Are We Miserable Because Joel Is?

I think we've been bummed watching this team because Embiid has seemed bummed playing for it.

We'd been taking Joel Embiid for granted.

Maybe that's not totally accurate -- what he means to us and has meant to us is basically beyond question or reproach or equal. But we'd been taking getting to watch Joel Embiid for granted, for sure. There was a time when "We have Joel Embiid" was mantra enough to get Process Trusters through the longest and coldest winter nights. Now, ask a Sixers fan about what it's been like rooting for this team for the first (mostly unofficial?) month of this season and you'll get a response similar to asking someone who just spent three weeks on vacation in Greece how they're enjoying their first few days back in the office. Embiid's brilliance is currently a "Yes, and...?" proposition when talking about the Sixers; it's no longer enough on its own to sustain passion for this team. Now, it takes him posting one of the greatest single-game regular-season performances in NBA history to snap us out of it, to remind us, oh right, Joel Embiid.

Which isn't entirely our fault. Embiid had been legitimately sluggish to start the season and the rest of the squad had mostly followed his lead. Folks have been comparing it to his slow start to begin last season, but I don't actually think it's that comparable; at the beginning of last year, his jumper wasn't really falling, but he was actually playing great all-around basketball and the team was humming largely as a result. This year, his jumper has been close to automatic throughout (at least within the arc), but for the first few weeks the rest of his game was badly lagging, and the team was under-performing accordingly. It'd been a disconcerting version of Joel, the one we'd never really experienced before, the empty-stat variety that was considerably less impressive to watch in 3-D than to see in a box score. It's understandable that that version of the guy wasn't getting us in our feelings the way he used to.

But now that he's snapped out of it and has mostly been playing like prime Joel for a week or two, I realize that wasn't really where the problem lay. I think we've been bummed watching this team because Embiid has seemed bummed playing for it.

Understand that I don't say this to chastise Joel, or to say that his play and the team has really suffered for his sullenness, or that the solution to everything that's plagued the Sixers so far this season would be solved if he would just Smile More. And if one thing should be clear from watching the Sixers the last five years, it is that regular-season vibes are ultimately close to totally meaningless: The 2021 Sixers had the best vibes and the most depressing playoff performance, the 2019 Sixers were a slog for the entire second half of the regular season and then pushed the eventual champs to the brink in the second round. Hell, even the Al Horford Sixers started 5-0 -- and won that 5th game with a delirious Furkan Korkmaz buzzer-beater. Good vibes last until they don't. Bad vibes last until they don't. You will not remember a team's regular-season vibes on your deathbed. That shit does not matter.

But, well, when it's Joel Embiid we're talking about, it is kinda hard to ignore. For his entire career, whether he's tweeting at Rihanna or doing the "suck it" motion or questioning Karl-Anthony Towns' right to play the same sport as him or slipping a totally unnecessary 69 joke into a post-game interview or airplaning down the lane after a big dunk or.... well, it's all about the extraness, isn't it? That's the Joel we're used to, that's the Joel we're comfortable with. That's the Joel we still assume we're getting when he goes to center court to take the opening tip.

That's not the Joel we've gotten this season, though. This version is not only not extra, it's... well, I Googled "extra antonym" but nothing really quite gets it across. He's just kinda emotionally inert this season. He makes a huge play and trudges back to the other end. A teammate hits a big shot off his assist and his arm looks too heavy to even lift for the customary point of recognition and approval. The game ends and he instinctively heads directly for the tunnel. The 59-point, 11-rebound, 8-assist, 7-block performance home win over the best team in the West wasn't enough to coax a signature smirking grin out of him; that took Maxey jumping on his back during the post-game interview and slapping his chest like Nate Robinson with Glenn "Big Baby" Davis back in their Shrek and Donkey days. It's unsettling, and it's hard for us not to respond to in similarly muted turn.

Is it meaningful? I have no idea. Surely some will try to connect it to Doc, some to Harden, some to the disappointing supporting cast, maybe some even to Maxey's newfound golden child status. I doubt it's really any of those, and even if it was I probably wouldn't want to speculate as to which. More likely, it's probably just that no matter who you are or where you are in your life, it's hard to do the same job for seven years without it becoming a job -- particularly when you've been in the same place with a lot of the same circumstances throughout. Maybe after the last two years, the thought of all the work he has to do just to get back to the Save Point is too daunting to just shrug off. Maybe he's been subconsciously picking up on the fact that we haven't been bringing it the same way either. Maybe his relationship with the team, with the fans, with basketball just needs redefining after all this time. Maybe that's any relationship.

It's understandable, maybe even a little bit healthy, and probably not actually as discouraging as it feels. And there's no guarantee it'll last, either. The regular season is long and rarely stays in one place for any player or team. Perhaps with the team back to .500 and four off days' worth of Embiid soaking up national praise for once again looking like the baddest dude on the block, Joel shows up to the Milwaukee game on Friday ready to kick ass, take names, and let those taken names know all about how much he's kicking their ass. He's already back to playing like his old self, any game could be the game that Embiid goes back to acting like his old self too.

I hope so. The Jazz game was a good reminder of just how precious every game we get with Joel Embiid is, how singular it is that we get to root for him every night. And now that the Phillies have been eliminated and the Eagles have finally lost a game, there's no denying that the Sixers season is actually, finally, really underway. It'd be a shame for us to waste much more of it worrying about vibes none of us are going to remember a year from now anyway.