Making Excuses for Joel Embiid
Andrew Unterberger is a famous writer who invented the nickname 'Sauce Castillo' and writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the 'If Not, Pick Will Convey As Two Second-Rounders' section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.
Andrew's writing is brought to you by Kinetic Skateboarding! Not only the Ricky's approved skate shop, but the best place to get Chucks, Vans, any apparel. Use code "DAVESILVER" for 9.1% off your order.
Boy has there been a lot of unloading on Joel Embiid the past two weeks. Most of it is deserved, a lot of itmay be overdue. He'd mostly -- not entirely, but mostly -- been spared our iriest ire over the last five postseason exits because there were always easier, less-precious scapegoats: Ben Simmons. Al Horford. Tobias Harris. Brett Brown. Rims. Ben Simmons again. James Harden. We knew Joel could have played better, but we believed one day he would: He'd finally get through a postseason healthy and finally get the chance to kick ass the entire way. Well, once again neither of those things happened this year, and Embiid's Game Seven performance in particular was so unspectacular, so uninspiring, that at long last, we don't really feel like saving him from any under-bus-throwing this time around. It probably had to happen. Maybe it had been building up for longer than we even realized.
But I can't stay in this place all offseason. Not with Joel. I can spend months still being mad at *The Sixers*, at this league, at Al Horford and Marcus Smart, at De'Anthony Melton for missing those threes in Game Six, at George Hill for being a fucking dirty bomb two years ago, at Bryan Colangelo for trading Nerlens Noel for a fake first-round pick in 2017 -- but I have to get back to some place better than this with Jo. I've put too much into our time together to let any one game, no matter how disturbing and disappointing and distressingly revealing, continue to spread its venom through the rest of our memories. In any relationship -- any real relationship, any relationship that actually matters -- you have to find a way to let the Bad Thing go. You have to want to find a way to let the bad thing go. Otherwise you'll never make it.
I want to find a way to let the Bad Thing go with Joel Embiid. I want to come to terms with his Game Seven. But it's easier said than done, for reasons that go well beyond his crappy box score numbers. As MOC perfectly summarized the other day, that includes everything from his mopey body language to his totally sapped energy to his blasé post-game demeanor. This was something new for us with Joel. We'd seen him fail in big moments before, we'd seen him want it too much, we'd even seen him kinda quit on a series when it wasn't gonna happen -- but we'd never seen him seem like he just didn't really care that much. The guy we fell in love with cried on the way back to the locker room after losing Game Seven in 2019, after Game Seven this year, this Embiid was smiling and glad-handing with Jayson Tatum, the guy who'd just spent 48 minutes roasting his soul on a spit. We didn't recognize this Embiid. We felt betrayed to even have to try.
I've spent most of the past two weeks struggling with this -- with what could have possibly happened between a Game Five when Embiid played his best basketball of the postseason and seemed well on his way to finally putting his demons behind him, and a Game Seven when he seemed to give up before it even started. And I think I've finally come up with an answer that won’t provide anyone much comfort or closure, but that I think I can come to terms with and move on with my life: Joel Embiid just realized he couldn't give us any more of himself this year.
There's a lot to unpack in a comment like that, and I'll get around to most of it. But I wanna start by reminding everyone, including myself, that the reason we've been so drawn to Embiid historically -- even beyond his dazzling on-court play and his inextricable ties to the very core of the Process -- is his sheer irrepressible humanity. When he spends the last minutes of a quarter shooting threes because he has 37 points and wants to get to 40, or when he spends half of an interview claiming he doesn't care about the MVP and the other half not-so-subtly lobbying for votes, or when he spends five straight plays trying to put Ben Simmons in the rim and maybe gets a combined two points for his efforts, we don't get mad, because we feel like we really see him. We love to root for a guy that feels like a real person, whose true intent and motivations always shine through despite himself, whose foibles and flaws we recognize in large part because we also see them in ourselves. I can't tell you how many times I've seen Joel Embiid do something transparently self-serving or silly or petty and just died laughing because I knew that if I were somehow put in his situation, I would be the exact same motherfucker. I love that about Joel. I always have. I don't think I'm alone.
But that's the weird thing about the relationship we have with our favorite star athletes: We want them to be human, until it's time for them to be superhuman. We want them to be real, until it's time to ask them to do unreal things. We like them getting frustrated and demonstrative and goofy, until it's time for them to become basketball automatons laser-focused on winning a game that they absolutely have to win. Never mind that most of us would crumble under 1/100th of that weight, never mind that none of us will ever know what it's like to have to play in a Biggest Game of Your Life, and to have to play in another Even Biggester Game directly after that. When it comes to that kind of performance in that kind of moment, we're not so drawn to the flaws and foibles anymore. We don't want these guys to be the exact same motherfuckers as us anymore. We want them to be gods, to be impervious in spirit and conviction, to be able to not only pretend like losing wouldn't be the end of the world for them, but to not even let the possibility of losing enter their thought process. It's a big ask.
To some extent, that’s what we ask of every star player, and there’s no reason why Embiid should be an exception. But I think we also owe him the grace to take a minute to consider how unusual his career has been, and just how much was not only riding him in this game, but in his entire career to this point. Of any big-name player in recent years, Joel might have had the shortest path from "didn't even know basketball was really a thing" to blue-chip status (at 15, he started playing basketball, at 19 he was he was an injury away from being the No. 1 overall pick) and from professional unknown to absolute superstar (in his second year, he might seem like he might never play in a professional game, by his fourth year, he was the best player on a team considered by many to be a finals contender).
And along the way, he was never really given leeway to lose. At Kansas, he played on a team with Final Four aspirations; by the time he was able to get on the court for the Sixers they were already three years into a patience-testing rebuild that had cost the GM his job and inspired the next guy to splurge on middling vets and start winning some games already. By the end of his rookie season it was obvious he was already too good to lose for much longer; next season he was joined by a pair of No. 1 overall picks and playoffs were already the expectation — then they won 16 straight games to end the season and things would never be simple for the 76ers again. The Thunder get compared to the Process Sixers a lot, but Shai Gilgeous-Alexander just missed the playoffs again in his fifth year and no one could possibly give a shit. Joel Embiid got to lose for all of 31 games before that was no longer acceptable.
Now, Jayson Tatum made the conference finals in his rookie year and he's already been back three times since — which makes it particularly tough that Embiid has made it zero times and just got Babalitied by Tatum in Game Seven. But aside from the fact that Tatum had been playing basketball against grown men since he was in fifth grade, he also joined a veteran-heavy Celtics squad as a rookie that had just been to the ECFs the year before, who already had one blue-chip prospect in Jaylen Brown and who had just added a couple max guys in Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward; he'd soon prove the team's best guy, but he didn't have to be, at least not right away. Embiid, on the other hand, has never played a second in the NBA in which he was not the anointed savior of Philadelphia basketball -- and what's more, he's never played a second in which his success wasn't looked at to be the primary justification for not just a particular team-building strategy, but an entire basketball ideology, an entire basketball culture.
He embraced it, of course -- he wouldn't have literally nicknamed himself "The Process" if he didn't -- and mostly seemed to thrive on it. But pressure has a nasty tendency to compound itself and losing can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We've all had multiple offseasons since this thing started where as fans, we wondered if we'd be able to pick ourselves up and do this again, but we aren't the ones actually responsible for the game results, the ones held to task if the results aren't what the process should have dictated. We spend all year watching a very good regular season team and loudly predicting that they're going to fall short again in the playoffs but we don't really consider what kind of effect that might have on the psyche of the dudes actually playing, particularly guys like Jo who are hyper-conscious at all times about what is being said about them. After five straight years of postseason disappointments -- again, worth remembering that Jo has never played in a postseason where him losing was not that big a deal -- it might just be unreasonable to expect anyone to have the level of self-belief to truly feel in their bones that the sixth time will be different.
And yet, Joel did get the Sixers one game away, playing beautifully against Boston in Game Five, at that point probably the biggest game of his life. And it should also be remembered that Embiid did have the fortitude to battle back through a slow individual and team start in that Thursday Game Six to get them on the verge of seizing control of the game in the fourth quarter, But then a barrage of missed threes re-opened the door for the Celtics, Tatum walked through it with lava-hot streakiness to balance the arctic chilliness of his game to that point, and Jo had no counter-punch. Sometimes when you're on the ice, you feel yourself starting to slip, and you get too consumed by thoughts of how much it's going to suck when you fall to even consider reaching for a guard rail or something. Jo froze a little, seemingly hoping that he'd already gotten the team far enough for Maxey or Harden or someone with less of his specific baggage to get them over the finish line. He hadn't and they didn't. Sixers lose. Game Seven on Sunday.
So what happened in the three days between those games? We'll never know for sure, but I think maybe the break was long enough for Joel to really take stock of where he was with his body, his career and his life, and he was unable to convince himself that he had enough left to get it done in Game Seven. I'm sure injuries played a part -- not just the LCL sprain he suffered this year, but the myriad freak injuries that had cost him time and effectiveness in series past, probably even the early-career feet, knee and ankle issues that cost him two and a half of his first three pro seasons. And I'm sure the opponent played a part, with Boston playing him tough all series, even more so since going to the double-big starting lineup that seemed to take away all of his comfort-food spots on the court.
But mostly I think it was the history that Embiid buckled under. I think it was the culmination of a lifetime's worth of expectations and disappointments stuffed into six fraught postseason runs, in which the gods did not seem to be on their side for a single one. I think it was all the Biggest Game of His Life talk -- and goddamn, has Joel Embiid had to play in a lot of those over his seven years -- and the chatter about how this could kinda be the end of everything for the Sixers if they lost. I think at a certain point, consciously or not, he might've just kinda had to admit to himself that with all the potential consequences awaiting him if he lost, he just wasn't willing to risk the hurt of putting every bit of his heart and soul into the game and still potentially falling short. Not again. Not after the Confetti Game, the Quadruple-Doink, the Passed-Up Dunk, the "Tobias Harris Over ME?" Not while compromised physically, not after already letting an opportunity slip away in Game Six. He just couldn't do it. He just couldn't give us that this time.
So does that mean he’s just a loser, then? Well, yeah, I guess, sorta. Certainly in the most literal sense, he lost that game, and a whole lot of others just like it before. Needless to say, pulling up to a career-defining Game Seven and deciding "I don't think so" isn't going to be the stuff of Philly sports lore, recited as bedtime stories along with tales of the Stepover and the Philly Special to the infants who will grow up to be Person's People and Kapono's Kings of the next generation. No, this one goes in that other category: Donovan McNabb throwing up before the Super Bowl, Eric Lindros sitting out the 2000-'01 season, Ben Simmons... well, take your pick there. Embiid's in that mix now, and he might very well never get out of it.
But also... I feel like I kinda get it now. The hardest thing for me about that Game Seven wasn't just that Joel Embiid lost, or that he lost by a lot, or that he lost by a lot while playing like ass, or even that he lost by a lot to the fucking Celtics while playing like ass. The hardest thing for me was not being able to shed the feeling that he just didn't care -- because he'd always cared, he'd cared as much as we did. Did he not anymore? Did he not really ever? Was this always a much more one-sided relationship than we'd thought? Those were the thoughts that really shook me to my core. It's one thing to put all your faith in a player who comes up short; that'll happen, and ultimately probably more often than not. But to put all your faith in a player who chooses to pull up before the finish line... that's the kind of stuff that makes you question the entire nature of fandom in the first place.
And Joel Embiid did pull up. But I don't think he felt like he really had a choice. Everyone says that in the playoffs, you have to dig deep -- and to win a Game Seven on the road in Boston and save his franchise from total disaster, Embiid was going to have to dig deeper than he ever had before. But eventually, everyone has a bottom to hit. After five years of injury-laden postseason disappointments and on the verge of his sixth (and most injury-laden and potentially disappointing yet), maybe that bottom was a little higher than it used to be. Maybe he already hit it at the end of Game Six. And rather than keep hitting it and hitting it in Game Seven hoping to find something that wasn't there, he decided to show himself the mercy to stop digging altogether. Is it heroic? No. Is it admirable? Not necessarily. Is it loser shit? Probably. But all I can really say is this: I would be the exact same motherfucker.
So I guess we're just a couple of losers, me and Jo. Mostly, I'm cool with that: I'm a bargainer and compromiser by nature, and I've long said that winning a championship is simply not everything to me; Joel winning the MVP this year still means something real to me, Joel making the conference finals and then getting swept by the Jimothy-led Heat would've been fine and dandy. Giannis' now-infamous post-Round One statement was corny and evasive but the core concept was true: Sports does have to be about more than winning the championship or not every year. Of course, it helps Giannis the he has won one already; Joel has not and may never. But the only thing that was going to prevent me from getting back in the bunker with Jo was thinking that he had checked out, that maybe basketball just wasn't the thing for him anymore. Now, I believe his problem is still the same that it's always been, just manifested differently: He cares way too much.
You might read all of that and go, "OK, so... explain to me why is this going to be better with Joel next year?" The answer to that is: Fuck if I know. If you read this far into this article and still expected it to end with some reason to be optimistic about the Sixers' chances of winning the championship next year... man, you might be down even worse than I am, sorry about that. This is not a piece about why the Sixers aren't screwed, about why Joel can still be the best player on a championship team, about how this wasn't really as bad a loss as everyone's saying it is. This is just me extending an arm out to one Joel Hans Embiid, the man I have spent more time and energy rooting for than any other player of my lifetime, and saying to him I know that feel bro. This is me saying that I get that he didn't have it this year, but if he's still there next year then so am I. This is me saying that -- if not today, then some day -- I can let the Bad Thing go.
That might seem absolutely pathetic to you, and I couldn't really argue. But I will say this: Nobody's giving out medals for Most Done With This Shit Sixers Fan. At the moment, we still seem to be in a fanbase-wide competition to see who can disavow this team the quickest and the most dramatically -- a competition that basically began in the waning minutes of Game Six. And I do get that too: The way this team has let us down time and time again, and the way they've made us look stupid for defending them as long and as passionately as we have has resulted in a hurt that's very real and very upsetting, one that feels like it demands an extreme response. But folks are acting like if they distance themselves themselves from Jo’s loserdom aggressively enough, they might be able to avoid picking up his loser stank by association. And I think it’s just far too late for that for any of us at this point. Far too late for me, anyway.
If you want to dismiss all of this as making excuses for Joel Embiid, go ahead — because sure, that’s exactly what I’m doing. Spike even convinced me to put it right there in the title. I get that that’s highly taboo for Sixers fans right now who still adamantly refuse to pander in the slightest to Jo’s losery ways, but I’m way too gone to worry about such things at this point. And really, I just don’t get why we shouldn’t at least try to make excuses for Embiid at some point. Isn’t that just showing empathy? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do for the people we love? Is it really better to just stay mad forever at a guy who still might be the greatest Sixer of our lifetime? Is that what real fans do?
For me, the bottom line is that players like Joel Embiid don't come around very often, and athlete-fan relationships like the one we've built with him -- that I've built with him, anyway -- over the last nine years come around maybe never. It's going to take some real work to get back to where I was with him before next season, to build anything like the trust we once had. But to me, it's still worth trying, still worth working for. It's worth looking at from his perspective, to imagine what he must have been going through, to recognize that the things we hate about him might ultimately stem from the same place as the things we love about him. It's worth giving him the benefit of the doubt to say that just because he no-showed in Game Seven doesn't mean that has to be the final word on him as a basketball player. After all, as the man once said: If it's the biggest game of his life, then why does he play it again next year?