The Philadelphia 76ers are a very poorly run organization. Outside of a handful of moves over the last six years, the organization has consistently made bad moves that reduce the team’s chance for a title. Monday, more mismanagement from the Sixers cost fans the long-awaited rematch between Joel Embiid and Nikola Jokic, with the news that Embiid was ruled OUT for the game.
It makes perfect sense for Embiid to get a few rest opportunities over the final two weeks of the year, given the gauntlet of a schedule the NBA gave the Sixers. What made almost no sense, however, was playing Embiid on back-to-backs over the weekend, with James Harden already out, when he was nursing calf soreness. Instead, the Sixers trotted Embiid out there in both games – back-to-back losses which knocked the Sixers entirely out of contention for the one seed and put them in a position to have to just hold on to the three seed.
This is the same Sixers organization that watched James Harden struggle with nothing to give last Monday while running him into the ground for 47 minutes in a double-overtime loss to the Bulls. Harden has yet to play since, though he could suit up tonight when he won’t have his running mate. The Sixers are 1-3 since then, including the loss last Monday, and could easily be 1-4 without Embiid tonight.
Even if the Sixers are just being overly cautious with Embiid tonight, it begs the question of why he even played on Saturday night, to begin with. No other Sixer player other than Tyrese Maxey appeared interested in playing, so why not give Embiid off that night? Glenn Rivers was hellbent on playing Dewyane Dedmon for no apparent reason other than, “well, we have him, so I have to at some point.” I’m sure Isaiah Joe and Charles Bassey would have liked to be given similar treatment while they were members of the team.
If the Sixers are not just being overly cautious here and Embiid’s injury is now more severe than anyone thought, then the decision to play him on Saturday will look even worse than it does now. And right now, it seems pretty dumb.
Embiid’s MVP odds immediately took a massive hit going from -150 to +100 within minutes of the news breaking that he was OUT. However you slice this, it’s a bad look for the Sixers and ultimately Joel Embiid. Some voters will hold this against him when they go to make their MVP votes at the end of the season. It also comes on the same day that a Shams article got published in The Athletic in which Embiid took a few veiled shots at Jokic.
No one should really be surprised, though, should we? This is an organization that continually missteps and makes itself look bad. Heck, this organization had to surrender two second-round picks for tampering to sign PJ Tucker and Danuel House this off-season, only to remove House from the rotation almost altogether for long stretches of the season.
To Embiid’s credit, he is putting his money where his mouth is with his comments about not caring about the MVP award. If he were as fixated on it as he was in the past, he would be playing tonight. That is at least a good sign for the Sixers in the playoffs. But, for now, it’s hard to overlook how badly Rivers is handling injured players in the lineup as we get closer to the Playoffs.
Sure, the Sixers may still be able to pull off a road win against a very hot or cold team that is 5-5- over their last ten games (although one of the five wins was a blowout of the Bucks), but it won’t change the fact that the Sixers continually mismanage their roster. At this point, there is more of an argument just to give Harden the night off again too for extra rest. What good does it do the Sixers to stagger rest days at this point?
NBA fans looking forward to this matchup for weeks are simply out of luck, which is a real bummer. Only a few regular season games have the kind of juice that tonight’s matchup of the two best centers and two frontrunners for the MVP award had until about an hour ago.
Sean Brown
March 28, 2023 at 9:33 am
Would Iverson have taken the night off? Hmmm.