Here we go again.

Joel Embiid rolled his ankle in the first quarter last night – much to the chagrin of a PANIC-STRICKEN Kevin Harlan – but he finished with 10 and 10 and after the game Brett Brown said he was fine. Of course, that doesn’t mean he’ll play at home on Saturday. Why? FUCK KNOWS:

Do you think Joel will play Saturday?

“It’s so fluid that we don’t know yet. It’s part of our landscape. You hear it all the time from us and me and it’s just part of our world where you go in and you’re not really quite sure what the lay of the land is gonna be. We will judge Joel we will judge Jahlil and from that judgement our sports science people will give us marching orders of how much we can play them. So it’s piecemealing it now until our guys can get back on our track with 100% health.”

As you might imagine, that bit of information, first tweeted by Keith Pompey, who cited Twitter in his follow up question to Brown, was met with some scorn:

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Embiid had a stress fracture, a type of injury that can reoccur with a heavy workload. So the Sixers are being overly cautious with The Process and easing him back slowly, which is fine since this is yet another lost season, as frustrating as that may be. But this whole awkward scenario is not exactly being helped by what already seems like yet another lack of communication on the part of the Sixers. They’ve said he won’t play both games of a back-to-back, leading most fans to assume that would mean the second game. So cue the outrage when he didn’t play on Wednesday night at home against the Wizards because the Sixers undoubtedly wanted to hold him back for the national TV shitfest against Karl Anthony-Towns and the T-Wolves last night. Fine. But Saturday is another home game, one not part of a back-to-back, that fans likely bought tickets for expecting to see Embiid, who might not play until the sports pseudo scientists measure whatever it is they measure.

This could all be alleviated if the Sixers would be just a bit more transparent about when he will or won’t play. It’s like when you went to a Flyers game in the late-90s and all of a sudden Lou Nolan commanded you to scratch “number 88, Eric Lindros” from your lineup card because he just contracted yet another troublesome ailment that was absolutely NOT a hangover. This is happening now with Embiid. And I predict it’s going to happen with a Ben Simmons if he returns later in the season. At this point, the Sixers should just change their jersey sponsor to the US Postal Service and wear “FRAGILE– THIS END UP” patches.

On the pre-game show last night, Ernie Johnson incorrectly reported that Simmons was done for the year. Apparently at some point during the first half, Scott O’Neil, who slept outside in a box…

… took time out of fighting homelessness to text Charles Barkley and inform him, somewhat forcefully, according to Barkley, that Simmons was in fact not done for the year. Kenny Smith immediately sniffed out the reasoning behind O’Neil’s correction:

“Yeah, he wants those tickets into February to start selling.”

He sure does. Whether Simmons or Embiid actually plays is a different story.