January 31, 2017
Despite an energetic and exhilarating victory at home Monday night against the Sacramento Kings, the Philadelphia 76ers surprise season of playoff hopes pretty much turned hopeless when it was announced that Joel Embiid would not play that night – and that he would also miss the following two games this week in Texas against the Mavericks and Spurs.
It was nice while it lasted, but that long shot at making the playoffs turned even longer. Instead, we are left in a quandary about what to think of the club’s future with Embiid, who suffered a leg injury last week against Charlotte but talked himself into the lineup for a national tilt on Friday night against Houston.
Since then Embiid has been hampered by a bone bruise and missing from the action.
Indeed, some of the sizzle that has surrounded the team remains as seven Sixers finished in double-digit scoring, Brett Brown again looked like a Coach of the Year candidate, and the quirky “raise the cat” phenomena appeared up close and live with some toy cats on display in the building.
At some point, this might wind up like the crazy days of the Florida Panthers when the fans would toss rubber rats on the ice after a victory, but for now, the lingering feeling is “#$%!, why did Embiid have to get injured?!”
Still, in place of the playoff buzz, there is still a buzz that things will get better quickly in the future with a healthy Embiid and the addition of Ben Simmons, who is likely to make his debut later this month.
The whole situation around Embiid stinks, but it is truly difficult to place any sort of blame. The Sixers took a risk when they drafted a big man with a bad foot, and the only guarantee was that the threat of injury was going to be a constant source of worry.
The worry began on draft night, and continued through his first season with the mishaps, walking boot, and trips abroad to make sure things were healing properly.
The worries continued into this season when Embiid was placed on a minutes limitation, and there was a directive that he simply would not play in back to back games. The drama built when Embiid became enraged when pulled late in a game headed toward overtime – assuring he would not go over his minute restrictions.
It’s a crazy situation made even crazier when there is no science to back up the game plan. For all anybody knows, Embiid could play three games in four nights and be fine – and then get injured when the Sixers played one game in a week.
But this is no ordinary player, and there is no such thing as an ordinary foot injury when a body is as big as Embiid, and the moves and torque so powerful.
The recent injury appears to be the result of a leg injury that was worse than he first believed. The fact that it has occurred just as the Sixers were making a loud statement across the NBA that their time was near is unfortunate – but it should not change the course of action.
There is just no sense in putting the franchise’s most important piece on the floor in this situation. In fact, given his lack of playing time over the past two seasons, it wouldn’t even make sense to put him on the floor even if the team was truly in the throes of a playoff run.
The end game here has never been to simply make the playoffs and then evaporate. The game plan has been to put enough quality players on the floor to be a team that challenges to go deep into the playoffs with a chance to win for several seasons.
Embiid the biggest piece of that plan, and the next biggest piece – Simmons – has not even been on the floor this season. The real win this season would be to have Embiid literally up and running by the time Simmons hits the floor, and then make plans for all the surrounding pieces to be added in the offseason to make a real challenge in 2018 and well beyond.
It truly stinks that Embiid comes with a “fragile” tag, but the really important aspect of all this is that he wants to play.
The real worry here would be if Embiid were balking at the action. The real worry would be if Embiid would not leave the garage if the “check engine” light was illuminated.
That is not the case. In fact, from the moment he was near healthy enough to play he has been making noise that he wants to shed the restrictions in terms of playing time, and he wants to go full out, wire to wire.
He is a huge player with a huge engine, and he is not afraid to run that engine at its red line in terms of RPMs. From the moment he announced that the playoffs were a possibility, the Sixers played with a new sense of purpose.
Perhaps more than even the fans, Embiid is impatient to get going. He has had enough of the preliminaries and now he wants to direct the team to some victories, but the reality is that the time has still not arrived.
In his very limited time, Embiid has already made this season a huge success for the Sixers. When he is on the floor they have become much-watch entertainment, and for a while, even when he was on the bench, he provided enough spark to give the team some momentum to win without him on the court.
For Sixers fans the time is near, it’s just not now.
