This Is Another Dumb Sixers Column
Jack McCaffery, who has been blowing real hard into the Delco Times for years to make it seem like a paper worth reading, also wrote about the Sixers’ handling of Joel Embiid’s injury (read: injury) today, and he, too, like Bob Brookover, has a problem with it. After a descriptive lede about the playoff atmosphere at the Sixers-Rockets game – maybe Embiid’s best yet – McCaffery fired up his torch and puffed in the direction of the reader here comes my flaming take ya’ll!
And then, it happened. Then, the Sixers resumed being the Sixers, choosing not to double-down on the excitement that Embiid was providing, but to suppress it, resting him Sunday in Chicago, then again Monday in a makeup game against the Sacramento Kings. They will also not play him Wednesday in Dallas or Thursday in San Antonio, and are not committing to allowing him to play in the final two games of a road test in Miami or Detroit.
That would make it seven of eight games without Embiid, all to help ease the very bruise that did not prevent him from tormenting the Rockets. And that could be nine out of 10 games without a player that had shoved them back into fringe playoff contention.
Scored Earth, motherfucker. McCaffery out.
Mind you, Embiid is hurt. He has a bone bruise, something McCaffery explained as he weaved through his disjointed narrative about why the Sixers are doing this or that wrong and needless palace intrigue about some confusion on the part of the PR staff as to whether Embiid would or would not play in Dallas and San Antonio. And that was before McCaffery laid in to Brett Brown’s encouragement that Embiid play in the Rising Stars game, WHICH MORE THAN TWO WEEKS AWAY:
“It’s just part of the fluid side of NBA basketball,” Brown said. “We are trying to develop. We are trying to experiment. We are trying to win games. This setback with Joel Embiid is just part of NBA life. And I would be lying if I said it didn’t rock our boat a little bit. It’s just a part of the fluid side of the NBA and the fluid side of our still very young program.”
That’s the Sixers’ story, and they know it well. But it has gaps. One is that Brown reiterated Monday that he would like Embiid to play in the Feb. 17 Rising Stars Challenge during All-Star weekend, insisting that the opportunity to share time with NBA stars will have benefits.
So the Sixers will encourage Embiid to play in a made-for-TV gimmick event because he could learn something, but not to travel to San Antonio and study whatever it is that has made the Spurs so successful.
Look, if Embiid is still sore during his lonely, Rihanna-less Valentine’s Day, I can all but guarantee you that he won’t play in the exhibition game a few days later. But if his bone bruise does what so many bruises before it have done – heal – then he’ll play, likely 15 minutes, in what amounts to an offensive showcase. And then he’ll probably find a B-list rapper chick or IG celeb and plow her into oblivion before exchanging pleasantries with some entertainment titans who will soon be wearing Sixers snapbacks in TMZ photos whilst they walk the streets of LA. TRUST THE PROCESS!