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SLAM and Joel Embiid Recreate Famous Iverson Cover for New Issue
By Jim Adair
Published:
Joel Embiid is out for the year and his Rookie of the Year odds seem to be shrinking every day. Once the winner by default, Embiid’s 31 games this season may not be enough to lock down the title. But SLAM Magazine says it’s enough, and they’re giving him the highest of praise in doing so.
To honor the man editor-in-chief Adam Figman still believes is the ROTY, SLAM recreated one of the magazine’s most iconic covers: Allen Iverson’s cover from March ’99– 18 years later.
The cover story is full of useful tidbits. Like when Allen Iverson grabbed Embiid in the bowels of the Wells Fargo Center in January and yelled to him, “I told you this was coming! I told people that you were gonna be this!” Or that Embiid and Hinkie still text. And this bit, which has to be about Embiid’s dunk over Nerlens Noel:
Then training camp started, and Embiid’s teammates—who in some cases hadn’t seen him so much as play in a pickup game—immediately took note of what he was capable of. In a scrimmage during those first few days, he dunked over a teammate with such rim-rattling force that Sixers guard Gerald Henderson still thinks about it.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen something so violent,” Henderson says. “It scared me. I was on his team—it was a post-up. I won’t mention who was guarding him because it’s one of my teammates, but it was violent. It shook me up, man. I had never seen something so powerful.”
While this feature is a respite from the dark cloud hovering over the team, it doesn’t ignore the negatives:
The team won’t rush Embiid through any of his rehabbing—they weren’t doing a ton of winning this season, anyway. But thankfully, the questions that lingered over the past two seasons—Will he ever be physically able to play in an NBA game? Does he have any talent whatsoever? What exactly are we waiting for here?—are now gone.
“With him being able to score the way he can from anywhere, and at the same time affect the defensive end as much as he does and guard multiple guys at the rim like he can, the sky’s the limit for him,” Henderson says. “He’s got the ability to be super, super special.”
“I’m not close to where I want to be,” Embiid says. “My nickname is The Process, and in my mind it’s like, something processing, or something loading. I always see that as 100 percent where you want to be. I think I’m about… maybe 5-10 percent. I have a lot to improve on my game to get where I want to be. Sometimes I’ll go on these runs of scoring the ball and playing good defense and I’m like, Here I am!”
It’s a real downer to read this knowing that JoJo won’t touch the court again for six months or so. But ten percent? If this season’s Embiid was him at ten percent, the NBA might have to rewrite rules around him… just like they did for AI’s style.
When he's not writing about sports here or ranting about them on Twitter, Jim is probably watching X-Files on Netflix or drinking a beer somewhere. Jim has nothing against hockey, it's just not his style. He once met Duce Staley at a Sixers game.