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I Will Always Be Thankful for Joel Embiid
By Sean Barnard
Published:
There is plenty to be said about Joel Embiid. He is a seven-time All-Star, a two-time scoring champion, a three-time member of the All-NBA defensive team, the 2023-24 MVP, the NBA all-time leader in points per minutes, and a human being.
This last point is lost all too often when discussing athletes and Embiid in particular. But it was put on full display with Dotun Akintoye’s deep dive article on ESPN titled, “Joel Embiid sees you.”
The article broke down the self-constructed wall that the Sixers superstar has put up over the years and laid out the exact reason why this was the case. We were granted a peek behind the curtain obscuring one of the more mysterious figures in Philadelphia sports, and most of the local reaction to the article is further evidence to why Embiid is so guarded in the first place.
Conversations around Embiid have become increasingly nauseating. The “get past the second round” jokes or “just wait until he’s injured” quips have grown increasingly frequent, and optimism for the Sixers franchise feels at an all-time low despite a wide-open Eastern Conference and some encouraging youthful strides the team has taken. In some ways, Embiid and the Sixers have become like an old married couple who no longer have the spark but also lack the energy and effort to go through a divorce.
Communication has never been a strength of Embiid or the Sixers throughout the 11-year relationship. Embiid filled in some gaps on some of the questions many of us had accepted would never be answered. From an intern looking over his initial rehab, to the organization not believing him (and fining him!) about still having pain in his injured foot before a doctor confirmed it had not healed, it was not exactly a glowing review of the Sixers organization.
This is where Embiid’s story has to be viewed in unique light. Generally, the pathway to development for players involves creating an infrastructure that gives them every opportunity to flourish. Doctors, trainers, coaches, teammates, and plenty of other figures are crucial to this. But this was a luxury that Embiid was never afforded.
Broken internal trust before he even stepped on the floor began to force Embiid in the guarded corner that he comfortably resides in:
“A pattern had emerged. Those loyal to Embiid and invested in his future became an organization within the 76ers organization. Embiid’s allies saw him as wounded and gifted and alone and in need of reinforcing. (David) Martin (of the Australian Institute of Sport), trying to understand how to work with Embiid and explain his behavior, started reading in-depth about working with gifted children. They flattered his proclivities (he did not communicate, so they became his go-betweens, covering for his tardiness) to get the most they could out of him, if not always the best.”
But these concerns with the organization not having the then roughly 20-year-old’s back were vindicated:
“Things got so bad that Martin drew up a confidential survey for members of the performance department. They were asked to answer multiple-choice questions about several players, including Embiid: Do you think this guy will ever be an MVP? An All-Star? A starter on a championship team? A rotation player? Do you think he’ll end up in Europe?
The results were dismaying. “Nobody believed in Joel,” Martin tells me. “They just weren’t into him.” Martin was convinced Embiid would never be able to heal in an environment that was so hostile. He decided to go to Hinkie and owner Josh Harris and ask to take Embiid out of the country, to Aspetar, an orthopedic and sports medicine hospital in Doha, Qatar. After some resistance, the team relented.”
Since Joel Embiid has been in Philadelphia, there’s been a revolving door of consistent change. At the general manager position, Sam Hinkie, Jerry Colangelo, Bryan Colangelo, Brett Brown, Elton Brand, and Daryl Morey have all spent time serving as the lead organizational decision maker. Without diving down the rabbit hole of how one of these general managers, with particularly obnoxious collar sizes, was tweeting about Embiid from a burner account, it’s fair to say these decisions weren’t always operated with his best interest in mind. Brett Brown, Doc Rivers, and Nick Nurse have each spent time as head coach and Embiid has seen more than 115 teammates cycle through the organization across his tenure. This includes failed star pairings with players like Ben Simmons, Jimmy Butler, James Harden, and more.
Continuity has been a constant buzzword from Embiid for quite some time. There have been examples of teams being rewarded for patience in seeing the process through. The Boston Celtics looked like they were heading to a Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown divorce before getting over the championship hump. Plenty were skeptical of Nikola Jokic or Giannis Antetokounmpo being capable of leading their cast of characters to the promised land, until they did it.
But even looking at today’s roster, Tyrese Maxey is Embiid’s longest-tenured teammate with five seasons under his belt. Only Tobias Harris and Furkan Korkmaz have remained on the Sixers and played alongside Embiid for longer than this. Maxey is the lone member of the current Sixers roster to have more than two years of experience playing with Embiid.
Daryl Morey has plenty of critics, but there is little debate that he has helped provide the Sixers organization with a level of stability they have lacked for over a decade. You can critique individual decisions but there is a level of competence in the front office that simply didn’t exist for most of Embiid’s career. But this has not fully healed the mental or physical scars left on him. The Sixers star took a not-so-subtle shot in the article in regard to him playing through his meniscus issue and bell’s palsy during the New York Knicks series.
The Sixers lost the series in six games. Embiid averaged 33 points, 10.8 rebounds and 5.7 assists. He had nothing left late in games when the adrenaline wore off and the pain took hold. “I knew I only had about two quarters,” he says. “My body just was, like, ‘Nope, that’s it.’ There was nothing I could do. I shot probably, like, 10 percent in the fourth quarter.”
Embiid looks back at the series with ambivalence. “In those situations, you wish some of the people upstairs kind of had your back and were like, this is not OK,” he says. “You’re not playing.”
This also came after an anecdote of Kim Caspare, a physical therapist whom Joel Embiid elected to let into his inner circle and worked with him extensively through the years, leaving Embiid’s house late night following a recovery session. At 2:29 AM she fired off a text making the case why Embiid deserves to give himself more grace and only he has to deal with the repercussion on his body. Embiid ignored the message and went on to score 50 points in Game 3, lifting the Sixers to their first win of the series.
As if the internal issues weren’t a heavy enough burden, outside media has never been kind to Embiid. He did himself no favors with his Twitter troll reputation early on his career. His injury issues have become a prevalent talking point for the national media and the lack of playoff success is a burden he has to wear. Even locally, Embiid does not get pushed or recognized in the way players like Jalen Hurts or Bryce Harper are, despite pre-dating both and holding the crown for most impressive individual talent among them. Instead, whiney old-school radio heads play the hits of Embiid complaints and hack journalists write how he is not living up to the legacy of his brother, who tragically passed away.
At the end of the day, Embiid is an athlete and is rightfully judged for his results on the court. But even sitting here reflecting on the playoff shortcomings I have a hard time not reflecting to life before Joel Embiid. Before the fruits of The Process rotted away in whatever cesspool the Colangelos tossed them in. Before Kawhi Leonard’s game-winning shot bounced 75 times on the rim and turned into one of the more improbable game-winning shots in history. Before the Sixers dropped the confetti on what they thought was a game-winning three-pointer by Marco Belinelli only to find out it was a tie and then lose in overtime. Before I learned more about unique sports injuries than anything across my three years of physical therapy school.
The Sixers went 47-199 in the three seasons before Joel Embiid stepped foot on the floor. Not only were they bad, but third-worst team in NBA history bad. I remember convincing myself that Tony Wroten driving left was one of the most unstoppable moves in basketball, that Hollis Thompson was a legitimate NBA player, that Jahlil Okafor and Nerlens Noel could coexist, and that Dario Saric would one day come over. But it was Embiid more than anything that was that beacon of hope. From the second he stepped foot on the floor for the first time, two full seasons after being drafted, and the turnaround jump shot over the Thunder giving the feeling of “We finally may have found a star.”
In an era where stars force themselves to new locations on a yearly basis, Embiid always stayed. Among active players, only Giannis and Steph Curry have been with the franchise that drafted them for longer. The Sixers are 287-146 in games that Embiid has played in his career (66.3%) and 104-163 (39.0%) when he has missed out. Last year’s playoff absence snapped a seven-year streak. Generally, it has been true that if Embiid is on the floor, the Sixers are a good basketball team that has a chance against anyone. When he isn’t there, they look a whole lot closer to what life was like before him.
Embiid does not have to be your favorite player. But the organizational burden he has been forced to carry is unlike any other athlete in recent history. He has been the stability for an organization in which the opposite should be true. The Philadelphia 76ers have failed Joel Embiid far more often than Joel Embiid ever failed the Philadelphia 76ers and this should be recognized as such.
Who knows how much longer the Embiid era continues in Philadelphia. Reports on his recovery on the second knee procedure in 14 months have not exactly been encouraging and the team has has notably added some youthful talent for a brighter future. But we are less than two years removed from Embiid still being a consensus top-three player in basketball in which he was averaging 34.7 points, 11 rebounds, and 5.6 assists per game and en route to his second consecutive MVP.
The Sixers have no choice but to ride with Embiid until the wheels fall off, even if that is not too far in the future. But give Embiid credit for uplifting this Sixers franchise back to basketball relevancy and carrying an organizational burden that would have crushed most. He is not perfect, but he is ours. It has not led to the dynasty setup we hoped or even a single Eastern Conference Finals appearance. But the grass is not always greener, and too many people have been in a rush to discover this haunting reality.
Sean Barnard has covered the Philadelphia 76ers and general Philly Sports for over six years in a variety of roles and for multiple outlets. Currently works as a Content Writer for DraftKings Network, Sixers/NBA Insider for Philadelphia's Fox Sports the Gambler, and co-host of Sixers & Phillies Digest on Youtube. Forever Trusting the Process.