Sixers opting for best path amongst several imperfect options with Joel Embiid

As the season began for the Sixers Wednesday night, there was some unfortunate injury news dampening what would otherwise be an exciting season opener after an offseason that seemed to reinvigorate the fanbase. Wednesday’s game at Wells Fargo Center against the Milwaukee Bucks did not feature either Joel Embiid or Paul George for the Sixers.

The George news comes as no surprise after the newly acquired veteran wing player sustained a knee injury in the preseason and fortunately appears to have avoided an extended absence. However, Embiid being held out Wednesday and Friday in Toronto before being “re-evaluated over the weekend” has raised questions about what’s going on with the franchise cornerstone.

Dave Early wrote about the ambiguous messaging that’s coming from the Sixers on the Embiid front. Last week, Bryan Toporek wrote about how refreshing it was to see Embiid distance himself from pursuing individual awards and focus on doing everything he can do to ensure he is healthy for the entire postseason. I’m here to say that both sentiments still ring true today despite a lot of fans and local media raising further questions about Embiid’s ability to stay healthy.

It is absolutely fair to call out the Sixers, a franchise that’s been notorious for poor transparency, for not disclosing more information regarding their load management plan for Embiid if the big man is not seriously injured. If he is injured, why hasn’t a statement been released describing what the injury is and how long he’s going to be out?

Might it be possible that there’s something going on with Embiid that’s more serious than load management? Absolutely. The Sixers have not earned the benefit of the doubt on these kinds of matters. But, if this is simply poorly communicated load management, then any kind of anger and frustration directed at the franchise this week will go down as much ado about nothing.

Had Embiid played Wednesday, the postgame reaction would be one of two things. In a win that comes with a strong performance from the former MVP, most cynical fans would simply say “Wake me up in April.” In a loss, even if Embiid played well, the same cynical portion of the fanbase would cite the loss to a fellow Eastern Conference contender as a sign of things to come and attempt to brace the rest of the fanbase for another early postseason exit. In other words, there’s not much to gain by rolling Embiid out there in what is still just one out of 82 regular season games.

It’s time to treat all 82 regular season games the same if you haven’t been doing that already. Nationally televised games are fun and beating marquee opponents in October-March is cool, but that’s not the goal of the season. Therefore, is there really that much of a difference between Embiid playing Wednesday and Friday and resting next week vs. Embiid sitting these first two games and debuting at some point next week if that’s how this plays out?

Unfortunately, we’ve all grown to expect Embiid to break down at the end of the season. So now the Sixers are saying “Wake me up in April” and who can blame them? You can say what you want about how last season’s meniscus injury played out and his participation in that dreadful regular season game at Golden State in January. Perhaps I’m an eternal optimist but I was holding out hope that Embiid was getting the major injury out of the way and he’d return in time for a playoff run healthier than he had been in previous postseasons. Had the Sixers survived the Knicks, I think many people would have picked them to beat the Pacers and advance to their first Eastern Conference Finals in over two decades.

The only thing you gain by winning a lot of regular season games is an improved seed in the playoffs. But we saw the Sixers squander what looked like a cakewalk to the conference finals in 2021 as the No. 1 seed in the East. As I just described, the path to the conference finals as last year’s No. 7 seed didn’t look all that daunting either.

We all think this is still a playoff team regardless of how many games Embiid plays this season, and they’ve already showed us that their seed isn’t what’s making or breaking their ability to make a deep run. At the end of the day, the team is just going to have to play its best basketball in the spring and let the chips fall where they may. They don’t need a fully healthy roster for all 82 games in the regular season to figure out the best version of themselves heading into the playoffs. Whatever the number is of games that Embiid, George and Tyrese Maxey all play in during the regular season, you’re going to have to be OK with that number being enough.

Besides, what’s the better course of action here? We’ve already seen Embiid be driven into the ground and not be able to make it through an entire season. As previously mentioned, delaying his season debut by a week isn’t harming anyone.

Nick Nurse load managed Kawhi Leonard to a championship in 2019. Perhaps there’s something bigger going on with Embiid that raises larger concerns. But we don’t know that as of today so let’s not spam the internet with unnecessary speculation. The Knicks just got crushed by Boston Tuesday with (mostly) everyone playing. Even with Milwaukee winning Wednesday, I think we’ll all be OK.