The Sixers and Daryl Morey are not at an inflection point. The only way out is through.

Daryl Morey is a man in search of an answer that does not exist. That’s the easiest way to make sense of what you saw and heard from the Sixers’ president earlier this week. There were moments during his year-end news conference when you could have sworn he was either lying to you or lying to himself. But there is a more charitable interpretation: that of a man talking through a problem for which there is no solution.

The Sixers are not at an inflection point. They are well past that. Championship or Bust has been the cry since the moment he arrived. Each of Morey’s first four offseasons have begun with a re-declaration of that mission statement. Offseason No. 5 is a reckoning. The Sixers have arrived at Bust. This is what it looks like.

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Morey is a man who is trying to turn a circle into a square. It’s the simplest way to explain the seeming incongruence at the heart of his annual State of the Daryl. On the one hand, Morey says the Sixers will stick to the blueprint they followed last offseason: a championship team built on a foundation of Joel Embiid and Paul George. On the other hand, he wants the Sixers to become a younger, more dynamic team. The impossibility is the answer.

Here’s how Morey explained it during his preamble. The passage is worth a close inspection.

“We feel good about those three guys, our three All-Stars, going forward,” Morey said, referring to Paul George, Joel Embiid, and Tyrese Maxey. “I have to do a better job putting a supporting cast around them.

“I think when you go through a season like this you need to really take a step back. Everybody needs to find a mirror, starting with myself. What could have gone better? What can I do better? There’s quite a few things there.

“I would say one of those things is I was very focused on finding veteran-type players who generally perform very well in the playoffs. I didn’t put enough emphasis on the team getting through the regular season. Next season for sure we will be a younger, more dynamic group.”

It is an illuminating comment in the sense that it offers some confirmation of the dramatic shift in tactics we saw from Morey and the Sixers around the trade deadline.

Out went Caleb Martin, signed the previous offseason after a long run as a postseason glue guy and occasional dynamo for the Heat. In came Quentin Grimes, who is still at an age where his legs work all winter. He joined former two-way player Jared Butler and second-round pick Adem Bona to form the core of the second-half Process Sixers. Suddenly, the present was the future.

Except, the lesson of the second half is that youth plus athleticism plus promise does not necessarily translate into wins. In fact, it almost certainly translates into losses without a core of veteran stars.

The sad reality is that the Sixers do not have those stars. They have a couple of guys who they thought would be those stars. But George and Embiid have done nothing to back up that belief.

You can blame the injuries, which Morey did. He noted that the Sixers lost 134 games to injury out of their All-Stars, nearly triple the next highest team in the league. What he didn’t note is that the Sixers failed to glimpse any glimmer of fruition even in the games when all three players were healthy. Even in those rare moments when the whole gang was here, the results were not there.

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There is no such thing as “should” for the Sixers. Not right now. Anybody who tries to tell you otherwise either hasn’t thought it all the way through or is talking out of an orifice other than their mouth.

Blow it up? Run it back? Trade George? Or Embiid? Pivot? Rebuild?

All are options. All will remain on the table until the Sixers have two critical pieces of information.

Until we have those two pieces of information, we have nothing actionable.

Here’s what we do know:

The only thing we know about the Sixers is that they cannot afford to hop back on the hamster wheel. In Maxey and second-year player Jared McCain, they at least have the makings of a post-Embiid team that can be molded into competitiveness. In Grimes and Butler and the rest of the second-half Sixers, they have some intriguing rotation pieces.

 At this point, the best path forward is to pretend that George and Embiid do not exist and begin building the team that will exist once that becomes a reality.

How do you do it?

That’s the question. Good luck with the answer.