Are We Really Entering the Grainy Joel Summer Workout Footage Era?
AU on the most exciting (and likely also the most wearying) five seconds of film in modern Sixers practice facility history.
We remember what time of year this is. Mid-September, which redirects on Process Wiki at this point to "Second August," has long been the time of getting way too excited about things we have no legitimate reason to be that excited about. It's the time for our guys to push their own narratives, to create their own senses of logic and order and reality that may very well fly in the face of facts about them we know to be true, because truth obviously does not exist in any hard-and-fast state during such an existentially boring period of the calendar. It's the time for them to give us the tiniest, tastiest little morsels of encouragement, and for us to weigh that against the mountain of discouragement they've previously given us and ultimately decide we're not here to talk about the past.
In other words, it's time for Ben Simmons.
This was, historically, the time of the year for Simmo the Savage — in the days before he was playing will-they-or-won't-they with the New York Knicks — to prove that next year with him would be Different. He wouldn't do that through revealing interviews or magazine profiles, or by making any kind of personal statements to the media and/or fans about how he planned to do better, or by really showing his work within the process he would be taking over the offseason in order to improve. Instead, he would post (or merely star in) grainy videos of him supposedly dominating in summer scrimmages, doing all the shooting stuff we'd long begged for him to do between the months of October and May, positively foaming at the mouth to prove everyone wrong. Or they would merely feature him in training, looking beastly and swole and Eye of the Tigerish. Whatever their subgenre, we fell for the videos pretty much without fail — and then every season after them with Simmons would prove to be just like the one before. We can't really be held responsible for our actions at that time of year; what happens in Second August stays in Second August.
But now, Simmons is long gone and we are faced with a player of far greater consequence suddenly finding himself in the same position: It's time for Joel Embiid to enter the summer workout footage video chat. And we're at a crossroads about whether or not we're going to choose to learn our lesson from the Ghosts of Process Past.
You probably saw the footage that went viral last week — or at least I assume it went viral; I'm on Bluesky not Twitter now, and as far as I can tell nothing goes viral on Bluesky except for major media outlets spreading disinformation or rock critics having bad takes on pop music. In any event, I'm sure it made your notice: Joel Embiid, at the Sixers' training facility, working in the post against an anonymous defender, squaring up for a short jumper and calmly draining it. Five seconds in total, but enough for fans to note that Embiid was in fact a) still alive, b) functionally mobile) and c) not even wearing a knee brace, seemingly unencumbered by any medical bandages, supports or prosthetics ensuring that everything in his body stays where it should be.
Needless to say, this was cause for celebration. After months of non-updates about Joel from the team, and quotes about him from Daryl Morey and Nick Nurse that you wouldn't quite describe as apocalyptic but you also definitely wouldn't describe as whatever the opposite of "apocalyptic" is, and just little to nothing from Joel himself, to get such a clear sign of life — of breathing, walking, jump-shooting life — was obviously a godsend. Some of us had convinced ourselves we would never see Joel in such a state again, simply because the not-totally-disregardable possibility of that actually being the case was such a painful proposition that we felt like we needed to start laying the emotional groundwork for it now. To see him hooping again is an emotional, cathartic, I guess we could even say beautiful thing.
Still, even the most easily susceptible of us to Second August Propaganda had to note the Simmons parallels here. The shortness of the video and focus of its context led us to wonder what else from the practice was being obscured: How stiff did he look when forced to really move on the court? How gingerly was he going up for the ball, or coming down with it? Was he pulling up in the post because even trying to get around the tackling-dummy defenders of the Sixers' practice facility proved too taxing on his body? If this one five-second clip was the highlight of highlights from Jo's reel on that day, what does that say about the rest of the day? Should we actually see this as more discouraging than encouraging?
The answer to that last one was probably "no," and in truth, a lot of us probably didn't really make it that far to asking it anyway. It was great to see Joel in any kind of action, of course, great to see him being even the faintest echo of his prime self, great to have any amount of reason to believe again that him smoking defenders in the post might be a not-infrequent occurrence again as soon as this upcoming season. Whether or not we take it further than that is up to every individual Sixers fan to decide for themselves, based on how desperate they are for hope and how fearful they are of leaving themselves vulnerable to being hurt again. I don't personally think it's prudent to jump back in heart-first with Joel based on this one spiritually grainy workout video — I'm dipping a toe, maybe, but the water's still pretty cold — but I can't really judge those who do. If buying back in with Jo is what it takes this year to get you from Second August to Third August to Home, I get it. We've all been there.
It's sobering, though — would be if there was any intoxication left to being a Process truster, anyway — that this is where we are now. We'd seen Simmons be an Summertime Warrior for the Nets the last couple years and laughed a good laugh at being free of the entire cycle with him, while the few-if-any Nets fans we knew couldn't help but fall into the old patterns we remembered all too well. We thought, things might be bad with the Sixers but at least we don't have to do THIS anymore. And now here we are, with a player whose ultimate success and happiness we want many times worse than we ever did with Ben, once again doing THIS. Those who don't learn from history may be doomed to repeat it, but those who follow Sixers history are likely just doomed regardless.
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.