let's also remember that, even with Noel squeezed out, this is still a logjam in the frontcourt -- Dario Saric and Robert Covington are probably best at power forward, and Richuan Holmes has shown this season that he deserves minutes at center.
  • This won't do anything positive for Noel's trade value. Everybody already knew Noel was unhappy and the Sixers were trying to make a move, but now Philadelphia can't even pretend that it's OK with doing nothing.
  • I'm still curious about the Embiid-Noel pairing. The two of them might not fit together neatly on offense, but they have the potential to be an awesome defensive combination because of Noel's mobility and their ability to protect the rim and rebound. Sadly, we might never see this now, unless Okafor gets traded or hurt in the near future.