Sixers’ injury moves hurt healthy players
PHILADELPHIA >> An odd thing happened this basketball season while the back-room manipulators of 76ers history were doing their annual thing: Brett Brown put together a good basketball team. Unfortunately for the coaches, the players, the fans and the dignity of the sport, the usual forces prevented anything more.
Never was that conflict of purpose more uncomfortable than the other night, when the players were showing one thing, and the usual static from the front office was providing a different message. There were the Sixers, in Chicago, against the playoff-minded Bulls, playing with the intensity of a college team trying to remain alive in a single-elimination tournament. They were running, defending, creating turnovers. Dario Saric, who should be the Rookie of the Year, was providing energy and fundamental excellence at both ends. Passes were connecting. The timing was perfect. The Bulls, at least for one critical point in the second half, were hurling the ball all over the United Center, to the disgust of their hooting fans.
It was the way the Sixers have been playing for weeks, how they had the Warriors in a two-point game in Oakland, how they clobbered the visiting Mavericks, how they shocked the Celtics last Sunday in the Wells Fargo Center. They have been playing splendid basketball, enough of it to continue to show that they could have been a handful for any postseason opponent this year — not the next year, or the one after that.
Joel Embiid had been saying that all along, first to muffled snickers, later to raised-eyebrow curiosity. He, too, had been playing with the passion that the Sixers have been showing all season. And because of his defense, outside shooting, charisma and rebounding, he helped them win 10 games and raging popularity in January.
But then he was injured, banging a knee late in the month against the Blazers. He has played one game since. And Friday, not long before the Sixers would torment the Bulls, the front office would torment the fans with a weekend missive, reporting that Embiid had knee surgery, after all, two months after the original damage. Two months. Two of them.
Though Embiid originally had claimed to have felt “great” immediately after the injury, though he scored 32 points in a game shortly after against Houston, though he was comfortable enough to dance on stage at a Wells Fargo Center musical show, does not limp, often does basketball things after practice and should have been OK to play, the Sixers dismissed him for the rest of the season.
As they did, they dismissed the season itself.
When tell-all gadgets revealed Embiid to have had a slightly torn meniscus in his left knee, Bryan Colangelo was quick to stress one enduring sports truth: It is possible to play with such an injury, and players do so regularly. So Embiid could have played, too. The alternative, one Colangelo and the Sixers avoided until last week, was to order minor surgery and correct the problem. So there were two (2) reasonable, reliable options: Play despite the slight tear, or have it repaired.
Nowhere on that list was the third choice, the one the Sixers took, which was to not play and then to have the surgery anyway at the end of March. Yet that’s what they did, brandishing it as usual as a corporate value. They proudly error on the side of caution, never pausing to consider the essence of the verb “error.”
“Based on the program that has been outlined, we will continually evaluate Joel’s progress against predetermined benchmarks,” said Dr. David T. Martin, the Sixers’ director of performance research and development, in a prepared statement, “and anticipate he will resume basketball activities this summer.”
During the telecast of the Sixers’ victory over the Bulls, the announcers fairly gushed about what they characterized as good news. Embiid will be back by the summer. The summer? That’s good news? Not that Embiid, at this stage of his development, necessarily would have been encouraged to play in summer leagues, but even if he could have used that seasoning, that loose recovery schedule would appear to rule that out. So without substantial summertime work, Embiid is almost certain to roll into training camp on some continuing activity restrictions. And if he does not participate fully in camp or the preseason, he will not likely be at full strength at the top of the regular season. If not, then the Sixers’ 2017-18 success may already have been compromised.
That’s what the 20162017 season was, too: Compromised. It was compromised when the Sixers, after resting Embiid for two years, minimized his participation … and then saw him be injured again, anyway. And it was compromised when they allowed Ben Simmons to miss the entire season with a foot injury originally projected to have him inactive for only three months. Even if there were complications in Simmons’ recovery, the Sixers continue to over-protect him, refusing to declare that he will play in the summer leagues. Like Embiid, if Simmons does not play in the summer, he will be less than ready for training camp, and the preseason, and the regular season. So the cycle will repeat.
The Sixers’ goal, stated and understood, is to build a program that can contend for championships over several years. Simmons, Embiid and Saric will be the foundation. More high draft choices and free agents, who will be financed by years of wise salary-cap maneuvering, will make that a reality.
That’s their position. It’s not going to change.
It’s just that while they were making all of those arrangements, a pretty good basketball team was permitted to become just better than ordinary. That team, and its coaches, deserved better. It deserved a chance to be great.