Joel Embiid’s legacy is on the line and he has to finally tune out the noise (2024)

Joel Embiid’s legacy is on the line here.

Sure, maybe we can blame Bryan Colangelo’s team for reporting a torn meniscus as a bone bruise and allowing him to play on a knee that ultimately needed surgery. Blame Doc Rivers for leaving the superstar in a game up by 29 with under four minutes to go. Blame the NBA for implementing a 65 minimum rule for MVP and All-NBA. Blame Elton Brand’s or Daryl Morey’s medical staff, or Nick Nurse not spotting an ailing MVP and simply swap in Paul Reed. Blame the national media’s shameful discourse about Joel ducking Nikola Jokic, without taking five minutes to fact check. Blame the media and fans for mocking Embiid mercilessly because of his injury history, his proud affiliation to the despised (outside Philly) Process, and for his having fun being a Troel.

At the end of the day, history won’t remember all that stuff Philly fans know so well. Yes, he’s already going to be a Hall of Famer. He’s already getting a statue in Camden. But history, Embiid’s legacy, his final standing in the pantheon of legends will ultimately boil down to what this man was able to accomplish in the playoffs.

Is his injury history simply something we chalk up to being an unsustainable combination of freakish size and agility? Is he simply too incredible, too otherwordly to last? Does he have bad luck with “freak” occurrences like Markelle Fultz or Pascal Siakam breaking his eye sockets?

Maybe. But maybe there’s something else within his control. Maybe he can at least increase his chances of finally delivering that magical and healthy playoff run. The one we’ll all remember forever.

The injury history, and what it might predict about his future, is a major impediment. And not for nothing, it may make Morey’s star pursuits a bit more difficult. If you were LeBron James or Paul George, would you stake the rest of your career on Embiid being healthy next spring?

No matter who is on the Sixers through the 2025 NBA Trade Deadline, it’ll mostly be about Joel’s body holding up for the next postseason.

Tracing back Embiid’s injury history, there is some evidence that he cares too much about outside noise, awards and proving haters wrong during the regular season.

Let’s look at his injury history and a few of the reports that reveal a history of suboptimal rehab patterns (a thing of the past) or dubious cognizance of hatorade (still present) that tempts Joel to push himself too hard when limited.

Injuries and anecdotes (trigger warning)

2015

It was reported that Embiid, while rehabbing that foot, would gain more than 50 lbs in just over half a year.

Per Keith Pompey, by January:

“[Embiid’s] work ethic is being questioned by some inside the organization....Embiid, however, hasn’t always been a willing workout participant, according to sources. He’s even blown off conditioning drills, one source added.

2016

Fans learned Joel re-fractured the same foot bone by July 2015. The organization was worried it was all career-threatening and there went the former Jayhawks’ second NBA season.

2017

Derek Bodner reported that Joel Embiid had a “a low-grade tear” of his left meniscus, suffered in late 2016. Prior to that point, Bryan Colangelo’s team claimed it was merely a bone bruise. Embiid and the team apparently tried other treatment options before eventually shutting him down for surgical repair.

The optics for everyone involved were brutal as fans so recently watched Joel playing in games (presumably making the issue worse), then later dancing on a concert stage with Meek, as the whole story unraveled.

2018

Inserted into the lineup on March 28 for the first time since late October of his rookie season, Fultz, clearly lacking chemistry with Jo, collided into the big man’s face. Embiid would fracture his orbital bone (for the second time, the first occurring at Kansas). Joel would return for a playoff push, but was clearly hampered by the mask.

Nothing Joel coulda done differently here — a freak occurrence.

2019

His first fullish season behind him, Jo came back with a vengeance in 2018-2019. By December of 2018, from USA Today: “The list of legitimate [MVP] candidates isn’t especially long, and right now, Embiid belongs at the top.”

But he was top three in the NBA in total minutes played when Brett Brown admitted Jo was “fatigued.” That was just before the surgically repaired left knee became a problem once again.

Fans and popular podcasters were sounding the alarms, begging the team to load manage Joel.

Instead, Embiid then clearly hobbled with knee and back ailments, hit the throttle, even increasing his minutes per game with seven games to go before All-Star Break. Sound familiar to 2024?

He’d talk about how he hated missing back-to-backs because it didn’t make him feel like an NBA player, given his history.

Fans watched him hurdle celebrity row at MSG, then play in the All-Star Game, before learning he would be out indefinitely with left knee tendinitis.

Not unlike 2015, Joel would pack on a ton of pounds in a hurry. When he returned just before the playoffs, he looked visibly limited, and quite out of shape.

There were probably more lessons here to be learned about load management, while caring less about proving he’s an 82-game NBA player, etc.

2020

A healthy bubble run! But without Ben Simmons they got swept.

2021

Embiid had a season-ending scare, when he suffered a hyperextension and bone bruise in his troublesome left knee.

This reporting by ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne, quoting Drew Hanlen, felt troublesome, in hindsight:

“At that time [March 2021] he was the favorite to win the MVP, and he wanted to go and dominate the All-Star Game so he could prove that he was the best player in the world,” [Drew] Hanlen says.

“That opportunity got taken away from him. That, obviously, was out of his control. But something he could control in the second half of the season was making sure everybody realized that he was the best player in the world.”

Piecing it together, it seems like Embiid (forced to miss that All-Star game due to COVID Protocol) tried to make an MVP statement vs. Washington.

Philly led by 18 in the third when the Cameroonian sensation hammered a poster jam but “forgot to fall like a tree,” Shelburne wrote. You simply cannot prove you are the best player in the world during an All-Star game, or garbage time vs. the Wiz.

In the playoffs, again in Washington, leading 3-0, Joel attempted to posterize the gargantuan Robin Lopez. Lopez didn’t back down, Embiid couldn’t stick a clean landing, and suffered a “small meniscus tear in his right knee.”

Both injuries on flying rim attacks felt like a star trying to make a statement when a safer pull-up might have preserved his health for both the ’21 MVP award and a series win vs. Atlanta. Calibrate to the moment.

2022

Joel makes it to the postseason healthy for the third consecutive season!

But in the first round vs. the Toronto Raptors, up 2-0, Embiid suffered a“ torn ligament in his right thumb that would later require surgery.” Freak.

Then Doc Rivers opted to leave Joel in during extended garbage time in the closeout Game 6. Pascal Siakam used his patented bony-elbow rip through and broke Embiid’s orbital bone (the third of his career).

Philly was literally up by 119-90, with under four minutes left.

I can’t go full “freak” on this one.

A) Glenn Rivers must’ve been petrified of blowing yet another massive playoff lead leaving Joel in but B) JoJo (who had recently baited the crowd with an airplane cellie) could have avoided harm’s way by letting Siakam waltz by with Miami on deck.

Similar to ‘21, in a situation where round two was all but in the bag, Embiid put himself in harm’s way, seemingly looking to put an “exclamation point” on his work. Calibrating his play would have been the optimal move once again.

2023

Joel makes it to the postseason healthy for the fourth year in a row! But for the third year in a row, he couldn’t escape the first round unscathed.

Nets coach Jacques Vaughn would publicly use UFC metaphors imploring his team to hammer someone. And you’ll never guess who they sent to the locker room with a “back” injury:

Then, playing through back pain, on a track-down block attempt on Brooklyn’s Cam Johnson, Embiid would suffer a “sprained LCL” of the right knee.

2024

Sort of like 2019, Embiid stormed out of the gates on an MVP tear before the left knee tendinitis cropped up. A team source would confirm that his left knee had been troubling him all season long through January.

Embiid was spotted Jan. 8 maintaining a historic 30 and 10 streak while limping around in garbage time vs. the Knicks in a blowout loss.

The team would lose more than 2/3rds of the games he’d miss this season. So clearly, Embiid, who refers to himself as a warrior for good reason, had incentives to suit up. But the more he played through January the worse he looked.

Smart Sixers fans knew Embiid was seriously limited. But the Denver and national media was largely clueless. They called Joel out for “ducking Nikola Jokic” for a game vs. the Nugz.

The noise grew louder. And the NBA’s comically stupid 65-game minimum to win MVP or make All-NBA “solution” to stars missing TV games predictably backfired with more star injuries than ever.

Days later, our own Paul Hudrick put it best:

“There’s no other way to say it: it was an organizational failure that Joel Embiid took the floor against Golden State. Nobody should escape blame for what we all witnessed.... He saw the ridiculous and unfounded notion that he’s avoided playing against Jokic in Denver and that he only plays bad teams on the road.

And for those reasons, he apparently decided to try to play Tuesday night in San Francisco. It should have never happened.”

Embiid looked like he was headed for a non-contact injury for nearly a full game vs. the Warriors, the game where Jonathan Kuminga fell on Joel’s left knee causing a meniscal tear — necessitating the second left meniscus surgery of his career.

And the reporting that followed vibed like the stuff from 2021, about proving some point, cognizant of criticism and regular-season awards.

Shelburne would tell Adrian Wojnarowski on a pod that Embiid was aware of that 65-game minimum rule for awards.

Shelburne: “I think that with this latest one, look: he wants to play. And that 65 game threshold that all the guys are very aware of this year, that’s always in the back of your mind....Do the standings make you come back also? So I think all those are in play because Embiid.... but if he doesn’t play 65 games, he can’t win.”

2024 offseason... now this

Per Yahoo Sports’ Jake Fischer, when discussing LeBron James’ future:

“LeBron James can enter the open market... And yet, there’s been no indication from league personnel with knowledge of the situation that James will truly entertain fleeing Los Angeles. Concerns about Embiid’s availability to both play and play at full strength in the postseason will also be a factor multiple player agents told Yahoo Sports they would advise clients to consider before signing with Philadelphia.”

That last line about “multiple players” is tough to swallow.

ESPN’s Jay Williams thinks Paul George should consider joining the Sixers, citing Clippers’ star Kawhi Leonard’s lack of “availability.”

But how much safer of a bet is Joel than Leonard?

I feel like I’m being a bit harsh here. But not all of this stuff is “freak” bad luck. Some of it feels like a player who is hyper online, hyper-aware of the hate he’s received, cognizant of regular-season awards, and for better or for worse, it’s cost him some playoff health.

You can see how many other people might be to blame and how unlucky this dude has been. But again, his own legacy is on the line now.

And a fan can’t help but hope he gets a bit of luck and tunes out the desire to prove haters wrong in January, and instead prove them wrong once and for all in June.