{"id":911927,"date":"2026-09-27T19:10:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T19:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/911927\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T19:10:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T19:10:09","slug":"joel-embiid-has-both-never-mattered-less-and-more-to-the-sixers-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/911927\/","title":{"rendered":"Joel Embiid has both never mattered less and more to the Sixers\u2019 success"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the first time in his NBA career, Joel Embiid is far down in the pecking order in terms of interesting narratives for this Sixers franchise.<\/p>\n

You have LeBron James taking a minimum deal to seek a ring in Philadelphia of all places, where we haven\u2019t hoisted the Larry O\u2019Brien Trophy since 1983. Jaylen Brown has arrived via trade from the Sixers\u2019 arch-rival to go on a scorched-earth, \u201cAnalytics are whack\u201d campaign for the next eight months or so. We could even turn next to Tyrese Maxey\u2019s continued ascension up the All-NBA ladder or VJ Edgecombe building on a stellar rookie campaign before arriving at Embiid.<\/p>\n

Yet while the Sixers are better equipped than ever to go forward without Joel on a given night in November or February, he remains the lynchpin in this franchise\u2019s championship aspirations. When available last season, he still played at an All-Star level, with averages of 26.9 points, 7.7 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 1.2 blocks. It\u2019s maybe 75-80 percent of his past MVP-level production, but still something only a dozen or so players in the league can replicate. While Philadelphia has any number of ball handlers and guys to score the basketball, they don\u2019t have anyone else capable of being a two-way presence on the interior. Adem Bona and Ariel Hukporti are not starters on a championship team, so Joel needs to be able to wade through two months of postseason action if this organization is going to reach its goal. The upside is the roster around him is better equipped than ever to get him to the postseason; the downside is everything else, which means at this point, we must bring up the criticisms from the haters\u2026<\/p>\n

They imagine he was a hurdle to overcome in LeBron coming to Philadelphia, but then James speaks glowingly about him<\/a>. They fabricate some feud between him and Jaylen Brown because Joel isn\u2019t all over social media welcoming Brown post-trade, but then it comes out that he was part of the group in constant communications with his new teammate. They bring up dietary stuff from ages ago, even though he\u2019s in the best shape in years. They mention old maturity concerns that are basically a thing of the past now that Joel has found happiness in a family of his own and taken proactive steps to be in a better place mentally to sort through past traumas and setbacks. And yet, the \u201che\u2019s never available\u201d criticism does have some ring of truth to it, because\u2026<\/p>\n

It does feel like it\u2019s always \u201csomething\u201d with Joel. It doesn\u2019t matter that he works his tail off to return and play with a facemask or a huge brace or whatever. Or that there are sometimes things entirely outside of his control, like his appendix bursting or coming down with a temporary neurological condition like Bell\u2019s palsy. Any time there\u2019s a prolonged period of things going well for Embiid, it seems like something is bound to pop up to ruin it. It\u2019s frustrating. I guarantee he\u2019s more frustrated about it than anyone. But to say you feel secure about his health or that you\u2019re not worried about his body breaking down over the course of the season would be insane to me. Sometimes people\u2019s bodies just do not cooperate and, unfortunately, we have years and years of evidence of that being the case for Joel.<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s where we are with Joel Embiid, a complicated situation as always. He\u2019s somehow both far down on the list of importance for this Sixers roster, and maybe the most important. I would love, love, love for him to get his One Shining Moment, but like with his availability, I can\u2019t say I\u2019m counting on it. Let\u2019s hope I\u2019m wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the first time in his NBA career, Joel Embiid is far down in the pecking order in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":911928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,84394,82],"class_list":["post-911927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sixers-analysis","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=911927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/911928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=911927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=911927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=911927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}