Sixers

Let’s Analyze the 20-Second Podcast Clip of Joel Embiid Talking (Complaining?) About Superteams

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Jul 24th, 2024 · 10:59 AM EDT

---

This is a very short video clip taken from Joel Embiid’s recent appearance on Drew Hanlen’s podcast. Hanlen has trained Embiid for some time now:

Joel Embiid on Jayson Tatum:

“He’s got a superteam… If I had a superteam I would win too… If i go 5-20 we get blown out.”

(via @TheCheckBall, @TheDunkCentral)pic.twitter.com/hDoteVyaRK

— Legion Hoops (@LegionHoops) July 24, 2024

You can go in a few different directions with this quote.

Direction 1: Yes, Jayson Tatum did have a super team around him this season. Jaylen Brown, Jrue Holiday, Derrick White, Al Horford, Kristaps Porzingis etc is better than any post-Process Sixers team. But Philly won 49 of 72 games in 2021 (.681 W%) and 54 games in 2023 and had more than enough talent to get past the second round, which they failed to do.

Direction 2: If memory serves us correctly, didn’t James Harden singlehandedly win two games against Boston in the 2023 playoffs? 45 points in Game 1 and 42 points and big shots in Game 4. Where was Embiid for the start of the series? Injured again. Joel came back, played well in the middle of that series, then shot 14-37 (37.8%) in Games 6 and 7, turned the ball over eight times, and quit like everyone else when Tatum went nuclear and scored 51. Embiid deserves as much of the blame as Harden for failing to close out the Celtics.

Direction 3: Joel is just speaking off the cuff, sure, and we can talk about the Ben Simmons Atlanta nightmare (passing up the dunk), Jimmy Butler’s wasted fourth quarter possessions in Game 7 in Toronto, and the shortcomings of other teammates. There are also plenty of examples of Embiid indeed having poor postseason games but the Sixers winning anyway. He shot 9-24 in Game 6 against Atlanta, but Philly snuck through with a 5-point win thanks to 24 from Tobias Harris, 24 from Seth Curry, and 16 off the bench from rookie season Tyrese Maxey. 2018 Miami series? 2-11 from the floor and 14 points, but a Game 4 win thanks to JJ Redick’s 24 and a 17/13/10 Simmons triple double. And maybe the most famous of the bunch is Game 2 in Toronto in 2019, when Joel shot 2-7 but the Sixers got 53 combined from Butler, James Ennis, and Greg Monroe.

So taking all of those various things into question, what conclusion do we come to? A lot of people seem to be in this mindset where even if Joel is speaking truthfully, they’d prefer he doesn’t speak at all. Sounds like excuse making and throwing past teammates under the bus, even if that’s not necessarily the intent. For a guy who hasn’t made it out of the second round, ever, maybe it’s better to just not talk. Go win gold with Team USA in Paris and then come back and get the ball rolling with Maxey, Paul George, and a roster that’s good enough to go to the conference finals. This is like the part in Half Baked where Brian, Thurgood, and Scarface visit Kenny in jail and tell him they’re going to sell marijuana to raise bail money. “No more window love! Go sell weed!” That’s kind of where some of us are at with Joel. “No more podcasts! Go play basketball!” And try to stay healthy.