Joel Is Actually the Phantom of the Process Now And It Is So F**king Confusing
AU is really struggling to make sense of where we are currently with the best Sixer of our lifetime.
We remember the days of Masked Joel, right? They first started when a stray Markelle Fultz shoulder in 2018 led to the first of many injury-plagued postseason runs for Embiid, necessitating him to wear a Marvel-esque protective mask that he absolutely fucking hated, throwing it to the floor on multiple mid-game occasions during the Sixers’ first-round series against the Miami Heat. (Justise Winslow stepped on it once.) Then in 2022, the Stranger-fied Joel returned when Pascal Siakam semi-literally elbowed his lights out at the end of the Sixers’ first-round victory over the Toronto Raptors, and the mask made a comeback appearance for his round-two rejoining of the lineup, once again against the Heat. “The Phantom of the Process,” he jokingly captioned a photo of his half-covered visage, something I’m pretty sure we’d already been calling him since the first time around.
At that point, the “Phantom” thing was mostly just a joke about him looking like a villain who could have theoretically been dwelling below the Wells Fargo Center floorboards, plotting his revenge against many of those who resided above. Now, it’s actually a pretty decent descriptor of the specter-like role he’s playing in the Sixers’ overall narrative this season, and about how confusing his continued semi-presence feels to this team’s larger timeline, and to us at home trying to figure out how we feel about any of this.
Joel Embiid, by all accounts, is currently an active player on the Philadelphia 76ers. He’s at the games. We’ve seen him play. He often even looks like Joel Embiid while doing so. But a lot of the time, it feels like if you were to reach out and try to touch him, your hand would pass right through him. He’s Joel Embiid, but not, like, fully. You know abstractly that he’s still on the team, but sometimes you have to remind yourself that he’s a guy who could actually take the court for them from night to night. Like Alanis Morissette, he’s there but he’s really gone.
Or maybe he’s not? It’s exceptionally difficult to say anything definitive about Joel Embiid these days. You think he’s ready to remind the league he’s still an elite player and then he gets clearly lapped by Tyrese Maxey in the team’s hierarchy. You think he’s turning the corner on the court and then knee soreness keeps him day-to-day for several weeks. You think he’s ready to come back and then he’s downgraded from questionable to doubtful on the injury report. You think he’s out for the foreseeable future and then he’s upgraded from doubtful to probable. You think he’s officially now a shell of his former self and then he scores 39 points in 32 minutes to win a game the Sixers kinda sorta really needed to win. You think it’s time to move on from the Joel Embiid experience altogether and then... well, then it’s tough to know what to think.
Spike seems to know what to think — or at least, he did a couple days ago. He’s come to terms with the Joel Embiid era being in its final days, to pre-mourning the Big Man’s inevitable parting with the Sixers, and to do so knowing that it will come unpleasantly and without a title (or anything near it) and sooner rather than later. He’s accepted that Tyrese Maxey’s leap this season has changed the team’s timeline and made him the unquestioned priority, and that Joel’s continued unsure presence on the court and in the locker room — and more importantly, his continued very sure presence on the ledger — will make it too difficult for the team to maximize Maxey’s imminent NBA prime. He’s not doing this to be doomery or reactionary or particularly hot-takey, he’s doing it because he loves and has loved Joel for a long time but can no longer deny the facts: that the chances of Joel leading this team on any kind of meaningful playoff run from this point on have dwindled from less-than-likely to longshot to essentially disregardable. He’s doing it so he can be ready for when the time comes. Because it is coming.
Unless it isn’t? As I told Spike a couple days ago, my head was willing to accept that what he was saying about Joel was almost certainly true, but my heart hadn’t quite gotten there yet. And even my head was starting to have its doubts: Since returning from his latest injury, Joel had been shooting like Samuel Dalembert, but I thought that his atrocious scoring stats were obscuring what was, at least in the Golden State and LA games, actually some pretty strong two-way play. He was generally in the right spots doing the right things on offense and had picked up his defense considerably from early in the season. He finished that Lakers game +11, and it felt that way to me watching it — that even with his 4-21 shooting he was still contributing more positively than negatively to the game. Survivors of the 2019 postseason may recall that that used to be Joel’s whole thing.
And then, Friday night against Indiana. where the rest of his box score numbers caught up to his plus/minus. 39 points on 12-23 shooting — and between his six missed threes and five missed free throws, that point total felt like it could’ve easily been in the 45-50 range. He was awesome on defense, he made big plays throughout, he helped the team separate at the end, and on the first Maxey-less night of the Sixers’ season, he proved that he could still win them ballgames basically on his own. (Easier to do against a 6-19 team, of course, but there’s no such thing as an unloseable game on the calendar for this Sixers season — and can you imagine how demoralizing it would’ve been if Indy had won?)
So does one game, one turn-back-the-clock performance, really change anything about the Sixers’ long-term outlook? Of course not. Except also possibly? It’s a lot easier to talk about the team moving on from Joel Embiid when he’s out of sight, out of mind. It’s not difficult to imagine a future without him when he’s not a majorly consequential part of the present; even when he’s playing but shooting so poorly or running out of gas so quickly, letting cold logic overrule emotion is still pretty doable. But when he’s out there, doing Joel shit, with the potential promise of even more Joel shit to come? How can you look at that guy and say “we will do whatever it takes to get rid of you”? How can you see him dominate a game on both ends and think that that’s less valuable than preserving team vibes? How can you possibly watch Joel Embiid play basketball and see him as more problem than solution?
Because in all likelihood, he still is. We re-learned this the hard way once already this season, when Joel played his best ball of the season to down the Toronto Raptors in early November, and it certainly looked like after an up-and-down start to the yeae, he was rounding back into full form, and the Sixers as a team along with him. And then the next day his knee hurt and he didn’t take the court again until after Thanksgiving. I’m not saying that’ll happen again before Sunday’s game in Atlanta; he said after the Indiana game that he felt great and hopefully he still does today. But it might. And if not before the next game, then maybe before the game after that. Or after that. Every game on the schedule is a potential trapdoor for Joel Embiid, a potential back-to-zero reset. And the more wear he puts on his body, the higher the chances get that the next game is the one. We can never feel safe, and neither can Joel.
And that’s the thing that should really keep us from ever getting too far ahead of ourselves with Jo. When I watch him endure tough shooting nights, I still reflexively think to myself, “He just needs to find his rhythm again with those shots.” Nick Nurse basically said the same to SixersAdam the other day, that Joel’s form and decision-making are sound, he just needs the reps to get back in form. But what both NN and I are ignoring there is that Joel will be perpetually in search of that rhythm for the rest of this season, and most likely the rest of his career. Rhythm demands consistency, and whether it’s through minutes restrictions, weird scheduling, DNPs or his own perpetually ailing body, consistency will be the absolute hardest thing for Joel to come by this season. Even in a best-case scenario, he’ll never totally round back into form. It’s always going to be a question of percentages with Joel. And the rest of the team, Tyrese in particular, will never know going into any particular game what that percent is going to be, except on the nights when it’s zero. How do you build around a player like that? How do you ask the rest of your team to accomodate you building around a player like that?
Because he’s Joel fucking Embiid, that’s how. Because he’s your franchise, and has been since you drafted him 12 summers ago. Because he won an MVP and finished twice in the voting two years before that and was on his way to winning a second before Shit Happened — and all of that was in the past five years. Because he lived and died for this and gave his body and his heart and his name on the dotted line to this team and to this city, and never gave us real cause to think he ever intended on doing any differently. Because on a given night, he can still look like one of the 10 best players in the world. Because on a given night, he can still actually be one of the 10 best players in the world. Because he’s the reason for all this shit, the reason I’m writing this article right now and the reason you’re reading it. Because of Sam Hinkie. Because of Arthur. Because of Arthur Jr. Because he’s Joel fucking Embiid.
Is he, though, still? Is he really? Is that actually him out there? Is that Joel Embiid, and not a limping manifestation of 35% of the salary cap? Is that Joel Embiid, and not the guy who’s making Tyrese Maxey throw his hands up in frustration because he just doesn’t know anymore, guys. Is that Joel Embiid, and not the player who Nick Nurse and Daryl Morey are looking at and constantly thinking to themselves this is the dude who’s going to get me fired? Is that Joel Embiid, and not the one thing standing in the way of all of us having a whale of a time watching this young, fun Sixers team scrap their way to a better-than-expected season of low-stakes, high-ceiling, future-forward basketball? Is that Joel Embiid, or is it just a memory of a player who’s already long gone? Is that Joel Embiid, or do we just wish it still was?
I dunno, y’all. I dunno about any of this. I don’t know what to do with Joel, or if there’s anything to do with Joel. I don’t know if I can commit to feeling the same way for more than a game at a time, or even for that long. I don’t know about this season at all. All I know is that The Phantom of the Process is there, inside my mind.
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.