I’ve been seeing a lot of Sixers fans freaking out over Sam Amick’s reporting that the team knew Joel Embiid had bad knees before they offered him an extension. Are those Sixers fans new here? Are the Sixers fans in the room with us now? I don’t think you need to have the x-rays in hand to know Embiid has more frayed cartilage in his knee than that bird will after dinner tomorrow:

Is this how bad it is being a Sixers fan right now? We’ve been hurt so much we’re just wiping the mainframe and acting like Embiid didn’t start his career with knee issues and shouldn’t have knee issues a decade later. We’re like six months from him throwing an oop to himself on a partially torn meniscus and re-injuring it and then playing 17 minutes a game in the Olympics. Of course his knees were jacked up and of course Sixers doctors thought they could manage it. This is the team whose unofficial slogan is “re-evaluated in two weeks”. At this point I wouldn’t even blink if Shams tweeted the doctors had to amputate a leg. But this was also explained to us (kind of) in a plan the Sixers had in place before the season.

And you know what? I can’t even blame the Sixers if this is true from Ramona Shelburne via ESPN that the team had him meet with a half a dozen doctors before the pen was even on paper:

The team and Embiid had sought half a dozen medical opinions before signing him to a three-year, $192.7 extension this September, sources said, and all of those consulted believed his knee could be adequately managed by a combination of strategic rest and procedures to promote healing, which Embiid has been regularly undergoing since last season.

In reality, what did you want them to do? They just extended Tyrese Maxey and signed Paul George. Did we not expect Embiid to be here for the life of those deals? In what world would that make sense? Plus waiting to extend him only makes him costlier in the long run. If you give props to the Sixers for one thing give it to them for not being the Dallas Cowboys.

Now you could wonder if all of the bad press from the stadium discussion was getting to them so they pulled the trigger on the deal for a change of pace. And you can say Embiid’s attitude through this whole thing has been shitty because it has. But you do this deal 10 out of 10 times. I’m not absolving them from anything. We all know they don’t deserve it after a history of mismanagement. But Paul George can’t even walk 10 feet without hyperextending something. Tyrese Maxey missed multiple weeks with an injury. You couldn’t paint a worse scenario to start the season. We’re also one Embiid setback over the next 65 games from winning 30 games and missing out on a stacked draft because their pick falls to OKC if it’s outside #6. The Sixers are in the worst position you can be – no man’s land. Which ironically is why they started The Process in the first place. Time is a flat circle friends.