So We Have to Do This With Embiid in the Summer Now Too?

Wasn't supposed to be like this!!

I cannot believe that it's July and I feel this sick about Joel Embiid. 

This is supposed to be our time off from worrying ourselves about the Big Man. No excuses, no legacy litigation, no consulting with medical professionals, no living and dying with every jumper. It's a mental health month that we badly need as Sixers fans -- that period where the playoffs are starting to become a distant memory, concerns about next season are still a couple calendar pageflips away, and we finally get to unclench a little bit and have some fun with the kids at Summer League. It's supposed to be simple. It's supposed to be easy. 

This July with Joel has not been simple or easy. I already wrote last week about how complicated Embiid's pre-Olympics experience has been, and since he's arrived in Paris things have only gotten more precarious. More needless quotes seemingly taking shots at his USA teammates. More peacocky off-court moments drawing unnecessary attention to himself. And of course, a relative clunker of a Lille debut against -- who else -- Nikola Jokic and Serbia. And for some reason I keep searching his name on Twitter to see What They're Saying, like Michael Bluth opening the paper bag with the Dead Dove - Do Not Eat note on it. It's probably taking entire weeks off my life at this point. 

It seems like we should have been through it all with Embiid at this point -- aside from, y'know, the final two rounds of the playoffs -- but this feels new. We've seen him be decried as a loser before, of course, but never as the problem. Even the folks who said that he was a fraud, that he was a cheap-shot artist, that he would never be good enough to win a championship -- none of them (well, almost none of them) ever started calling for the Sixers to just get him off the court already. Even at his worst, Embiid was still pretty clearly the best and most important player on the team, and his infamous plus-minus stats from nearly every playoff series he's ever lost suggested that, in fact, he's still a positive contributor even at his least helpful. 

But now, even plus-minus is betraying Joel. Serbia got off to a quick 10-2 start against Team USA during a stretch that included a missed jumper, a couple missed free throws and maybe a missed defensive assignment or two for Embiid, and he got the hook for Anthony Davis at the first timeout. Embiid finished the first half minus a lot, as an increasingly sizable nation of Embiid haters and skeptics gleefully pointed out. It's not the first time this Olympic season that Embiid finished a stretch for Team USA as a decisive negative -- though at this point, even when he does finish a game well in the positives, he still takes the brunt of the social blame for whatever struggles the team has. 

It would be easier to stomach all this slander if there wasn't some degree of truth to it. If the criticism of Embiid was solely prejudicial, based on dumb biases against him as a regular-season flopper, playoff choker and national traitor to both France and Cameroon, then maybe it could just be a galvanizing Us Against The World moment for the fanbase -- appropriate for Olympics time, I suppose. But Embiid has struggled to find his fit on both sides of the ball with this team, has made a couple notably poor decisions in pretty much every game so far, has generally looked kinda slow and rusty. Anthony Davis hasn't exactly played like a Monstar in Embiid's stead, and he's had some off moments too, but it's hard to ignore that things just look smoother with him and/or Bam Adebayo on the court than with Jo manning the pivot. 

All that said, the criticism of Team USA Embiid is of course cartoonishly overblown. Yeah, he got worked a little by Jokic in the first half Sunday -- so did AD, so does everyone -- but he actually came back to play very solid D on him in the second half, and got an and-one on him on the other end too (though he missed the FT). He didn't score much at any point, but he cleared absurd amounts of room for the team's shooters with his screening -- nearly all of which looked illegal to me, but hey, if they're not calling 'em, keep setting 'em -- resulting in open three after open three. In general, Joel has played better as the games have gone on, which is why it's so frustrating that his rotation minutes seem to (understandably) be dwindling to make more time for Davis and Adebayo, and why Coach Steve Kerr's hook on him early seems to be getting quicker and quicker. It seems likely that Joel might never quite get the PT with this team to play himself back into rhythm. 

Joel Embiid at the Olympics: A Complicated Viewing Experience

But even though there are excuses to be made for Joel, as I make them I can feel Spike leaning over me preparing to yell "COOOOOOOOOOPE" in my ear. Indeed, watching Jo play for Team USA has felt a lot like watching Jared McCain for the Summer League Sixers, minus the global audience champing at the bit to rejoice in his flailing. Every possession you're watching him praying he does something to change the momentum of his overall play, and after enough in a row where he doesn't give it to you, you just want to FF to the next game to see if he maybe fares better with a fresh start in that one. It's sort of unreal to see Joel Embiid, former MVP and best Sixer of my lifetime, play on a team that actually seems better off without him, but so far, that's what it's been. 

It should probably be a pretty humbling experience for The Process, but his behavior the past couple weeks more suggests a pro wrestler fully embracing heel status. After last weekend's comments calling LeBron old and sorta washed, this week it was Jayson Tatum's turn to be the subject of bitchy Embiid quotes, commenting to Drew Hanlen on his podcast (insert Demi Lovato meme here) that Tatum's Celtics are basically a superteam that can afford having their star go 5-20, unlike Embiid's longtime Sixers. Again, not wrong, just wildly uncalled for at a time when Embiid and Tatum are playing together on an actual superteam -- one that, presently at least, Joel doesn't even seem particularly qualified for. And while as a fellow enjoyer of ridiculous sunglasses, I can hardly fault him for his meme-spawning donning of the olympic rings shades, you can't help kinda wishing he could just chill on the meme-spawning extraness while his play remains subpar; additional attention is not really Jo's friend right now. 

The good news in all of this is that as questionable as Embiid's work has been both on and off the court this month, he still seems to be getting along with the rest of the team pretty OK. When he got that and-one on Jokic, the entire bench was up cheering for him, with a crotch-chopping Anthony Edwards leading the way. And Embiid hasn't looked too sulky about his struggles or limited minutes either; he's been engaged and enthusiastic on the bench too. And the other good news is that it's still pretty early in the schedule, with plenty of opportunities still for Embiid to have the one dominant performance that washes out the taste of all the lesser ones. 

But that could also be the bad news, too. Because with every successive performance of Embiid's that does contribute to his overall narrative, he just seems to be digging himself deeper into a hole -- of perception, even if not reality -- that he might not be able to dig himself out of. And in the meantime, it just hurts to watch: hurts to see him not be the player we know he can be, hurts.to see him treated like an outsider in his chosen country, hurts to know that this may end up being a particularly telling chapter in the story of a brilliant career still more defined by failure than triumph. It's not a pain I wanted to feel at all this summer, let alone one that's likely to recur every couple of days for the next couple weeks. It's not something I think I've ever said in July, but September really can't get here soon enough. 

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Andrew Unterberger 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. 

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