Craven Sixers media just proved Joel Embiid's point in the worst possible way

Joel Embiid has not always had the best relationship with some of the NBA reporters who cover him. After being somewhat an NBA reporter for about ten years (on and off), I feel pretty secure in saying that this is mostly the fault of NBA reporters who cover him.

I really am not sure what some Philadelphia 76ers reporters want from Joel Embiid. I wrote something yesterday that would be the opposite of carrying water for Embiid and the Sixers. (I think that would be standing still in a desert, if I had to guess.) However, he has so many All-Star appearances, an MVP, All-NBA nods and an incredible penchant to play through injuries. Dude literally played through Bell's Palsy in the playoffs. Among other things!

But for a weird collection of people who appear closer to basketball stock investors than they do reporters or fans, it’s far less important that Embiid plays through injury than it is that he has them. Or that he does the “wrong” thing to recover from them. You know, the human bravery to persevere through pain and ill circumstance is actually just an unfortunate side-effect of the thing that they somehow really expect him to control: getting injured and not following the plan they consider best from the small pieces of information they get messaged at them from press conference to press conference.

Embiid came from Cameroon and moved to Florida. Then he moved to Kansas. He seemed he could be the No. 1 pick in his NBA Draft class, but, um, injury. Recovery. He missed his first two years with the 76ers. There would be tantalizing clips of him shooting or working out, but there was no play. Then he finally had his abbreviated rookie season, and he was so good that there was genuine debate about whether the 31 games he played could be enough to get him Rookie of the Year.

From there, things were pretty kickass in the regular season. But then, once the playoffs started to approach, something cursed would happen. An injury, a figurative absence, Kawhi Leonard rattling around an insane three. The Joel Embiid who led the team to sky-high expectations could not meet those sky-high outside expectations.

So the problem isn’t the high expectations. The problem is Joel Embiid.

That’s what John Kincade wants to say, anyway, after reading ESPN's latest lengthy profile of the big man.

Dude. Not everything is a game. You’re not always trying to find an angle. Maybe sometimes someone just is open to saying some sh*t.

John Kincade : Incisive :: Spork : Thinly sliced shabu shabu cuts

Of course this is one-sided! One side spoke! What did you expect?!

Also, why are there sides? What are the sides? The piece is pro-Embiid, I guess, in so far as it’s about him and he doesn’t suck. Does that mean there is a presupposed and demanded anti-Embiid side that exists? And I’m supposed to think that’s not weird? Why is that even a market? Why is that even a thing?

It’s this weird notion that something is only neutral if the natural proceedings of one’s narrative life that innately come across as positive are counterbalanced by manufactured shade. If you believe something like that, you don’t qualify to interact with people, let alone make statements about what is or what isn’t proper reporting.

You slosh noggin.

You absolute recycled tire.

A quote from the article in question, written by Dotun Akintoye, that seemed to tear a bit at John’s identity as a bastion of what is fair and balanced in the FOX News sense: “Embiid has many reasons to call this [interview] off. He thinks explaining himself will be distorted into defending himself.”

Well, how about that?

If you haven’t read the article, please do. It’s mentioned that Embiid began attending therapy last fall. Somehow the act of receiving therapy can be twisted to be defensive in some people’s minds, but I’m just going to leave a chunk of reporting here and let you decide if this is one-sided or just, kind of, you know, the actual truth.

"At the start of Embiid's rookie season in 2014, his 13-year-old brother Arthur was hit by a truck and killed. The day Arthur died, Embiid ignored a series of phone calls. When he finally answered, it was terrible news.

Even now, phone calls can send a tremor through him, a quicksilver slice of panic — someone is dead. In fact, he rarely answers texts or calls. His notifications are turned off. Those who need to reach him do so through his assistant or his wife. His replies can take months.

'I have a reputation of being not a good texter,' Embiid tells me, adding that he probably has 10,000 unread messages."

When you think about it, the things that Embiid has been exposed to are a lot stranger than his reactions to them.

Here’s another big quote regarding his caretaking family when he first came over to the States to play basketball as a teenager:.

"It felt weird for me," Embiid remembers. "I got there, one of the first things that I saw was guns."

Hansen's husband, Ric, is a veteran and an avid hunter. Embiid's father, Thomas, was an officer in Cameroon's military, but Embiid didn't know people lived with so many guns in their homes.

"I don't think anybody understands my point of view," Embiid tells me. "Why I was reserved and why I liked to be in my room, why I tried to lock the door ... I was kind of scared."

One more quote from the article: “His life was being accelerated at a speed he could not comprehend, propelled by a story about himself he did not believe, supplied by people he did not trust.”

I guess this is the excuse. When you go from foreign prospect in Cameroon who is learning English in real time to hope and future of a billion-dollar NBA franchise in the span of a few years, you might be caught off guard by what you’re expected to do and who you are in the eyes of many. Embiid really only trusted himself at the beginning of his time in the league. While continuing through rehab, he got the impression that what he was feeling wasn’t correct. He stopped showing up entirely.

How horrible.

“At the start of Embiid's tenure with the 76ers, his rehab had been overseen by an intern.”

I feel that’s more horrible, but that’s just me.

To his credit, Sam Hinkie brought in a new team to oversee Embiid’s recovery. After further tests by more qualified people, it turns out the original team was correct in their negative assumptions. Embiid had just been lazy.

Just kidding, Embiid actually was right the whole time.

Well, unfortunately, Embiid was now picturing the team that fined him, tried to force him into harmful rehab, tried to get him on the court as an antagonist. The management of the team were supposed to be the adults in the room and failed.

Please read the article. I’ll give you a minute.

You’ll have to forgive Joel Embiid for not trusting a journalistic system entirely dependent on clicks for profit

Joel Embiid is quoted as saying, “Ultimately, I guess I made those decisions. And then you got to live with it.”

I want you to recall that bit from earlier about Embiid’s life accelerating at a speed he could not comprehend. That is the necessary context here. It’s this other framing that explains so much of Embiid’s reclusivity today. He thinks that so many decisions he’s “made” were done by him in proper circumstances with adequate time to process.

Like, no. His life has been on warp speed for a decade and a half now. You make your best guesses with the help of your support system out of the options presented to you by the people or positions in power to offer you things. You get pushed certain ways. Certain motivations are presented to you as more crucial. It’s like an all-you-can-eat buffet with a 12-minute time limit. You’re not going to make your best choices.

And there have been moments throughout his growing up in the league that he’s regretted, that are primarily his fault, but it’s hard to believe his decision-making process is 100% unburdened in most moments.

But he made the choice to play for Team USA in the Olympics. That seems pretty cool. This, of all the scenarios presented in the article in question, felt the most like a personal decision. So of course, to again quote the article:

“But nothing with Embiid is ever so simple. 'He's pushing his risk of injury in a setting where he's not even gaining anything except riding tails of other all-stars,' wrote one veteran Philadelphia commentator before the medal rounds had begun.”

I once did an Uber Eats to John Kincade and he didn’t tip me

That isn’t true, but do you see how easy it is just to make stuff up? To be a personal nuisance to another person that is more notable than you are? I feel like someone needs to learn a lesson here.

It all just feels like latent frustration at the idea of Embiid, at his best, being arguably the best player in the league who could carry you to a championship, colliding with Embiid, in the cold embrace of reality, only reaching those peaks in all-too-fleeting moments while being the oft-injured constant over a decade of Sixers regime overhauls. The Sixers are supposed to be really good! Embiid is supposed to be the really goodest! He is so badly hurt so much! It must be a character flaw!

It’s stupid. This is all stupid. I don’t know what a comment like this was hoping to accomplish, but it did result in this.