Joel Embiid Hates Basketball, Is About To Use Up All His Sick Days Before Thanksgiving
Chris Coduto. Getty Images.Joel Embiid has heroically played 59 minutes of basketball so far this season. He made his season debut last Tuesday after missing the Sixers first 6 games because his body wasn't ready yet, and then the next 3 games after that due to a suspension after getting into an altercation with a columnist. Naturally he missed the Sixers next game after his debut because he already established that he wasn't going to be playing in back-to-backs this season. So the Sixers have played 12 games so far this season and Joel Embiid has already missed 10 of them.
Get ready for that number to be 11!
11/13 games between his body not being ready to start the season because he chose to play in the Olympics over the summer, getting into a fight with a reporter, and now because he has the sniffles. The Sixers still have 13 more back-to-backs on the schedule so there's another 13 games. I'm sure he'll get another case of the sniffles once we get into flu season. There's just no way this guy doesn't end up playing in 40 games maximum this season.
And even when he does play, here's what you're getting out of him.
I'm not saying the guy isn't allowed to be sick or anything, but….I mean…holy fuck, dude. You're making hundreds of millions of dollars. Get your ass to a Walgreens, buy up an entire aisle worth of DayQuil, and get your ass in the game. At what point is this dude going to stop finding excuses and just gut out a few performances in a row.
The issue is that Joel Embiid clearly doesn't give a shit about the regular season. Which makes sense considering playoff success is the only thing his career is ever going to be judged on at this point. But how is this team even going to look when the playoffs roll around and he's logged maybe 9 total hours with the team all year.
All I'm saying is the next time Joel Embiid starts to feel a little sick, the least he can do is stub his toe against the corner of a couch so the injury report can say "lower body injury" as opposed to just being sick. Optically that'll look much better.
Sidenote: The city of Philadelphia is banned for clowning on Ben Simmons for the foreseeable future. Until Embiid decides if he has a heart or not, we don't get to say a peep about Ben Simmons.