Selecting injured Joel Embiid required conviction and confidence, but Sam Hinkie understood that Joel Embiid’s fractured foot, and the Philadelphia 76ers future, could be changed for the better.
From the moment the Philadelphia 76ers president Sam Hinkie drafted injured, but potential franchise player Joel Embiid, at the third pick of the 2014 NBA Draft, the court of public opinion had been quite harsh in judging the move as fool’s gold.
In fact, it may have cost former president Sam Hinkie his job.
Now that Joel Embiid has begun to excite the NBA, I have begun to see evidence of inputs marginalizing the risk assumed by Sam Hinkie in drafting Joel Embiid. For those who do not recall, Joel Embiid was a big prospect with little basketball experience with a partial year playing for the University of Kansas.
Mike Gibson crafted an over-dramatized narrative on the topic, but hit the essential risks in his article entitled “Philadelphia 76ers Have To Accept The Reality That Joel Embiid Might Never Play Again“.
For a time, it appeared as though Joel Embiid might not play again. After all, he had stress fractures in his back, a high risk Naviscular bone fracture in his foot (which required two surgeries and two years rehab to repair), and was a young man who was very far from home and who suffered the tragic loss of his brother.
He might have turned away from a game that offered much but demanded much. But Sam Hinkie understood the psyche of the young Cameroon. That young man simply need the opportunity, and Hinkie made sure he got it.