Joel Embiid's hurt.
He suffered a meniscus injury Tuesday night against the Warriors when Jonathan Kuminga fell on his left knee late into it. The reigning MVP is out through at least the weekend, the Sixers are trying to figure out what the treatment plan is, and the players have to find another way to get by as a club that hasn't been playing so hot of late in the meantime.
It's not good, and there's a lot of anger stemming from it, toward the NBA's new 65-game rule for awards qualification, toward the Sixers for how they handled the situation with even letting Embiid play, toward media and opposing fan bases for questioning or attacking his character, and even toward Embiid for trying to force his way through issues that were clearly hampering him.
Just a terrible look this past week all around. Here's what they're saying about it in the sobering fallout...
Zero chance
NBA on TNT
Jumping right into the major problem for the Sixers as a team, they don't work without Embiid and might as well be dead in the water if they have to go any extended amount of time without him.
Said Charles Barkley on Thursday night's TNT panel:
"Meniscuses are tricky. I had a meniscus one time and played in a couple weeks, but I've seen guys miss a month or two. We gotta wait to see the results, but it's a devastating injury. The Sixers, without him, they might be a lottery team. That's how great he is.
"Man, I hope he's not out an extended period of time because – No. 1) He's the MVP, that's how great a player he is – but the Sixers have zero chance without him. Zero." [NBA on TNT]
As for how the 65-game rule for the MVP race factored into this, and its overall fairness, Barkley wasn't all that sympathetic to any complaints:
"He's gonna miss more than four games...These players got nobody to blame but themselves. The Players Association signed off on the deal. I thought it should've been 70 games, honestly, personally. But these guys put themselves in a situation where they didn't respect the game and started resting and load managing, and the NBA had to do something. These fans, man, they keep seeing these guys one time a year. They're paying all this money for tickets, and these guys are making $30-40-50-60 million, they need to play. It's unfortunate what happened to him, but I hear all these guys whining about it's a bad rule. It's a bad rule in my opinion. 65 games? I told ya, I thought it should've been 70." [NBA on TNT]
Shaquille O'Neal, from the other end of the table:
"There should be certain limits. Somebody fell on his knee. that's not his fault. The way he was playing, that's not his fault. I agree with Chuck. The load management, no. But if something like a freak accident like that happens...ii you have an injury caused by somebody else, the numbers don't count. I know we're at 12, but that wasn't his fault last night. The guy fell on his knee." [NBA on TNT]
Draymond's thoughts
Draymond Green | The Volume
The Warriors' Draymond Green was right there when Kuminga fell on Embiid's knee, and afterward on his podcast, very much felt like the 65-game rule is what forced Embiid out there – much like a few Sixers did postgame, per The Athletic.
"Joel playing tonight felt very much so because of the 65-game limit – what I actually think is quite bulls---. Guys didn't face those rules before , but those same All-NBA teams, those same MVP awards, lists, Defensive Player of the Year, those lists are the same...In turn, you get Joel, who comes out there tonight and he forces it. Freak play with him and JK diving for the ball, but maybe it's not as bad if the knee isn't already banged up.
"I don't really bang with it and now we got one of our premier faces in this league, the MVP of our league possibly hurt for an extended period of time, because he's forcing it." [The Volume]
The NBA's part in this
David Murphy | The Philadelphia Inquirer
Because there was the 65-game rule, yeah, but also not to be lost in the shuffle was that the NBA was investigating why Embiid was such a late scratch from Saturday night's game in Denver, which David Murphy wondered if that might have forced Embiid's hand even though he clearly wasn't healthy.
But the second-order effects are worth consideration. As is often the case with second-order effects, they suggest a battle that simply isn’t worth fighting. Nobody understands their bodies better than the players themselves. Nobody tries to understand them better than their teams. At the end of the day, these load management regulations put a bureaucracy in charge of deciding what’s best for an individual’s health. They also put pressure on players, subliminal or otherwise.
The focus on Embiid’s absence in Denver was there in part because the NBA sent a message that his absence was worthy of investigation. It became a multiple-day story.
Well, message received. Embiid was out there. Now, he isn’t. [The Inquirer]
MORE: Sixers fined $75,000 failing to place Embiid on injury report
About that narrative
Sam Amick | The Athletic
And then there's the "ducking" narrative and the Embiid-Nikola Jokić MVP debate that has only seemed to bring out the worst in fans and even media alike.
Embiid didn't play Saturday night against the Nuggets and that led to having his character openly questioned on ESPN's airwaves and during Nick Nurse's press availability.
Then he did against the Warriors on Tuesday night and everyone saw why he wasn't. He paid for it, too.
Embiid didn't deserve any of that, wrote Sam Amick:
So maybe we all should have dug a little deeper here before destroying him for his absence in Denver. Yours truly included.
There was the evidence that was largely ignored from the Thursday night game against Indiana when Embiid went down midway through the second quarter and appeared to hurt that same left knee that would be his undoing in Denver. Nonetheless, he played through it against the Pacers and finished with 31 points, seven rebounds and three assists in 31 minutes.
Fast forward two nights, and it was entirely fair to wonder why Embiid wasn’t on the injury report heading into the Nuggets game (and make no mistake, the league has been investigating that very matter). But the criticism regarding his absence went much further than that.
Embiid was deemed a coward in some circles, someone who would rather get booed (which he was) than take on Jokić in his building. Never mind that he had just bested Jokić in Philadelphia less than two weeks before. [The Athletic]
Later Friday, LeBron James chimed in on Twitter/X and demanded higher accountability for how many handled Embiid's situation in the media:
MORE: Sixers trade deadline guide
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