There's no ducking it now: Philadelphia 76ers superstar Joel Embiid is in a very worrisome injury situation after playing through an issue in his left knee. It's the culmination of a storm of awful decision-making and the crafting of insincere coverage of one of the NBA's best players.
Embiid has dealt with numerous injuries this season, causing him to miss 12 games already. The 76ers center has been the subject of jabs and roasts each time he has sat out. That noise peaked in the lead-up to Philly's recent matchup with the Denver Nuggets in Ball Arena. Embiid was ruled out for the fourth straight time in the Sixers' lone game of the season in Denver.
The 76ers did themselves and Embiid no favors by not listing him on the injury report ahead of the Nuggets matchup. He was very clearly bothered by his knee in the last game, a loss to the Indiana Pacers two nights prior, after sitting out three previous games with a knee issue and being listed as questionable with “left knee injury recovery” in a game five days before facing the Pacers.
Embiid asked to not be put on injury report
ESPN's Ramona Shelburne laid the blame on Embiid for asking not to be put on the injury report for that game. He was in the wrong, no doubt, but it's the job of the medical team to overrule him and do what has to be done. For as badly as Embiid (understandably) wanted to play, his health must be treated with the utmost importance. Even putting him as probable would have made the situation so much easier to deal with. Instead, the medical staff jumped in at the last second because of concerns over how he looked in warm-ups, hastily sidelining him.
Joel Embiid being ruled out just before tip-off unleashed an outpouring of frustration — and it was deserved. To come into the day believing he would finally be able to take the court for another matchup against Nikola Jokic and then have it be called off at the very last moment was incredibly disappointing. But much of the conversation turned sour, shifting into quasi-conspiracy theories that he was intentionally skipping the game because of an aversion to playing there.
The last game Embiid played in Denver occurred in the 2019-20 season. Contrary to the popular belief that the Denver game is the one that Embiid absolutely needs to ensure he's ready for, it's actually not all that simple. He has just one shot of making it happen in any given season. If the game falls amid lengthy absences — which is what happened in the 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons — he's out of luck.
Last season, Embiid was ruled out hours before tip-off time in Denver. After he played both legs of a back-to-back, the team decided to hold him out as a precautionary measure. The decision was made worse by an interview he did with The Athletic's Shams Charania in which he offered a spicy perspective on the MVP race. The timing of that article painted the whole ordeal in a peculiar light. But it was a legitimate ailment, as indicated by how poorly he played on the second game of the back-to-back.
This time, it was asserted even harder that Embiid was ducking Jokic, that he was afraid to square off with the player who beat him out for two MVPs on his home floor. Embiid's absence was seen as a reflection of his character — as if the moral compass of a human being could be askew because they didn’t lace 'em up on a particular day. These nonsensical assertions undermined the nature of Embiid's knee issue, which would be made apparent in the following days.
After missing the Nuggets game and a game against the Portland Trail Blazers two days later, Embiid was listed as questionable but made active to play against the Golden State Warriors. From the jump, it was clear that he was not even close to being a full health. He settled for contested jumpers rather than carve out space in the mid-range or drive to the hoop. A grand total of two of his 18 field goals came in or near the restricted arc and he did not draw a single shooting foul. He moved gingerly on nearly every defensive possession, even falling down once as he tried to leap to contest a shot.
Joel Embiid's injury concerns were made even worse when, at the end of the game, Jonathan Kuminga dove for a loose ball and fell squarely on his injured knee. He yelled and rolled in pain on the floor before exiting the game and heading for an MRI.
It's easy to speculate that those baseless, inconsiderate narratives play a part in Embiid's thinking because of how much time he spends online. The degree to which they do can only be truly known by the big man himself. But what seems like a more concrete factor in him gritting through an injury and returning to action is the NBA's newly implemented requirements for league honors, such as MVP and All-NBA 1st Team.
NBA's new award eligibility not working out
The NBA revoking award eligibility for players who play fewer than 65 games is backfiring spectacularly — and not just because of Joel Embiid, who can only miss five more games before falling into ineligibility. Tyrese Haliburton, the exciting floor general of the up-and-coming Indiana Pacers, only has four more excused absences left. Donovan Mitchell and Devin Booker, two of the best shooting guards and mainstays in All-Star Games and All-NBA conversations, have just eight left.
What makes the rule so insulting is that the league came up with a punishment for players who miss too many games without meaningfully changing its poor scheduling habits. How can players be expected to miss no more than 20 percent of games when there are still regular back-to-backs and points of the season with three games in four nights? Endure one slightly lengthy injury-related absence and POOF! Your excellent season is unable to be recognized above an All-Star nomination.
Set aside the fact that these awards are meaningful signifiers of excellence at the highest level of basketball. This rule is about to make some players ineligible for bigger contracts, as salary levels are partly dependent on winning these honors. The league has decided to make availability a more important part of the players' potential earning power…while not making said availability easier to attain. Cool!
Scheduling back-to-backs in two different cities is particularly egregious and indefensible. The same goes for marquee, nationally televised games. Remember when the Boston Celtics played their first road game of the season against the Milwaukee Bucks on the second night of a back-to-back after playing in Boston the previous night? A highly anticipated game was turned into such a blowout that the network ditched it early in the second half.
The 76ers faced a similar situation, too. In November, they had to face the Minnesota Timberwolves in Minneapolis on a Wednesday after playing the Cleveland Cavaliers in Philadelphia on a Tuesday. That’s a very tough circumstance to face one of the best teams in the league. Embiid was ruled out with hip soreness and the Sixers lost in a blowout.
Embiid accused of skipping games against better teams
Speaking of playing road games against teams with records over .500, those are the types of teams Embiid is often accused of ducking. Fans and media members alike disingenuously declare that Embiid only cares about playing bad teams at home as a way to pad his stats and ensure another MVP trophy. Even a cursory glance at those games shows that it's far from a specific pattern Embiid has chosen to follow.
The 76ers have played 23 road games so far, 10 of which came against teams with a winning record. Embiid has played in four, facing the Bucks, Oklahoma City Thunder, Pacers and Orlando Magic. He missed that contest against the Wolves and then missed games against the New Orleans Pelicans and the Celtics due to an illness that other teammates had also contracted. After twisting his ankle, he sat out of a four-game road trip that included stops against the Miami Heat and the Magic. And, of course, he missed the game in Denver.
Those who cling to the idea that Embiid is ducking his toughest games must think that either Embiid and the Sixers are making those injuries up or that Embiid is intentionally hurting himself to be ruled out. Neither option makes a lick of sense — but such narratives aren’t meant to be more than a surface-level dig that often derives from unbridled disdain for the big man. Those narratives, by the way, can easily flip into a suggestion that Embiid only cares about regular-season/individual accolades should he not get injured as much.
While another MVP trophy would indeed be a significant accomplishment for Joel Embiid, he and the 76ers know it's all about the playoffs. But exacerbating the issue of Embiid missing games is the fact that the team looks nothing like a championship contender without him. They have a 3-9 record in games he has missed this season. In the nine games where Tyrese Maxey plays and Embiid doesn’t, the record is just 3-6, a winning percentage that puts Philly in the same range as the 12th-place Toronto Raptors.
If Philly was able to stay afloat without Embiid, the team could perhaps feel more empowered to convince him to rest. Unfortunately for them, the Eastern Conference is loaded with talented, hard-nosed teams. Squads like the Cavaliers and the New York Knicks are hitting their stride and showing to be legitimate forces to be reckoned with. In fact, the 76ers' loss in Golden State allowed them to pass Philly in the standings.
Embiid criticism is unreasonable
All this talk about Embiid using injuries as an excuse to miss certain games was ridiculous and hollow from the start. Far too many media members and fans with large social-media followings claim to just notice things 1) without digging for context and 2) in an attempt to quantify their own assumptions and pass it off as a genuine viewpoint. People who discuss sports — or any topic — in this way are no more insightful than a pile of rocks. “I'm just asking questions,” says the person who has no interest in finding a nuanced answer.
The verdict from those who obsess over Joel Embiid's missed games is yet to be determined. Does he have some sort of mechanism in his body where he can schedule an injury before having to play Jokic on his home turf? Does he possess a spidey sense for difficult games and will throw himself in harm's way to avoid them? Does he lie about his injuries? Is he, a player who was injured for the entirety of his first two seasons after being drafted and sustained various injuries in the playoffs over the years, willing to let himself get injured here and there so he can coast?
Perhaps the moral of the story is that inventing narratives of a player's injury being a covert attempt to avoid high-level competition — and then reinforcing that narrative by making quacking sounds on your podcast — is bad, actually. Maybe discussions about player injuries don’t have to be an effort at degrading said player and/or delegitimizing whatever ailment they are dealing with.
An avalanche of the worst of the worst from various circles in the NBA has brought us here, where Embiid's health is potentially compromised in a major way. The NBA's new award rules and the 76ers' medical staff enabled Embiid to push himself to play as soon as possible — and he ended up pushing himself way too far. Bloggers and reporters spewed nonsensical talking points with the singular goal of diminishing him, casting doubt on an injury until it became too real to dismiss.
Joel Embiid is a showman who tends to talk trash and embrace the hate he gets from opponents, sure. But the pendulum of opposing fans' thoughts about him has swung into insanity and desperately needs recalibrating. There is a healthy way to root against a certain player. None of it looks the way it does with Embiid right now.
For the most-discussed narrative about one of basketball's premier talents, in the midst of one of the most remarkable seasons ever, to be about how he not-so-secretly is afraid of good teams is an indictment on countless levels of the NBA world. It would be refreshing to see apologies and a desire to improve after the narrative of Joel Embiid “ducking” certain matchups was debunked by what could be a serious injury.
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