A good captain neither seeks to abandon the ship when waters get rough, nor does he blame his crew for failures that fall at his feet.
Joel Embiid is very smart, wickedly clever, and a master at messaging. After failing in another postseason in which he was injured again, the reigning MVP is sending another clear message:
He’s not entirely happy with his situation with the Sixers and he would not resist a trade to a contender; and, in fact, he might welcome a trade.
This is abdication of leadership. This is anti-leadership. It’s like Embiid watched Jalen Hurts the past two years and said, “I’m going to do the opposite.”
Embiid should be vowing to get fitter and better. He should be supporting his teammates, not implying that they don’t help him enough. He should be eager to repay Philadelphia’s loyalty to him after nine years and $166 million — loyalty that remains despite repeated postseason collapses, most recently in Games 6 and 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals against the Celtics.
Instead, he’s anticipating greener pastures and wishing for better teammates.
Again.
At LeBron James’ UNINTERRUPTED film festival last week, Embiid told James henchman Maverick Carter — the same Akron associate who engineered James’ disastrous “The Decision” announcement in 2010 — that he’s hungry to win a title, whether it’s in Philadelphia ... or “anywhere else.”
“I just want to win a championship, whatever it takes,” Embiid said. “I don’t know where that’s going to be. Whether it’s Philly or anywhere else, I just want to have a chance to accomplish that.”
This is a damning implication, in that it implies that he does not believe he has a chance to win a championship with the Sixers as they are being run by president Daryl Morey. Further, it implies that Embiid has never had a good chance to win a title in Philly.
He proceeded to criticize the personnel that surrounded him the past six seasons, all of which ended with the Sixers exiting the playoffs before the Eastern Conference finals:
“It takes more than one or two, three guys. You got to have good people around you. Myself, every single day I work hard to be at that level, so I can produce and make it happen.”
After this column ran online and after talk radio dissected his latest abdication of leadership, Embiid attempted to walk back his comments via social media, claiming he was trolling when he said them — a weak and dubious claim. He said what he said, and he said it to the greatest active player’s majordomo, and he’s said it all before.
Embiid has failed to advance past the conference semis when supported, in different combinations, by Jimmy Butler, James Harden, Ben Simmons, JJ Reddick, Tobias Harris, Tyrese Maxey, and P.J. Tucker. Clearly, he believes that these players either were insufficient, that he needed more players like this, or both.
He’s not exactly wrong in his observation. None of the listed players except Tucker has won a title, and Tucker, for all of his value, is a role player. However, saying it out loud indicts not only the brass who constructed the rosters but also the players who remain, including Maxey, Tucker, and perhaps Harden; Harden has opted in to his 2023-24 contract but has demanded a trade.
Again, Embiid isn’t wrong in his evaluation. He’s just irresponsible saying these things out loud.
Then again, Embiid has never been a team-first guy in either word or deed.
After sitting out his first two seasons with injuries, in 2016 he christened himself “The Process,” hijacking the name for the strategy of losing on purpose that the Sixers embraced beginning in 2013 and belittling other prominent young pieces such as Nerlens Noel and Jahlil Okafor, both top-six picks. Embiid was the third overall pick in 2014.
In 2019, NBA Hall of Famers Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley, the sports highest-profile analysts, skewered Embiid as he tiptoed through the conference semis against the Raptors.
After the birth of his son Arthur in 2020, Embiid more fully committed to improving his fitness and his skill set, consistently played through injury, and began to limited his on-court incidents and his social media feuds ... but he has not completely reformed.
In 2021, Embiid took a shot at the fans on Twitter when he posted that, years before when being booed for a poor performance, he’d shushed the crowd and, now that he was an MVP candidate, they needed to “be better.”
While watching the Heat in the 2022 conference finals after losing to them in the semis, Embiid tweeted that “Miami needs another star,” implying that he’d like to join Butler on South Beach.
Embiid refuted any such implication, but invalidated that refutation when in December, he told Yahoo Sports:
“Sixers fans, they want to trade me.” The 28-year-old grinned wide, his breathy laugh filling the space. There’s that twinkle in Embiid’s eye when he’s ready to unwind and talk.
So here is where our brief conversation, lightly edited and condensed for clarity, truly begins.
Yahoo: You don’t believe that.
Embiid: I do believe that. They want to trade me.
Finally, after getting blown out by the Celtics in May, Embiid said, “Me and James, we can’t win alone.”
Again, the point was well-taken — the Celtics’ bench was superior — but the messaging was horrible. And the timing could not have been worse:
Embiid and Harden scored 15 and nine points, respectively, in Game 7.
The Sixers lost by 24.
