The Sixer Sense
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Steps to Dealing with news of Joel Embiid’s Setback

By Eric Mullin

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All was well in the land of the Sixers rebuild; the draft was under two weeks away, with free agency to follow, and summer league right after that to wrap up the offseason. Exciting times were ahead for the Sixers with no real concerns in sight.

But over the weekend, out of nowhere, a #WojBomb filled with sadness was dropped on Sixers fans:

This report from Woj coincided with the Sixers releasing a statement from Sam Hinkie that said that Joel Embiid had suffered a setback in his rehab process because his foot is not healing at the rate that was expected.

This obviously came out of nowhere and has most Sixers fans feeling down and questionable. There is a lot to take in with this report, so let’s walk through the steps of how to handle this Embiid news.

1. Don’t freak out…yet

For the past two years under Sam Hinkie, the Sixers have not been transparent about anything. Hinkie rarely talks to the media and nothing of value about what is going in on inside of the organization ever gets leaked. So the fact that the Sixers actually released a statement on the setback was enough for fans to freak out.

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It would be premature to freak out about Embiid’s setback without having more information. Here is all we know for sure from both the Wojnarowski piece and the statement from Sam Hinkie: Joel was doing well in his rehab process and his foot was feeling fine, he went from a scheduled check-up in Los Angeles where a CT scan showed that his foot was not healed to the point that they expected it to be.  It is still unknown how far Embiid will be setback in his rehab process and whether or not he will even need surgery.

Remember, the last time Embiid had a ‘setback’ was during the regular season and within a week he was back on track with his workouts being ramped up. That is not to say that the same will happen here, but fans should not lose sleep over this news. Even though there are some rumors floating around that Embiid could miss all of next season, do not freak out just yet.

2. Think of Summer League as being a long shot for JoJo

Since the lottery, the Draft has been the one and only talking point for Sixers fans. It’s crazy to think that we were under a month away from seeing Joel Embiid play for the first time and no one was really talking about. It would have definitely been a hot topic after the draft, but with this news it unfortunately may not be a topic at all.

In Hinkie’s first two years as the man in charge, one thing that he has made clear is that the Sixers will always act on side of caution. Hinkie is not worried about what the public perception will be when he spends two straight first-round picks on injured players. They acted with caution during Nerlens Noel’s recovery from his ACL injury and they followed up with the same plan with Embiid. No matter how long it takes, the Sixers will be patient with Embiid until they know he is more than 100 percent healthy enough to play.

The Utah Summer League runs from July 6-9 and the Las Vegas Summer League is from July 10-20. Without anymore information on the setback, it is hard to really say whether or not Joel will play in either of the leagues. All there is to go off of is how the Sixers have handled injuries in the past two seasons, which leads me to believe that Embiid playing this summer is a long shot.

3. Don’t think that this changes the Sixers Draft Plan

When this news broke there were a few common reactions among fans on social media. Next to Sixer fans being depressed, the most common reaction was that this injury would change the way the Sixers draft. For instance, now that Embiid got ‘hurt’ people were assuming that the Sixers would now take Jahlil Okafor if he is still available when they pick at number three overall.

This is not necessarily the case for a few reasons. For starters, Embiid did not get hurt, and his setback in his recovery does not mean his career is over. The Sixers are not tossing Embiid out of their long-term plans because of this, as he still remains as a key piece towards the success of their rebuild.

With that being said  I don’t think that this changes their mindset on draft night at all. If the Sixers were not interested in Okafor as a prospect before the setback to Embiid, then their prospectives on him would remain the same after. So since the Sixers are, most likely, drafting the best player available with their third-overall pick, the injury to Embiid would not have had an effect on their big board.

4. Don’t think that the Sixers made a mistake at last year’s draft

‘The plan has failed’, has been a popular phrase thrown from the sports media crowd at Sam Hinkie and the Sixers following the news of Embiid’s setback. The anti-Sixer comments have come out in abundance about how the Sixers made a mistake in spending a first-round pick on ‘damaged goods’. But, as much as it hurts to say, this is the perfect response to those types of comments:

Building a championship team in the NBA is not an easy task. Some teams are able to strike luck by convincing an established superstar player to sign with them in free agency, but more recently franchises have turned towards rebuilding through the draft in an attempt to land a franchise player.

Rebuilding in the NBA is all about finding a foundation in the form of a superstar player, and then building a team around that player. The difficulty in landing a superstar player is what causes teams to be stuck as bottom-feeders or in mediocrity for a number of years. So at last year’s draft when the Sixers were on clock there was one player with superstar-type potential on the board, in the form Joel Embiid. Even though Embiid had a particular foot-injury, that has hindered NBA bigs in the past, he was the only player on the board that had a chance to be an actual franchise player.

Just like the previous basketball operations regime did with Andrew Bynum, the Sixers took a risk to land a franchise player. Embiid may be riddled with injuries while only playing in the NBA until he’s 25 or he may stay healthy on is way to being a superstar for years to come, but regardless of the outcome the Sixers made the right choice last June 26.