Will This Be the Year Joel Embiid Changes His Regular Season Approach?
Will This Be the Year Joel Embiid Changes His Regular Season Approach?
Far too many Sixers seasons in the Process Era have seen their best player compromised by the time the playoffs roll around. MOC looks into whether this might be the year that finally changes.
For so long now, it’s felt like every regular season has been an all-out sprint for Joel Embiid and the Sixers. Whether it was fighting for playoff seeding, building a case for MVP, or just not knowing any better, it has often felt like Embiid has played so many minutes and shouldered such a large load that he’s invariably become injured and fatigued by the time the postseason rolls around.
Even at times when injuries have befallen Embiid that were completely out of his control, he has often rushed back into playing while still being visibly hampered. Last year in particular, Embiid initially tried playing through his knee injury in early January, then returned in early April while still looking nowhere near 100 percent.
As I wrote at the end of last season, it’s time for Embiid to approach the regular season differently; he has accomplished everything that one could hope to accomplish in terms of regular season success, and it is a denial of reality to act like continuing to push him at this pace is the best thing to do, either for the team or for Embiid himself. With Paul George on board as well as the rest of the depth that the Sixers added this off-season, it would seem that now is an especially obvious time for Embiid to learn to pace himself in the regular season.
To me, that looks like the following: deliberately playing him around 55 games, resting him on every back to back, making him sit out any time the slightest nagging injury pops up, and allowing him to assume a more passive role within the offense. And at the risk of overreacting to a couple of under-the-radar quotes, I think we might finally get something like that this season.
First, in an interview with Spike, Ike Reese, and Jack Fritz on WIP in July, Daryl Morey said: “I don’t think you’ll see [Embiid] out there for many back to backs [this season].”
Then, on the Check Ball podcast with his trainer Drew Hanlen, Embiid said: “[Hanlen] is gonna be mad at me next year. Next year, I’m not shooting the ball. Ten assists per game.”
I don’t mean to overreact to Embiid’s declaration there, but he did say it with an underlying tone of you’re going to think I’m joking but I’m not. He seemed dead serious.
Of course, saying that you’ll play more passively as a scorer is one thing, and it doesn’t guarantee anything when the games get underway and your competitive instincts to dominate your matchup kick in. Still, I think that just by saying things like this, Embiid is signaling an awareness that it’s time for him to shift his focus squarely towards being ready for the postseason – which is a good and necessary shift at this point in his career.
The Olympics were perhaps further proof that Embiid is at the point in his career where he is mentally ready to pace himself more throughout the NBA season; the fact that he approached the early games with such a passive demeanor, and then turned it on when it mattered, was a stark contrast from the Embiid that entered the league as a rookie, who had no off switch whatsoever. He has since matured out of that, but I’m old enough to remember Embiid was diving all over the place and kicking chairs when taken out of meaningless regular season games. Nowadays, he is at peace with taking things easy – sometimes to a fault, as we’ve seen him take weeks into a season to get into shape and establish a rhythm.
And as far as his own personal stakes, there is simply nothing that Embiid could do to change his national or local reputation this regular season. He could win MVP again, lead the Sixers to the No. 1 seed again, and win another scoring title, but if his body breaks down late in the season and his performance dips in the playoffs, those same old criticisms of him will be louder than ever.
As AU wrote last week, the Sixers are better positioned than ever to survive minutes without Embiid on the floor; Andre Drummond is the best innings-eater backup center that Embiid has had, and it’s not as if an offense built around Tyrese Maxey and Paul George is going to be anywhere near helpless. There is more shot creation on this team than the Sixers have had in a long time – even fringe rotation guys like Reggie Jackson and Guerschon Yabusele are capable of getting buckets in a pinch when called upon.
In Embiid’s entire career, the team has not once had a positive net rating over the course of a full season with him on the bench. In Drummond’s half season with the team back in 2021-22, they came about as close as they possibly could, with a net rating of -0.3 with him on the floor and Embiid resting. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if this year’s team is able to creep over the positive net rating threshold with Drummond out there; they are about as well-equipped for the Embiid-less minutes as they could possibly be. If you remove Embiid from this roster entirely, they should still be an above- .500 team.
So, I hope and believe that we will finally see a shift from Embiid and the Sixers’ organization in how they manage the regular season. I’d like to see a slimmer, calmer, slightly more passive Embiid who willingly sits back to backs and rests whenever nagging injuries pop up. Frankly, there should be no bigger objective for this team and for Joel than for the big man to finally show up healthy to the postseason, and there is absolutely no reason why the Sixers can’t win 50-plus games in the process while adhering to this type of plan.
Mike O’Connor is the best O’Connor in basketball writing. Previously of The Athletic, you can find Mike on Twitter @MOConnor_NBA. Mike’s writing is brought to you by Body Bio, supplements based on science, focusing on your gut and brain health. Get 20% off E-Lyte, Gut+, and all Body Bio products with promo code MIKESTUMMY at Body Bio’s website.
It’s fine to write about how the Sixers need to manage Embiid differently during the regular season to make sure he is at his strongest in the postseason. ON PAPER that all reads like it makes some sense and solves all the issues with a player like Embiid who has never in his career been healthy for a serious playoff run. But let’s not over-simplify the inherent risk in that strategy. First, as you noted, many of Embiid’s injuries are a result of the WAY he plays ball on the court, not so much how many games he’s played. Embiid flops his big body all over the floor. He dives when he doesn’t need to dive. He clumsily drives to the hoop with wild steps. And he takes a lot of elbows to the face because of his height. As a result, his back could go at any time. His knees are always at risk. It's even more high risk now because of his age. Playoff basketball, as we’ve seen, is rougher. So the Sixers could rest Embiid all they want in the regular season and he could go out and break his face again in game two of a first round playoff matchup. We’ve seen it happen with him before. And then all that regular season resting of Embiid just has contributed to a worse playoff seeding and done nothing positive for us.
Second, it appears you’re suggesting that Embiid will play some entirely new style of basketball in the regular season to preserve his health. Like he’s going to turn into a ball distributor and rebounder and defer to Maxey and George for the scoring in the 55 regular season games he plays. The implication there is that Embiid then reverts to his normal, ball dominant self in the postseason. Or, that this new style of play is what we need in the playoffs to win a title. Both of these possibilities are a bit odd to me. Suggesting the Sixers could play one way with Embiid all season to make it to the playoffs and then flip a switch to play a different style of postseason basketball and WIN that way is far fetched. How many teams have won a title in the last ten years or so having their best player take a very different role all regular season to the role he takes in a championship playoff run? We’ve certainly seen it fail more than succeed. And don’t forget that Paul George will also need games off this season as he’s older than Embiid and has career injury issues. So between games George rests and games Embiid rests, you still need enough games where those guys play together for they to be a high level of comfort by playoff time. Obviously, teams need to use the regular season to perfect their style of play – ESPECIALLY a team that is almost entirely new from last year. Seems pretty silly to suggest this Sixers team will be able to flip a switch and use Embiid differently in the playoffs from how he played all regular season. It also leaves open the possibility that Embiid is simply not in great shape when the playoffs begin because he hasn’t been playing enough games or minutes. “Resting” a generally out-of-shape guy doesn’t help the guy be in better cardio shape for the rigors of NBA playoff games.
So then, if you think his “pass first” declarations will become his new style of play for BOTH the regular season and playoffs, the question becomes whether the Sixers could actually WIN playoff series like that. They’re essentially a team with three star players and a bunch of complementary pieces. If Embiid intends to be the #3 guy of those three stars so as to reduce the risk of injury, then it will be up to either Maxey or George to be the Jimmy Butler or Kawhi Leonard style winning player for the team in the playoffs. Perhaps one of those guys can emerge like that, but neither has ever been THAT GUY before. To be fair, Embiid hasn’t been that either. But SOMEBODY is going to have to win the tough playoff games when everything tightens up in the 4th quarter. If the Sixers are going to change the pecking order with the way they play the regular season, and stick to that in the playoffs for continuity sake, then it’s going to have to be Maxey or George in that role. Tall order.
And finally, I agree with your point that all this requires that Embiid dramatically changes how he behaves on the court. He’s got almost a decade of playing as the ball dominant guy who has the offense run through him and now he’s going to just change? A guy like him has an NBA ego developed over his long career that is going to be the devil on his shoulder screaming at him to take the shot, or dive for the ball, or drive the hoop when he doesn’t need to. I think his sort of schizophrenic Olympic Games performance is less proof that he can take a different role, and more proof that he’s just uncomfortable playing behind other guys. And also, that team was full of veteran stars that Embiid had no choice but to defer to. It wasn’t HIS TEAM. The Sixers are absolutely JoJo’s team. So I’m skeptical that Embiid is the right guy, at the right time in his career, to come up with a new style of play that is less worthy of personal attention because it helps the team play better. Embiid has always been immature for his age and this kind of change requires real maturity from an NBA star.
If I had a say in how it was going to go, I would certainly just build the style of play for the 2024-25 Sixers around a reduced role for Embiid and an increased reliance on Maxey and George. We’ve tried, for too many years, to rely on a team centered on Embiid to win in the playoffs and every time it fails. So to keep pushing that same approach is insanity. We should try it this year with Embiid as the #3 guy on this three-star team and see how it goes.
Amen! If we’re being greedy, we should also want Joel to play at 270 rather than 280+. And please no playing the entire first and third quarters nonsense.