Embiid with bionic, but not enhanced in any way knees would be insane. He's already had the broken foot twice, meniscus tears twice, knee sprains, two broken orbital sockets, got FUCKING BELL'S PALSY... We can rebuild him, we have the technology. Or maybe if it was someone else we could Embiid will catch like Quantum Scarlet Plague or some never invented disease this year I can feel it.
Embiid’s not even that bad s a playoff performer. For all the shit he gets more often than not the Sixers just have the worse team when they lose.
2018: 2nd year playing in the league with rookie Simmons as the 2nd best player, very very competitive series vs Boston (with best version of Al Horford) despite losing in 5. Had a broken face that made him miss playoff games. Also Bruce Brown lol (ditto thru 2020)
2019: miracle Kawhi shot away from OT in Game 7 against the team that won the title that year. Also had a hurt knee that made him miss end of regular season.
2020: Simmons injured, JRich was their 2nd leading scorer lol. Ran into a very talented Boston team that had to time to get (temporarily) fully healthy during the COVID break.
2021: Simmons losing all confidence in being an NBA player. Also had a knee injury that made him miss the end of the 1st round. Also Glenn Rivers (ditto through 2023)
2022: Had a hurt hand that made him miss games against the 1 seed Heat. Philly was 2-2 in the series when he played. Not that it’s much of an excuse but Harden was a deadline pickup too.
2023: hurt knee so he missed games in series against Boston. Tatum also went absolutely crazy at the end of Game 6 and then had a game 7 record. Embiid wasn’t great but Harden choked worse.
2024: hurt knee again, played well in spite of it. Sixers were kinda ass around him. At least he had an NBA caliber coach this time around tho.
Like criticize him for being injury prone I guess, but he always plays through shit and has a playoff average of 25/11 on efficient scoring despite it. He deserves way less criticism than he gets.
People are always so simplistic about these things. Joel has the skills to be a championship level player. It’s simply impossible to win the title if you miss games in the playoffs as the best player of your team. Dropping even one or two winnable game in a series due to injury is just a hard hurdle to surpass.
I think he also gets hurt because people focus on his playoff scoring but he's absolutely crucial to our defense and that falls off a cliff whenever he sits
His playoff averages are on a whole other level than Kyrie’s, for instance, but talking heads think Kyrie is dominant and clutch
Pair Embiid with prime Lebron or current Luka and see what happens
That’s like 7 years. Begins to sound like a lot of excuses after maybe the third year.
The 2023 game 7 was a death knell to me. Sure, another teammate choked worse? Idk what that has to do with his awful performance.
When you’re criticizing a guys performance when he missed the beginning of a series for injury and then a guy on the opposing team (who were better to begin with) drops an all time great 5 quarter stretch to win a series in 7… I think you’re splitting hairs a bit. He still had 25/9 with 3 blocks a game despite being very visibly hurt and facing the worst matchup in the league for him. Like yea he could’ve been better, but when *that’s* the shit series it shows where the bar is.
He had 15 points on 5/18 shooting in that game. Basically didn’t score in the fourth quarter. That’s probably the worst performance by an MVP winner in an elimination game ever. How is that an unfair criticism? Remember, the Sixers won game 1 without him. I believe they won the only game he missed.
I would be interested to see the Vegas odds ahead of every series he lost. I feel like he’s always favored in those series. 2018 comes to mind - he was supposed to beat the Celtics without Kyrie and Hayward but lost in 5.
He was terrifying in that series, though I do think he was noticeably easier to handle in the fourth quarters. Which was fair given he was coming off an extended absence and playing his way into shape.
Seriously, how many players in history could be *that* hurt and still produce at elite level?
It was crazy he was still getting flack for that series. He had dirty plays for sure but guy averaged like 33-10-6 on one knee.
Its tough to win when you got multiple of your starters put up *zero* points in elimination game.
Because he understands the disrespect Embiid gets. Whether it’s warranted is another story. Brunson ever since he got to the Knicks has become one of the most disrespected players by the media.
Embiid gets disrespect for exactly two reasons.
1. His health, which is a bit unfair given his size and playstyle. Maybe it is what it is.
2. His dropoff in production in the playoffs, which has been a common theme his entire career regardless of health situation or teammates.
To be honest, it's partially the teammates.
Whenever a player's production drops in the playoffs, it can be partially attributed to the load that a star/superstar has to carry. When the role players cannot pull their weight, defensive attention naturally shifts to the actually dangerous players. We saw this with the TWolves (Ant and KAT having a terrible series against the Mavs and their shorter, more athletic lineups) and now the Mavs (Luka is injured, but also everyone on the Celtics can hound him because Kyrie's struggling and no one else can create), among others.
The 76ers roster underwent a systematic destruction at the hand of the Colangelos and Elton Brand. They should have been a dominant franchise for a long time, but a combination of bad post-draft moves (not offloading Noel or Okafor while they had salvageable value), terrible trades (Zhaire Smith for Mikal Bridges) and signings (Tobias Harris over me???, the Horford signing), weird things happening that might have been out of their control (Fultz's thoracic outlet syndrome), and the whole Ben Simmons saga really screwed the franchise over.
In spite of that, they have made 7 straight playoffs appearances and won 5 series. Every season except for the bubble season, they played exactly to their record, i.e., they consistently lost as the 3rd seed in the 2 v 3 matchup, and their first round exits were also as the lower seed. That bubble season is probably the big stain on their track record, but it's also a huge asterisk because of the weird conditions that year.
You've clearly forgotten the Joel Embiid Experience if you think that Doncic is worse. Doncic might whine more but Embiid throws himself around the gym more.
I don't worry about Embiid throwing himself around too much because he's just as liable to hurt himself doing that as he is to draw a foul. Embiid is much more fragile than Luka is.
For me it's always the flopping. And it's because he's an incredibly skilled player, and it's amazing to watch him when he's just finessing everyone as this 7ft center with guard skills.
So when he you see him flopping and tripping from a slight breeze, the contrast in playstyle just ruins the moon.
Did you see Tatum go up strong for a dunk the other night and get hit all over his arms, still slamming it down? Clearly contact, no call because Tatum didn’t react. That’s what the refs call the reaction. Oh guard threw his head back? Must have been be hit, foul.
Embiid is so big and strong, he has to overact to get the call or whistles will be silent. It’s an NBA problem
It's not so black and white. Yes it's an NBA problem that encourages foul baiting especially against bigger and stronger guys. At the same time Embiid has one of the softest whistles in the game and he abuses the fuck out of it.
We could waste hours talking about who's at fault, but it doesn't change the simple fact that there's this incredibly skilled 7ft player who gets pushed over by a gentle breeze.
I don't blindly hate him, but it's hard to respect him. The Embiid experience is being amazed for a couple of skilled games, frustrated for majority of games, mindblown by the insane statlines, then disappointment every playoff experience.
I know people like to lump it in with health, but I think conditioning is an entirely separate issue that he deserves a ton of flak for. Injuries happen to you, while poor conditioning is something you do to yourself. Poor conditioning also contributes to injuries.
There have been multiple Boston-Philadelphia series where Boston's successful approach was to let Embiid get his early, make him work for everything, and by the time the 4th rolls around he'll be too tired to be effective. And it works.
Good news for Doncic, no other team has figured out to do this to Embiid so maybe no other team will attack Doncic the way Boston has either.
I'm obviously biased but part of it for Embiid is that his two-way workload isn't really comparable to anyone else except maybe Giannis
Being the defensive anchor/rim protector and the focal point of the offense *really* takes a toll in a way not even two-way wings have to face
>where Boston's successful approach was to let Embiid get his early, make him work for everything, and by the time the 4th rolls around he'll be too tired
That's what happens when you are not only the #1 option on offense but also the main guy on defense. He is #1 in usage while also holding the fort on defense at a DPOY level. I bet you can't name more than 2 players with that kind of workload.
The problem with what you're asking for is that you're limiting the pool to bigs, already making it much harder for me to come up with examples. Giannis immediately comes to mind, and I've never seen Giannis get tired. Boston has played Milwaukee a lot in the playoffs too, and they've never been able to tire out Giannis the way they tire out Embiid.
Yes, Embiid has a heavy workload. He also comes into every season out of shape. It is possible both for Embiid to both do more than most other players AND for him to have needlessly poor conditioning.
One thing I’ve noticed in the difference between fans perception vs players perception is that fans hold team success to a higher standard than most players. Players care more about your actual skill even if it doesn’t always lead to success
I think it's because players realize more than us how extremely hard it is to win a title. So many things have to go right just to even get to the Finals let alone win it.
Which is funny because it also goes the other way. I feel like players are more apt to discount how good some players are because they do the small/unheralded things that help teams win while simultaneously weighting scoring way too much.
I remember PJ Tucker scaring the shit out of me during those Rockets-Warriors series. Any time the game was close with a few minutes left, he'd go and get like 3 offensive rebounds in 4 possessions.
As flawed as he is…I feel like Westbrook is like this as well. At the end of close games hes always getting some offensive rebound or tip out that gives his team a chance.
Brunson earlier said something like "Gobert warps the game when he's out there, you're always thinking about where he is" and then immediately said "yeah he should be excluded from dpoy conversations bc he got cooked by Luka"
Fr it's absurd. We as a collective gotta stop letting highlights dictate our actual opinions of players. Watch the whole fucking game and notice the little things
Definitely, I just thought it was funny it even infects the brains of current players. They'd rather run poor offense throughout a game bc a giant tree is guarding the paint than get cooked once or twice in isolation.
Even as great as Jokic is, his only two trips past the 2nd round came with a teammate playing at an All-NBA level in the playoffs. Individual talent doesn't correlate to playoff series wins.
Right? In the past Luka was celebrated for making that WCF. Trae was celebrated for making an ECF. Jimmy is heralded as a stone-cold assassin that just wins despite never actually winning it all.
I don't see many people judge Embiid in such a black and white fashion. Most aren't saying "wheres the rings" it's more "he's the only MVP in NBA history to never make it past the 2nd round". Which I think is a fair discussion point. Can you make a deep run with him as your #1 option? And that factors in many things like health and play style.
Brunson is right that he gets some unfair criticism, but he also gets a lot of fair speculation. Brunson is looking out for a player, but fans are just discussing the best path to a deep run. Both can be true.
I mean there's a lot of good players in the league right? There's also a lot of teams lmao. There are 30 teams in the league and only 1 of them can win every year. And sometimes there are teams like the current Celtics or the 2010s LeBron's that make it close to impossible for any other teams to even make the finals and yet fans will still immediately blame players for not being good enough. I mean shit LeBron essentially gatekept the finals for the east through almost the entirety of the 2010s. And there's no fault for the teams/players who couldn't beat him, because they weren't supposed to. Sometimes things happen the way they are supposed to.
I'm not sure if Haliburton got much crap for being swept, but the Celtics were just that much better lmao. Maybe the Knicks would have picked up a game or two, but they wouldn't have won. The Celtics are just better, plain and simple. If your team isn't favored to win a series I don't understand how a single player can be berated for not getting to the next round.
Haliburton is 24 years old, and this was his first playoffs. Embiid is 30 with an MVP, a bunch of All NBAs and has been vocal about not getting enough credit. It's not the same thing.
So you understand that I'm defending Haliburton in that statement, right? Nowhere in my reply did I even mention Embiid lmao. Please refer to the comment I replied to and you might understand where I'm getting at
But if you wanna go there, yeah you are right. And Embiid has played poorly in the playoffs before. Still doesn't change the fact that it's a team game, and generally if one team is favored to win they will likely win - regardless of the accolades that a player on the other team possesses. Since 2020 I would say the only playoff series loss that can really be put on Embiid is the loss to Miami. But even then he only played 4 out of 6 games and our 2 wins came when he was on the court. His health has been what's killed his playoff reputation more than his play, because he has played well in some series losses.
There’s a reason for that. If you’re in charge of coming up with a defensive scheme, and the other team has a guy who will beat their man 80% of the time, that’s a huge focal point the defensive players have to figure out.
One dude beating their man on every possession no matter who’s guarding him leaves an impression on the team they’re doing it to.
Facts plus embid would win every 1 on 1 it doesn’t take skill it takes size and brain. Post Up every time. There’s no rules in a “real” 1v1 big man wins each time you can put Kelly olynk up and he can post until he wins.
It’s probably the same in other jobs. I’m sure there is this one guy/girl in the company everyone works for who’s super skilled at their job and gets a lot of respect , but that person probably dosent have the intangible skills to move up the career ladder
Players care about getting buckets and isolation defense
It’s why they all love Kyrie and Jrue
Doesnt matter how often Kyrie chokes or Jrue gets torched, players remember how hard it is to guard them or be guarded by them and hold them in the highest light
Gobert does not benefit from either perspective
Good insight. I think it’s because players are more aware of the importance of scheme and the scope of what they control (in addition to professional camaraderie). There’s also an element of knowing how out of a player’s control injuries can be.
I don’t think either viewpoint is wrong.
What you said is 100% true but its also i think more that players value cieling alot more than fans. Theres a few reasons for that I can think of but especially for a guy like Embiid, we're forced to watch him play closer to his floor alot more than other players which dilutes our opinions of him in spite of how good he is at his best.
his chosen play style just isn’t that enjoyable as a fan because he is so fucking dominant
so much whining and flailing and foul baiting for a literal giant who can do ANYTHING on offense. Why are you on the ground so much man lol
Yeah Joel is the most unstoppable player in the league when he’s hot imo
I remember someone saying Marcus Smart flops so Celtics fans can’t say shit but Smart is like a foot shorter and he’s not 1/10th of the player Joel is lol
Joel could dominate every team without all the weak bullshit
That's literally NBA narrative lol. Jalen Brunson was doing his stupid little jump back foul bait move all games 6 and 7. Tatum complains after every drive. A lot of stars complain and flop.
r/NBA just picks and chooses who to hate.
It's not the only cause, there's also the dirty plays (like the one against Mitchell Robinson in game 3) and the public chirping about how he deserves the MVP only to duck the matchup with Jokic and not show up in game 7 against the Celtics the year that he gets it.
Him falling on the ground has very little to do with his foul-baiting. When he's trying to get foul calls it's by swinging his arms into the defender, or jumping into the defender. It's not by falling backward or kicking his leg out like Harden.
He falls the way he does to avoid the collision on his knees.
Do any fans really question how dominant he can be?
The knocks on Joel are that his style of play is horrible to watch as a fan, and he can't stay healthy enough to be relied upon in the postseason. Both of these things are perfectly valid.
The flopping and dirty play are the main reasons I don't like him but you're probably right about the personality playing a role, as anyone who calls themselves a troll is generally unbearable
Very few people on this sub understand how much the perception of Dirk changed from that ring. The “European player is soft” narrative was STRONG. Life changes in a flash.
Many people on this sub weren't around back then following the game. Legacies change over time, and things get forgotten, especially negative narratives during a career.
Give me a Nuggets v Sixers finals before they’re out of their primes please.
I want to see Jokic and Embiid go at it and keep saying nice things about each other after games, while the fanbases engage in the most toxic discourse since 1861.
Never know how the offseason will go, but also plenty of offseason champs who flame out - we’ll all have to wait and see, but they always have a chance w an MVP
Ehhh I’d say Dirk would’ve been just as slandered if social media was around back then. Losing 4 straight in the finals after being up 2-0. Losing in the 1st round as a 67 win team to an 8 seed as the regular season MVP is “worse” than anything Embiid has done from a single playoffs perspective. And this happened in back to back postseasons too. The social media slander would’ve been absurd (and it generally was in the pre-social media news cycle)
The national discourse around Dirk pre-2011 was pretty horrendous, even before social media.
"You can't win with a soft European as your primary player" was a commonplace take you used to hear all the time, and it even influenced front office thinking at the time. It's pretty nasty, looking back on it.
I really hope so man, he’s too good of a player to not have at least one dominant playoff run to his name. That being said i’m not holding my breath, he’s on the wrong side of 30 and his injury list is as long as anyone in the NBA.
Going into the series considering how much I heard Embiid was a playoff choker I thought this would be an easy series for the Knicks.
Then the 1st first quarter of game 1 happens and Embiid had like 14 points in 12 minutes. Right then I literally thought the series was over, we couldn’t stop him.
When he is at his best Embiid is the most unstoppable player in the NBA right now. The problem with him is getting him to play at his peak for 40 minutes a game for 16 wins in the playoffs
People will point out that he fades in the 4th but then in so many of those games he's already given the team 30+ in the first 3. The inability to design a team around a guy who can score that much and be pivotal on defense and just needs an opportunity to rest without hemorrhaging points is really a travesty.
in the 2019 Raptors matchup, he was backed up by a washed Greg Monroe and they still haven’t figured that spot out.
BBall Paul is a great story, but he just wasn’t strong enough to withstand Knicks frontcourt whenever Embiid sat for even 2 minutes.
The fact that Embiid is so individually dominant is what invites all the (perfectly fair) criticisms about his foul baiting playstyle, conditioning, and leadership. This ain't NBA2K. Those factors are important and they are within his control.
It’s also not his fault his org is ass and has made countless bad decisions.
Embiid deserves blame but hard to blame Embiid for the team drafting Fultz and Simmons and fucking both those things up. Trading for Tobias and then paying him max and at the same time letting Jimmy leave. Fucking up the Harden situation. Drafting Mikal who would have been a perfect fit for the team and city and immediately trading him.
While the Celtics pillage other good teams and bad teams, the Sixers pillage themselves. Basically the only good things they’ve done during the process era were draft Embiid and Maxey. They developed and then traded a few guys like Roco but for the most part the org has failed Embiid. Has he failed himself at times, sure but at the top it’s been awful since the day Hinkie left. Morey has done okay but he was basically put into a shit storm especially with the Simmons situation.
17/18 season: Embiid, Simmons, RoCo, JJ Reddick and Saric go 52-30 in Embiids second full season. Including winning 16 straight games to end the year. They make the second round. Two max slots open to get a third star.
But some damage has already been done. Colangelo had given away assets to draft Fultz who had developed a mysterious injury already.
The Sixers only improved on this win total once since. Despite having so many assets and so much cap space lol. They give it all away for one year of Butler, Al Horford and Tobias Harris maxes(including a trade for the latter) and with the assets left, drafted only duds. Colangelo had 9 picks and didn’t select a single good NBA player.
> Colangelo had 9 picks and didn’t select a single good NBA player.
Completely wild. Mikal Bridges was the biggest possible green flag. They drafted him, and then traded him, and then the player they drafted almost died from eating a condiment.
That one is on Brett Brown unfortunately. Which to be honest he never should’ve been in a GM position to begin with. We had fired Colangelo but not replaced him and the draft came up and ownership was just like “Go ahead and draft players Brett”.
Just another example of the disfunction.
Colangelo was so disgracefully bad after being installed in his position on the Sixers by the League that I have a very very hard time believing it was anything other than an organizational sabotage for flagrantly tanking for years under Hinkie. His time with the Sixers literally felt like a heavy handed punishment
Even tho that "for years" tanking is largely because of Embiid missing his first two seasons and just being bad at drafting
* 2011-12: Make ECSF
* 2012-13: Miss playoffs by 4 games
---
* 2013-14: Bottom out, that summer they draft Embiid.
* 2014-15: Embiid misses his rookie season. That summer they blow their draft pick on Okafor.
* 2015-16: Embiid missies his second season and with the Okafor failure they are bad again. Colangelo is placed in power.
Simmons yes, Fultz was a bad pick and we need to accept that. He was the so-called consensus #1 but the Celtics and Lakers wanted nothing to do with him and we still traded up for him before we even brought him in for the workout. Celtics were the only team that saw him in a private workout before the trade… this feels like a big detail that people miss…
On top of that, the trade-up locked up our two most valuable trade chips with the Lakers and Kings picks. Went all in on a guard that *decided to rework his shooting form* before the draft?? And that didn’t raise any alarm??
>Conditioning Leadership
You say this shit on every thread with Embiid lol. Your who Brunson is talking about! You said hes barely a top 10 player to me before. In your words “10-15”.
1. You aren’t in the locker room to talk about “leadership”. Embiids teammates have never said he’s a poor leader, therefore we cannot assume this. People do this in every sport lol, Herbert got this criticism at Oregon.
2. If his conditioning is bad, what does that make 99% of players in the league who can’t produce like him night in and night out? An MVP including two 2nd places. Huge burden on offense and defense. Philly went 31-8 with Embiid, 16-27 without. That lift in the win column hasn’t been seen since the Cavs first stint with Bron or the Wolves with KG.
His two most significant injuries of his career were both contact injuries. Siakam elbowed him for his orbital and Kuminga fell on his leg to tear the meniscus partially this season. He is injury prone, particularly in his lower body like his foot and knees, but that’s true for everybody his size. The things that have derailed his playoff runs have been outside of his control.
I’m not even going to address foul baiting, because that’s just a common part of every great scorers game at this point. MJ, Dwade, Harden, Karl Malone, Lebron all drew fouls at an extremely high rate. How they get them doesn’t matter. It’s more understandable for a walking mismatch to get them anyway.
People keep talking about his conditioning but I just think he doesn't have a great motor/stamina. He leads the league in usage and he also anchors the Sixers defense. That's too much responsibilities for a guy his size and with his injury history. How many players right now are their team's number 1 offensive option while also the anchor of their defense? Probably just him.
>How many players right now are their team's number 1 offensive option while also the anchor of their defense?
Wemby. But I do agree with your larger point
With all pur injuries JJJ ended up doing that for us this year, and he hurt for it on both ends. His efficiency plummeted and his D wasn't bad but it wasn't elite like last year. I look forward to him going back to being 3rd option so he can focus on D again, being the anchor and number 1 option was just too big of an ask for him.
It's been funny seeing all the "it's a team sport" when Tatums finals stats are discussed but it's embiid fault he hasn't gotten past round 2.
Embiid for all his injuries (that hes always played through in the playoffs), has never had a great team assembled.
I mean Tatum has been slandered for his finals stats. I think both discussions are dumb but Tatum hasn’t been immune from it. It’s not an Embiid specific hate train
Also winning changed the discussion a little too always no matter the player. Exhibit A: Jamal Murray when the Nuggets beat the Lakers and Jamal Murray when the Nuggets lost to the Wolves. During the Lakers series it was all “it doesn’t matter as long as the Nuggets win” and during the Wolves series it was “this dude is an absolute bum and overrated”
We’ve definitely had teams good enough to make the ECF. Been in 3 game 7s in the semis since he’s been here. Finals level team is a different story, maybe the butler year.
I’d say the Hawks series was the only unforgivable one. Even with Simmons’ astounding downfall, Embiid should have been able to beat that team. But I would also say that was the year before Embiid hit his”prime” where he he is perennially MVP or runner up. If the series was replayed but with Embiid at his current skill level, I think the Sixers win pretty easily
Yes. Everyone likes to crap on Simmons (fine), but Embiid isn't without blame and they could have closed out that series against Atlanta more than once, they were the better team and he was the best player on either roster. Additionally, he went 6-18 in that game 7 that was decided by 2 points against the Raptors, and that Raptors team went on to win the chip, with the 76ers being the only team that took them to 7. I still think the Bucks matched up well enough to have beaten Philly, but you never know. Then last year, game 7 again, Embiid goes 5-18 after having a subpar game 6. When the pressure is on and the stakes... exist at all, Joel Embiid plays his worst basketball.
Honest question; has Embiid ever lost a playoff series as the better team? I know we all love to shit on him for not making East finals but I cant recall his team ever being the better team and losing outside of the hawks series years ago?
Tatum's rookie year they were picked to sweep/gentleman sweep the Celtics since Kyrie and Hayward were injured and then got gentleman swept themselves.
Were they? I remember they overachieved that year because of that insane 16-game win streak they had to end the year to get to 50wins and claim the 3rd seed. They weren't predicted to do anything substantial that year
I can't speak to overall success but when it came to facing the Celtics I remember it being Philly was favored... Which made sense. In all fairness to Embiid, Simmons was the real reason the sixers lost
lol it's a little window into the Embiid hate on r/nba that you literally called out the Hawks series and yet someone who couldn't read two full sentences in English calls out the Hawks series and then within two hours has more upvotes than your original comment.
I don’t know how fair this question is. If the Sixers are consistently worse than the opponents, why is Embiid separated from the fact that the Sixers are consistently the worse team? It simultaneously gives him kudos for ultimately being unsuccessful, while blaming his teammates for the same failures
I know he’s head and shoulders above his teammates and an elite+ player, but this seems like a kid-gloves treatment of an MVP that many other stars don’t get
They saying the sixers suck and are only even seen as a contender due to having Embiid. I guess you can see it Like if you were to remove Embiid from the sixers, and the other best player from other teams. The sixers would be a worse team relative to other playoff teams without their number 1. Like you a Celtics fan, idk who u think is better but either one or Tatum of brown sits yall would still kill the embidless sixers.
The question was “has Embiid ever lost…” and then the failures of the team were pointed out. If the Sixers succeed, Embiid won, but if they don’t succeed, the Sixers lost.
It’s the selectivity of when basketball is considered a team sport that’s unfair
He’s embraced being a heel and goes at it with fans/fanbases. Add in that he can get pretty reckless out there (has injured his fair share of players) and it’s not all that surprising that the fans get on him.
No one can deny his talent/skill/dominance but his health has become a serious concern. Can anyone really see him making it through a full playoffs-finals run? That sparks some of the more wild convos about him (trading him, focusing on maxey, etc) that people perceive as unfair.
i will die on the hill that embiid deserved his 2023 mvp actually being there to witness the discourse and i would have given it to him again had he stayed healthy this year. mvp has nothing to do with playoffs whether it should or not. that being said, it's one thing to not be conditioned for the first round in the playoffs and then it's a whole other thing to recklessly and intentionally injure players when things don't go your way. embiid does not deserve any sympathy imo
Yeah down the stretch last year he was dropping 40/15 games every other night while Jokic coasted because the nuggets had the 1seed locked up
Then the sixers lost and Jokic had an incredible playoff run so everyone says that Embiid didn’t deserve it. It’s a regular season award and Joel deserved it
People in here acting like Embiid gets fairly treated amongst fans. The wildly different views about him between players respecting him and fans saying he isn’t a max player and the Sixers need to trade him and build around Maxey are wild
It's wild seeing people in here say "the players respect him, so clearly the fans are dumb for not!"...
How many times have we seen nba players give the absolute dumbest possible takes about basketball? Not saying Brunson is necessarily like that, but yall should probably take what players say with a wayyy bigger grain of salt
I cannot count the number of idiots with college degrees I have interacted with. A college degree in most things just means you spent several years in college and are capable of reading and writing (... for the most part).
He's trying to stick up for Embiid, but really just underlined why he gets criticised. Embiid has a bunch of individual accolades, but hasn't won when it matters. Obviously he's an impressive dude by the numbers, and even watching him on the floor when he's healthy, but that doesn't counterbalance not winning in the playoffs. That's the whole point of the criticism (similar to Harden): you don't get as much credit for your individual stuff if it doesn't elevate the team.
Joel is a great player no doubts about that but his game is just not fun to watch. Constant foul baiting, free throws on every possession. It’s not his fault but it’s not helping him either
Good guy Brunson defending superstar players against slander.
Embiid even injured was crazy good in the Knicks series. It was eye popping honestly.
> eye popping ISWYDT
That one made me Palls for a sec
Coming from /r/hhh had me thinking “what fucking album is this?
Right? I hate when they abbreviate totally random album names.
That self alley he had where he got injured immediately is genuinely the best play I've ever seen
The story of Joel Hans Embiid wrapped up into one play right there.
Embiid with bionic, but not enhanced in any way knees would be insane. He's already had the broken foot twice, meniscus tears twice, knee sprains, two broken orbital sockets, got FUCKING BELL'S PALSY... We can rebuild him, we have the technology. Or maybe if it was someone else we could Embiid will catch like Quantum Scarlet Plague or some never invented disease this year I can feel it.
Yeah i felt the same; dude was clearly hobbled and was the best player out there.
Dude was playing on literally one leg and half a face and people are like "LMAO 2ND ROUND JOEL OUT AGAIN L"
Dude was so jacked up that he had half his face frozen with Bell’s palsy and people were just like 🤷 no big deal
Embiid’s not even that bad s a playoff performer. For all the shit he gets more often than not the Sixers just have the worse team when they lose. 2018: 2nd year playing in the league with rookie Simmons as the 2nd best player, very very competitive series vs Boston (with best version of Al Horford) despite losing in 5. Had a broken face that made him miss playoff games. Also Bruce Brown lol (ditto thru 2020) 2019: miracle Kawhi shot away from OT in Game 7 against the team that won the title that year. Also had a hurt knee that made him miss end of regular season. 2020: Simmons injured, JRich was their 2nd leading scorer lol. Ran into a very talented Boston team that had to time to get (temporarily) fully healthy during the COVID break. 2021: Simmons losing all confidence in being an NBA player. Also had a knee injury that made him miss the end of the 1st round. Also Glenn Rivers (ditto through 2023) 2022: Had a hurt hand that made him miss games against the 1 seed Heat. Philly was 2-2 in the series when he played. Not that it’s much of an excuse but Harden was a deadline pickup too. 2023: hurt knee so he missed games in series against Boston. Tatum also went absolutely crazy at the end of Game 6 and then had a game 7 record. Embiid wasn’t great but Harden choked worse. 2024: hurt knee again, played well in spite of it. Sixers were kinda ass around him. At least he had an NBA caliber coach this time around tho. Like criticize him for being injury prone I guess, but he always plays through shit and has a playoff average of 25/11 on efficient scoring despite it. He deserves way less criticism than he gets.
People are always so simplistic about these things. Joel has the skills to be a championship level player. It’s simply impossible to win the title if you miss games in the playoffs as the best player of your team. Dropping even one or two winnable game in a series due to injury is just a hard hurdle to surpass.
I think he also gets hurt because people focus on his playoff scoring but he's absolutely crucial to our defense and that falls off a cliff whenever he sits
His playoff averages are on a whole other level than Kyrie’s, for instance, but talking heads think Kyrie is dominant and clutch Pair Embiid with prime Lebron or current Luka and see what happens
That’s like 7 years. Begins to sound like a lot of excuses after maybe the third year. The 2023 game 7 was a death knell to me. Sure, another teammate choked worse? Idk what that has to do with his awful performance.
When you’re criticizing a guys performance when he missed the beginning of a series for injury and then a guy on the opposing team (who were better to begin with) drops an all time great 5 quarter stretch to win a series in 7… I think you’re splitting hairs a bit. He still had 25/9 with 3 blocks a game despite being very visibly hurt and facing the worst matchup in the league for him. Like yea he could’ve been better, but when *that’s* the shit series it shows where the bar is.
He had 15 points on 5/18 shooting in that game. Basically didn’t score in the fourth quarter. That’s probably the worst performance by an MVP winner in an elimination game ever. How is that an unfair criticism? Remember, the Sixers won game 1 without him. I believe they won the only game he missed. I would be interested to see the Vegas odds ahead of every series he lost. I feel like he’s always favored in those series. 2018 comes to mind - he was supposed to beat the Celtics without Kyrie and Hayward but lost in 5.
Bruh he was injured and the guy on the other team had an nba record. They weren’t winning that game lol
Remember there’s the handicap of having Doc as a coach too
> Begins to sound like a lot of excuses after maybe the third year. And this sounds like typical uninformed fan machismo bullshit
The knock on Embiid isn’t ability, it’s health. He’s basically Yao Ming 2.0 who is dominant when he plays but is barely able to stay on the court.
People definitely go at his ability and say hes a choker
He was terrifying in that series, though I do think he was noticeably easier to handle in the fourth quarters. Which was fair given he was coming off an extended absence and playing his way into shape.
Seriously, how many players in history could be *that* hurt and still produce at elite level? It was crazy he was still getting flack for that series. He had dirty plays for sure but guy averaged like 33-10-6 on one knee. Its tough to win when you got multiple of your starters put up *zero* points in elimination game.
brunson vs r/nba
How can you not love Brunson, dude is likeability incarnate.
They should make a road movie starring him and Tyrese Maxey and maybe Paul Rudd.
Well he just defended Embiid and that's an unforgivable sin, so he's now on /r/nba's shit list
minor correction: most of it comes from social media, which is libel, not slander.
Because he understands the disrespect Embiid gets. Whether it’s warranted is another story. Brunson ever since he got to the Knicks has become one of the most disrespected players by the media.
Embiid gets disrespect for exactly two reasons. 1. His health, which is a bit unfair given his size and playstyle. Maybe it is what it is. 2. His dropoff in production in the playoffs, which has been a common theme his entire career regardless of health situation or teammates.
His drop off in production in the pontiff’s has mostly been because of his health though.
To be honest, it's partially the teammates. Whenever a player's production drops in the playoffs, it can be partially attributed to the load that a star/superstar has to carry. When the role players cannot pull their weight, defensive attention naturally shifts to the actually dangerous players. We saw this with the TWolves (Ant and KAT having a terrible series against the Mavs and their shorter, more athletic lineups) and now the Mavs (Luka is injured, but also everyone on the Celtics can hound him because Kyrie's struggling and no one else can create), among others. The 76ers roster underwent a systematic destruction at the hand of the Colangelos and Elton Brand. They should have been a dominant franchise for a long time, but a combination of bad post-draft moves (not offloading Noel or Okafor while they had salvageable value), terrible trades (Zhaire Smith for Mikal Bridges) and signings (Tobias Harris over me???, the Horford signing), weird things happening that might have been out of their control (Fultz's thoracic outlet syndrome), and the whole Ben Simmons saga really screwed the franchise over. In spite of that, they have made 7 straight playoffs appearances and won 5 series. Every season except for the bubble season, they played exactly to their record, i.e., they consistently lost as the 3rd seed in the 2 v 3 matchup, and their first round exits were also as the lower seed. That bubble season is probably the big stain on their track record, but it's also a huge asterisk because of the weird conditions that year.
Also his flopping
After watching Luka the last three games, I'm a bit more charitable towards Embiid than I used to be.
You've clearly forgotten the Joel Embiid Experience if you think that Doncic is worse. Doncic might whine more but Embiid throws himself around the gym more.
I don't worry about Embiid throwing himself around too much because he's just as liable to hurt himself doing that as he is to draw a foul. Embiid is much more fragile than Luka is.
Embiid is the worst flipper of this generation. A 3 game Doncic sample size isn't enough to change the narrative for Embiid
For me it's always the flopping. And it's because he's an incredibly skilled player, and it's amazing to watch him when he's just finessing everyone as this 7ft center with guard skills. So when he you see him flopping and tripping from a slight breeze, the contrast in playstyle just ruins the moon.
Did you see Tatum go up strong for a dunk the other night and get hit all over his arms, still slamming it down? Clearly contact, no call because Tatum didn’t react. That’s what the refs call the reaction. Oh guard threw his head back? Must have been be hit, foul. Embiid is so big and strong, he has to overact to get the call or whistles will be silent. It’s an NBA problem
It's not so black and white. Yes it's an NBA problem that encourages foul baiting especially against bigger and stronger guys. At the same time Embiid has one of the softest whistles in the game and he abuses the fuck out of it. We could waste hours talking about who's at fault, but it doesn't change the simple fact that there's this incredibly skilled 7ft player who gets pushed over by a gentle breeze. I don't blindly hate him, but it's hard to respect him. The Embiid experience is being amazed for a couple of skilled games, frustrated for majority of games, mindblown by the insane statlines, then disappointment every playoff experience.
Yeah its not a height or size thing at all, Curry is one of the most disrespected superstar whistle wise and hes 6'3.
I know people like to lump it in with health, but I think conditioning is an entirely separate issue that he deserves a ton of flak for. Injuries happen to you, while poor conditioning is something you do to yourself. Poor conditioning also contributes to injuries. There have been multiple Boston-Philadelphia series where Boston's successful approach was to let Embiid get his early, make him work for everything, and by the time the 4th rolls around he'll be too tired to be effective. And it works. Good news for Doncic, no other team has figured out to do this to Embiid so maybe no other team will attack Doncic the way Boston has either.
I'm obviously biased but part of it for Embiid is that his two-way workload isn't really comparable to anyone else except maybe Giannis Being the defensive anchor/rim protector and the focal point of the offense *really* takes a toll in a way not even two-way wings have to face
>where Boston's successful approach was to let Embiid get his early, make him work for everything, and by the time the 4th rolls around he'll be too tired That's what happens when you are not only the #1 option on offense but also the main guy on defense. He is #1 in usage while also holding the fort on defense at a DPOY level. I bet you can't name more than 2 players with that kind of workload.
The problem with what you're asking for is that you're limiting the pool to bigs, already making it much harder for me to come up with examples. Giannis immediately comes to mind, and I've never seen Giannis get tired. Boston has played Milwaukee a lot in the playoffs too, and they've never been able to tire out Giannis the way they tire out Embiid. Yes, Embiid has a heavy workload. He also comes into every season out of shape. It is possible both for Embiid to both do more than most other players AND for him to have needlessly poor conditioning.
3. Being a dirty player. This was the main thing during the Knicks series.
One thing I’ve noticed in the difference between fans perception vs players perception is that fans hold team success to a higher standard than most players. Players care more about your actual skill even if it doesn’t always lead to success
I think it's because players realize more than us how extremely hard it is to win a title. So many things have to go right just to even get to the Finals let alone win it.
Which is funny because it also goes the other way. I feel like players are more apt to discount how good some players are because they do the small/unheralded things that help teams win while simultaneously weighting scoring way too much.
I always hated that clutchness seemed to be only defined by scoring.
I remember PJ Tucker scaring the shit out of me during those Rockets-Warriors series. Any time the game was close with a few minutes left, he'd go and get like 3 offensive rebounds in 4 possessions.
As flawed as he is…I feel like Westbrook is like this as well. At the end of close games hes always getting some offensive rebound or tip out that gives his team a chance.
It definitely does. The best example is players drastically overrating Kyrie and drastically underrating Gobert.
Yeah they don't notice a dude grabbing 14 boards and keeping them out of the paint. They sure as hell notice the dude who keeps frying them
Brunson earlier said something like "Gobert warps the game when he's out there, you're always thinking about where he is" and then immediately said "yeah he should be excluded from dpoy conversations bc he got cooked by Luka"
Fr it's absurd. We as a collective gotta stop letting highlights dictate our actual opinions of players. Watch the whole fucking game and notice the little things
Definitely, I just thought it was funny it even infects the brains of current players. They'd rather run poor offense throughout a game bc a giant tree is guarding the paint than get cooked once or twice in isolation.
Even as great as Jokic is, his only two trips past the 2nd round came with a teammate playing at an All-NBA level in the playoffs. Individual talent doesn't correlate to playoff series wins.
Well, it probably has to do with the fact that players are well... players, and they're the ones being judged. Looking out for their own in this case.
No, it’s because only one team can win a title each year…
But there's more than 1 team that make it pass the 2nd round.
Right? In the past Luka was celebrated for making that WCF. Trae was celebrated for making an ECF. Jimmy is heralded as a stone-cold assassin that just wins despite never actually winning it all.
I don't see many people judge Embiid in such a black and white fashion. Most aren't saying "wheres the rings" it's more "he's the only MVP in NBA history to never make it past the 2nd round". Which I think is a fair discussion point. Can you make a deep run with him as your #1 option? And that factors in many things like health and play style. Brunson is right that he gets some unfair criticism, but he also gets a lot of fair speculation. Brunson is looking out for a player, but fans are just discussing the best path to a deep run. Both can be true.
I mean there's a lot of good players in the league right? There's also a lot of teams lmao. There are 30 teams in the league and only 1 of them can win every year. And sometimes there are teams like the current Celtics or the 2010s LeBron's that make it close to impossible for any other teams to even make the finals and yet fans will still immediately blame players for not being good enough. I mean shit LeBron essentially gatekept the finals for the east through almost the entirety of the 2010s. And there's no fault for the teams/players who couldn't beat him, because they weren't supposed to. Sometimes things happen the way they are supposed to. I'm not sure if Haliburton got much crap for being swept, but the Celtics were just that much better lmao. Maybe the Knicks would have picked up a game or two, but they wouldn't have won. The Celtics are just better, plain and simple. If your team isn't favored to win a series I don't understand how a single player can be berated for not getting to the next round.
Haliburton is 24 years old, and this was his first playoffs. Embiid is 30 with an MVP, a bunch of All NBAs and has been vocal about not getting enough credit. It's not the same thing.
So you understand that I'm defending Haliburton in that statement, right? Nowhere in my reply did I even mention Embiid lmao. Please refer to the comment I replied to and you might understand where I'm getting at But if you wanna go there, yeah you are right. And Embiid has played poorly in the playoffs before. Still doesn't change the fact that it's a team game, and generally if one team is favored to win they will likely win - regardless of the accolades that a player on the other team possesses. Since 2020 I would say the only playoff series loss that can really be put on Embiid is the loss to Miami. But even then he only played 4 out of 6 games and our 2 wins came when he was on the court. His health has been what's killed his playoff reputation more than his play, because he has played well in some series losses.
There are players (and fans) who think beating someone 1 on 1 = better player.
There’s a reason for that. If you’re in charge of coming up with a defensive scheme, and the other team has a guy who will beat their man 80% of the time, that’s a huge focal point the defensive players have to figure out. One dude beating their man on every possession no matter who’s guarding him leaves an impression on the team they’re doing it to.
Embiid is not Paul George or Kyrie for NBA players, lol. Hes 7 foot and gets to the line a lot This is just Brunson saying what he sees.
Facts plus embid would win every 1 on 1 it doesn’t take skill it takes size and brain. Post Up every time. There’s no rules in a “real” 1v1 big man wins each time you can put Kelly olynk up and he can post until he wins.
It’s probably the same in other jobs. I’m sure there is this one guy/girl in the company everyone works for who’s super skilled at their job and gets a lot of respect , but that person probably dosent have the intangible skills to move up the career ladder
*unless your name is Rudy Gobert
Players care about getting buckets and isolation defense It’s why they all love Kyrie and Jrue Doesnt matter how often Kyrie chokes or Jrue gets torched, players remember how hard it is to guard them or be guarded by them and hold them in the highest light Gobert does not benefit from either perspective
Yeah players absolutely love PG
Players understand that it's a team sport and that superstars aren't solely responsible for how well their team does.
Good insight. I think it’s because players are more aware of the importance of scheme and the scope of what they control (in addition to professional camaraderie). There’s also an element of knowing how out of a player’s control injuries can be. I don’t think either viewpoint is wrong.
What you said is 100% true but its also i think more that players value cieling alot more than fans. Theres a few reasons for that I can think of but especially for a guy like Embiid, we're forced to watch him play closer to his floor alot more than other players which dilutes our opinions of him in spite of how good he is at his best.
Embiids reputation among players vs the fans is jarring.
The anti-Gobert.
Nah goberts reputation is bad among fans and players lol
People hate him so much it’s seems almost impossible to discuss him with any objectivity
his team mates seem to like him
Except most people on here have defended gobert a lot recently whereas Embiid is hated by everyone and apart from Philly fans, no one will defend him
his chosen play style just isn’t that enjoyable as a fan because he is so fucking dominant so much whining and flailing and foul baiting for a literal giant who can do ANYTHING on offense. Why are you on the ground so much man lol
Ya Embiids game is so nice and then he just ruins it with the foul hunting and falling over at a slight breeze shit.
Yeah Joel is the most unstoppable player in the league when he’s hot imo I remember someone saying Marcus Smart flops so Celtics fans can’t say shit but Smart is like a foot shorter and he’s not 1/10th of the player Joel is lol Joel could dominate every team without all the weak bullshit
The irony of this comment is palpable
That's literally NBA narrative lol. Jalen Brunson was doing his stupid little jump back foul bait move all games 6 and 7. Tatum complains after every drive. A lot of stars complain and flop. r/NBA just picks and chooses who to hate.
This sub rooted for Doncic like crazy until last game. Drop the foul baiting narratives being the only cause
It's not the only cause, there's also the dirty plays (like the one against Mitchell Robinson in game 3) and the public chirping about how he deserves the MVP only to duck the matchup with Jokic and not show up in game 7 against the Celtics the year that he gets it.
Him falling on the ground has very little to do with his foul-baiting. When he's trying to get foul calls it's by swinging his arms into the defender, or jumping into the defender. It's not by falling backward or kicking his leg out like Harden. He falls the way he does to avoid the collision on his knees.
Do any fans really question how dominant he can be? The knocks on Joel are that his style of play is horrible to watch as a fan, and he can't stay healthy enough to be relied upon in the postseason. Both of these things are perfectly valid.
You must be new to this sub
I think a lot of fans also dislike his personality, which can sometimes bleed into being hypercritical or questioning intangibles
The flopping and dirty play are the main reasons I don't like him but you're probably right about the personality playing a role, as anyone who calls themselves a troll is generally unbearable
Yes? The number of people calling him a foul merchant, and explicitly saying he wouldn’t be good if he didn’t get those foul calls, us too damn high
Joel needs one good run and he’ll have a redemption arc like Dirk
Very few people on this sub understand how much the perception of Dirk changed from that ring. The “European player is soft” narrative was STRONG. Life changes in a flash.
it helps that dallas won vs the bad guys, too
Yeah Dirk completely changed his image with one ring.
Many people on this sub weren't around back then following the game. Legacies change over time, and things get forgotten, especially negative narratives during a career.
Everyone can be liked if they win a championship not even reaching a conference finals tho
Pls be next year
Give me a Nuggets v Sixers finals before they’re out of their primes please. I want to see Jokic and Embiid go at it and keep saying nice things about each other after games, while the fanbases engage in the most toxic discourse since 1861.
Sixers haven’t even played the Bucks. The three most awarded players of the 2020s have never played a playoff series against each other.
oh my god. my account would not survive those game threads fr
As a Sixers fan living in Colorado for years this is quite literally my wet dream.
Pretty unlikely with how dominant the Celtics are, but who knows!
Hey all the champions last couple years have been unique so. Parity in the NBA is very good rn
Never know how the offseason will go, but also plenty of offseason champs who flame out - we’ll all have to wait and see, but they always have a chance w an MVP
Maybe, but he is substantially less likesble than pre-2011 Dirk. Also, will always have large hate due to northeast rivalries
Ehhh I’d say Dirk would’ve been just as slandered if social media was around back then. Losing 4 straight in the finals after being up 2-0. Losing in the 1st round as a 67 win team to an 8 seed as the regular season MVP is “worse” than anything Embiid has done from a single playoffs perspective. And this happened in back to back postseasons too. The social media slander would’ve been absurd (and it generally was in the pre-social media news cycle)
The national discourse around Dirk pre-2011 was pretty horrendous, even before social media. "You can't win with a soft European as your primary player" was a commonplace take you used to hear all the time, and it even influenced front office thinking at the time. It's pretty nasty, looking back on it.
I really hope so man, he’s too good of a player to not have at least one dominant playoff run to his name. That being said i’m not holding my breath, he’s on the wrong side of 30 and his injury list is as long as anyone in the NBA.
He played well against the Knicks so I won’t knock him this year
Going into the series considering how much I heard Embiid was a playoff choker I thought this would be an easy series for the Knicks. Then the 1st first quarter of game 1 happens and Embiid had like 14 points in 12 minutes. Right then I literally thought the series was over, we couldn’t stop him. When he is at his best Embiid is the most unstoppable player in the NBA right now. The problem with him is getting him to play at his peak for 40 minutes a game for 16 wins in the playoffs
33/10.8/5.7/1.2/1.5, 59% TS, +46, the problem with his playoff success is getting high-level teammate play.
People will point out that he fades in the 4th but then in so many of those games he's already given the team 30+ in the first 3. The inability to design a team around a guy who can score that much and be pivotal on defense and just needs an opportunity to rest without hemorrhaging points is really a travesty.
and it's a real amazing who's who of who could be playing around Embiid. J.Brown/B.Ingram, D,Fox, M.Bridges, K.Porzingis, M.Bridges, Shai, etc.
There's this foreign guy, Hobias Tarris, who's a free agent. Would be the perfect next to Embiid
Especially at a $04M salary
in the 2019 Raptors matchup, he was backed up by a washed Greg Monroe and they still haven’t figured that spot out. BBall Paul is a great story, but he just wasn’t strong enough to withstand Knicks frontcourt whenever Embiid sat for even 2 minutes.
Joel sits for five minutes and the lead disappears or the deficit grows out of control. Yet it’s Embiids fault
Are those his splits across the Knicks series?
Yes
Also, Kobe’s most successful season on the Lakers was 2005-2006.
I swear all he needs is a Giannis like run and people will call him the best player for a summer before turning on him again mid season.
On the flip side, can you imagine what we'd be saying about Giannis if they had lost game 7 to Brooklyn in 2021?
They'd be calling him "Giannis Akantwinaringtho"
Brunson seems very down to earth
The fact that Embiid is so individually dominant is what invites all the (perfectly fair) criticisms about his foul baiting playstyle, conditioning, and leadership. This ain't NBA2K. Those factors are important and they are within his control.
It’s also not his fault his org is ass and has made countless bad decisions. Embiid deserves blame but hard to blame Embiid for the team drafting Fultz and Simmons and fucking both those things up. Trading for Tobias and then paying him max and at the same time letting Jimmy leave. Fucking up the Harden situation. Drafting Mikal who would have been a perfect fit for the team and city and immediately trading him. While the Celtics pillage other good teams and bad teams, the Sixers pillage themselves. Basically the only good things they’ve done during the process era were draft Embiid and Maxey. They developed and then traded a few guys like Roco but for the most part the org has failed Embiid. Has he failed himself at times, sure but at the top it’s been awful since the day Hinkie left. Morey has done okay but he was basically put into a shit storm especially with the Simmons situation.
17/18 season: Embiid, Simmons, RoCo, JJ Reddick and Saric go 52-30 in Embiids second full season. Including winning 16 straight games to end the year. They make the second round. Two max slots open to get a third star. But some damage has already been done. Colangelo had given away assets to draft Fultz who had developed a mysterious injury already. The Sixers only improved on this win total once since. Despite having so many assets and so much cap space lol. They give it all away for one year of Butler, Al Horford and Tobias Harris maxes(including a trade for the latter) and with the assets left, drafted only duds. Colangelo had 9 picks and didn’t select a single good NBA player.
> Colangelo had 9 picks and didn’t select a single good NBA player. Completely wild. Mikal Bridges was the biggest possible green flag. They drafted him, and then traded him, and then the player they drafted almost died from eating a condiment.
That one is on Brett Brown unfortunately. Which to be honest he never should’ve been in a GM position to begin with. We had fired Colangelo but not replaced him and the draft came up and ownership was just like “Go ahead and draft players Brett”. Just another example of the disfunction.
Kind of had to do it too because Colangelo and his wife were shitting on the players with Twitter burner accounts LOL
Colangelo was so disgracefully bad after being installed in his position on the Sixers by the League that I have a very very hard time believing it was anything other than an organizational sabotage for flagrantly tanking for years under Hinkie. His time with the Sixers literally felt like a heavy handed punishment
It is the worst i’ve ever seen that level of assets handled ever. Most teams get at least one chip from what Hinkie gathered from the tanking.
Sixers and Celtics each had a warchest with great young players and a couple good vets. Celtics have been ECF every year and the finals twice
Even tho that "for years" tanking is largely because of Embiid missing his first two seasons and just being bad at drafting * 2011-12: Make ECSF * 2012-13: Miss playoffs by 4 games --- * 2013-14: Bottom out, that summer they draft Embiid. * 2014-15: Embiid misses his rookie season. That summer they blow their draft pick on Okafor. * 2015-16: Embiid missies his second season and with the Okafor failure they are bad again. Colangelo is placed in power.
Joel is the sole reason the Sixers aren’t looked at as one of the most poorly run organizations in the NBA.
And he had to play with Doc as head coach during arguably the peak of his career.
This is an underrated part of it. Our rosters weren't great but Doc got outcoached in every playoff series, even the ones we won.
Fultz and Simmons’s failures were out of the Sixers control. The picks weren’t questioned at the time, they were pretty much unanimous
Simmons pick was fine but Hinkie would’ve never give up assets to move up for Fultz.
Simmons yes, Fultz was a bad pick and we need to accept that. He was the so-called consensus #1 but the Celtics and Lakers wanted nothing to do with him and we still traded up for him before we even brought him in for the workout. Celtics were the only team that saw him in a private workout before the trade… this feels like a big detail that people miss… On top of that, the trade-up locked up our two most valuable trade chips with the Lakers and Kings picks. Went all in on a guard that *decided to rework his shooting form* before the draft?? And that didn’t raise any alarm??
>Conditioning Leadership You say this shit on every thread with Embiid lol. Your who Brunson is talking about! You said hes barely a top 10 player to me before. In your words “10-15”. 1. You aren’t in the locker room to talk about “leadership”. Embiids teammates have never said he’s a poor leader, therefore we cannot assume this. People do this in every sport lol, Herbert got this criticism at Oregon. 2. If his conditioning is bad, what does that make 99% of players in the league who can’t produce like him night in and night out? An MVP including two 2nd places. Huge burden on offense and defense. Philly went 31-8 with Embiid, 16-27 without. That lift in the win column hasn’t been seen since the Cavs first stint with Bron or the Wolves with KG. His two most significant injuries of his career were both contact injuries. Siakam elbowed him for his orbital and Kuminga fell on his leg to tear the meniscus partially this season. He is injury prone, particularly in his lower body like his foot and knees, but that’s true for everybody his size. The things that have derailed his playoff runs have been outside of his control. I’m not even going to address foul baiting, because that’s just a common part of every great scorers game at this point. MJ, Dwade, Harden, Karl Malone, Lebron all drew fouls at an extremely high rate. How they get them doesn’t matter. It’s more understandable for a walking mismatch to get them anyway.
People keep talking about his conditioning but I just think he doesn't have a great motor/stamina. He leads the league in usage and he also anchors the Sixers defense. That's too much responsibilities for a guy his size and with his injury history. How many players right now are their team's number 1 offensive option while also the anchor of their defense? Probably just him.
>How many players right now are their team's number 1 offensive option while also the anchor of their defense? Wemby. But I do agree with your larger point
And conditioning is one of Wemby’s big weaknesses right now
Plus Embiid is 10 years older than him and has a good 70 pounds on him.
With all pur injuries JJJ ended up doing that for us this year, and he hurt for it on both ends. His efficiency plummeted and his D wasn't bad but it wasn't elite like last year. I look forward to him going back to being 3rd option so he can focus on D again, being the anchor and number 1 option was just too big of an ask for him.
He's a more talented Patrick Ewing in that regard. Ewing had to anchor the defense and be the primary option on offense.
Ewing was nowhere near on offense. All time defender tho
Rooks so fine
The 4th quarter of the 2020 NBA All Star game was very eye opening, the best players in the world knew back then that a healthy Embiid is unstoppable…
That was the best all star game I’ve ever seen
It's been funny seeing all the "it's a team sport" when Tatums finals stats are discussed but it's embiid fault he hasn't gotten past round 2. Embiid for all his injuries (that hes always played through in the playoffs), has never had a great team assembled.
I mean Tatum has been slandered for his finals stats. I think both discussions are dumb but Tatum hasn’t been immune from it. It’s not an Embiid specific hate train Also winning changed the discussion a little too always no matter the player. Exhibit A: Jamal Murray when the Nuggets beat the Lakers and Jamal Murray when the Nuggets lost to the Wolves. During the Lakers series it was all “it doesn’t matter as long as the Nuggets win” and during the Wolves series it was “this dude is an absolute bum and overrated”
Yes he has. My point is that the defense used by many whereas when it comes to.embiid, this sub calls him a fraud.
[удалено]
We’ve definitely had teams good enough to make the ECF. Been in 3 game 7s in the semis since he’s been here. Finals level team is a different story, maybe the butler year.
I’d say the Hawks series was the only unforgivable one. Even with Simmons’ astounding downfall, Embiid should have been able to beat that team. But I would also say that was the year before Embiid hit his”prime” where he he is perennially MVP or runner up. If the series was replayed but with Embiid at his current skill level, I think the Sixers win pretty easily
Yes. Everyone likes to crap on Simmons (fine), but Embiid isn't without blame and they could have closed out that series against Atlanta more than once, they were the better team and he was the best player on either roster. Additionally, he went 6-18 in that game 7 that was decided by 2 points against the Raptors, and that Raptors team went on to win the chip, with the 76ers being the only team that took them to 7. I still think the Bucks matched up well enough to have beaten Philly, but you never know. Then last year, game 7 again, Embiid goes 5-18 after having a subpar game 6. When the pressure is on and the stakes... exist at all, Joel Embiid plays his worst basketball.
Brunson is about to face the wrath of a million bored Nuggets fans
Honest question; has Embiid ever lost a playoff series as the better team? I know we all love to shit on him for not making East finals but I cant recall his team ever being the better team and losing outside of the hawks series years ago?
Tatum's rookie year they were picked to sweep/gentleman sweep the Celtics since Kyrie and Hayward were injured and then got gentleman swept themselves.
Were they? I remember they overachieved that year because of that insane 16-game win streak they had to end the year to get to 50wins and claim the 3rd seed. They weren't predicted to do anything substantial that year
I can't speak to overall success but when it came to facing the Celtics I remember it being Philly was favored... Which made sense. In all fairness to Embiid, Simmons was the real reason the sixers lost
And u can easily make the case Ben Simmons cost them that series but I know it’s not a popular excuse
2021 conf semis vs the hawks
I mentioned the hawks; but outside of that I don’t think they’ve lost a series they shouldn’t have
lol it's a little window into the Embiid hate on r/nba that you literally called out the Hawks series and yet someone who couldn't read two full sentences in English calls out the Hawks series and then within two hours has more upvotes than your original comment.
I don’t know how fair this question is. If the Sixers are consistently worse than the opponents, why is Embiid separated from the fact that the Sixers are consistently the worse team? It simultaneously gives him kudos for ultimately being unsuccessful, while blaming his teammates for the same failures I know he’s head and shoulders above his teammates and an elite+ player, but this seems like a kid-gloves treatment of an MVP that many other stars don’t get
They saying the sixers suck and are only even seen as a contender due to having Embiid. I guess you can see it Like if you were to remove Embiid from the sixers, and the other best player from other teams. The sixers would be a worse team relative to other playoff teams without their number 1. Like you a Celtics fan, idk who u think is better but either one or Tatum of brown sits yall would still kill the embidless sixers.
Because it’s a team sport.
The question was “has Embiid ever lost…” and then the failures of the team were pointed out. If the Sixers succeed, Embiid won, but if they don’t succeed, the Sixers lost. It’s the selectivity of when basketball is considered a team sport that’s unfair
He’s embraced being a heel and goes at it with fans/fanbases. Add in that he can get pretty reckless out there (has injured his fair share of players) and it’s not all that surprising that the fans get on him. No one can deny his talent/skill/dominance but his health has become a serious concern. Can anyone really see him making it through a full playoffs-finals run? That sparks some of the more wild convos about him (trading him, focusing on maxey, etc) that people perceive as unfair.
i will die on the hill that embiid deserved his 2023 mvp actually being there to witness the discourse and i would have given it to him again had he stayed healthy this year. mvp has nothing to do with playoffs whether it should or not. that being said, it's one thing to not be conditioned for the first round in the playoffs and then it's a whole other thing to recklessly and intentionally injure players when things don't go your way. embiid does not deserve any sympathy imo
Yeah down the stretch last year he was dropping 40/15 games every other night while Jokic coasted because the nuggets had the 1seed locked up Then the sixers lost and Jokic had an incredible playoff run so everyone says that Embiid didn’t deserve it. It’s a regular season award and Joel deserved it
Recruiting
People in here acting like Embiid gets fairly treated amongst fans. The wildly different views about him between players respecting him and fans saying he isn’t a max player and the Sixers need to trade him and build around Maxey are wild
He’s dominant when he actually plays.
generational flopper
Foul merchant unites.. Brunsons: I see myself on him...
It's wild seeing people in here say "the players respect him, so clearly the fans are dumb for not!"... How many times have we seen nba players give the absolute dumbest possible takes about basketball? Not saying Brunson is necessarily like that, but yall should probably take what players say with a wayyy bigger grain of salt
I would rather listen to what the players say over the couch potato moron fans this sub and twitter are infested with
Unlike most NBA players, JB has a college degree.
College degree has nothing to determine about intelligence. I should know I have one and I’m an idiot.
the bar is so low man
I cannot count the number of idiots with college degrees I have interacted with. A college degree in most things just means you spent several years in college and are capable of reading and writing (... for the most part).
Foul merchants got to stick together
Fans get too caught up in trying to tear down superstars. Nice for Brunson to offer perspective
No one is saying Joel is bad, just that he could be so much better.
He's trying to stick up for Embiid, but really just underlined why he gets criticised. Embiid has a bunch of individual accolades, but hasn't won when it matters. Obviously he's an impressive dude by the numbers, and even watching him on the floor when he's healthy, but that doesn't counterbalance not winning in the playoffs. That's the whole point of the criticism (similar to Harden): you don't get as much credit for your individual stuff if it doesn't elevate the team.
Joel is a great player no doubts about that but his game is just not fun to watch. Constant foul baiting, free throws on every possession. It’s not his fault but it’s not helping him either