{"id":8740,"date":"2025-03-06T10:16:37","date_gmt":"2025-03-06T10:16:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.365scores.com\/news\/?p=8740"},"modified":"2025-03-06T10:16:39","modified_gmt":"2025-03-06T10:16:39","slug":"joel-embiid-time-76ers-to-end-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.365scores.com\/news\/joel-embiid-time-76ers-to-end-process","title":{"rendered":"Joel Embiid: Time for the Philadelphia 76ers to End This Broken Process"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>One <a href=\"https:\/\/www.365scores.com\/en-us\/basketball\">NBA<\/a> story we won\u2019t have to worry about anymore this season is when <a href=\"https:\/\/www.365scores.com\/en-us\/basketball\/player\/joel-embiid-53414\">Joel Embiid<\/a> will be healthy for the Philadelphia 76ers. Last week, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/sports\/76ers-star-joel-embiid-ruled-season-knee-injury-rcna194296\">team announced<\/a> they are shutting him down for the rest of the 2024-25 season to rehab his left knee after he was limited to just 19 games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s been a rollercoaster for Embiid, who missed the first nine games of the season, had his debut delayed after he was <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/joel-embiid-suspended-shove-newspaper-columnist-0247b1924af889f4d5089ba11446f273\">suspended for shoving a columnist<\/a>, and he never played in more than four consecutive games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.365scores.com\/en-us\/basketball\/team\/philadelphia-76ers-1306\">76ers<\/a> are also 21-40 through 61 games, including an 8-11 record when Embiid played. So, the NBA playoffs likely weren\u2019t in their future this season anyway if you\u2019ve checked the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.365scores.com\/news\/2025-nba-finals-odds-update-all-star-break\">NBA odds<\/a> for the Finals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But <span style=\"box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;\">anything feels possible in the NBA right now after the shocking\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.365scores.com\/en-us\/basketball\/player\/luka-doncic-53106\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Luka Doncic<\/a>\u00a0trade to the Los Angeles Lakers last month<\/span>. If the Mavericks were willing to let go of one of the best players in the league, one of the best starts to a career in NBA history, and move a player who took them to the Finals before his 26th birthday, then no one\u2019s job is safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>That\u2019s why in the offseason, the 76ers need to pull the plug on \u201cThe Process\u201d they started over a decade ago and trade Joel Embiid for the best offer they can get.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s time. They waited patiently after using the No. 3 pick in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/draft\/NBA_2014.html\">the 2014 NBA draft<\/a> on him, but Embiid\u2019s best days are likely behind him, and it never even resulted in one appearance in the Eastern Conference Finals, a historic lack of success for an NBA MVP as we\u2019ll explain below.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" src=\"https:\/\/www.365scores.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-10.jpg\" alt=\"Joel Embiid\" class=\"wp-image-8742\"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-rank-math-toc-block\" id=\"rank-math-toc\"><nav><ul><li class=\"\"><a href=\"#too-many-injuries-for-embiid\">Too Many Injuries for Embiid<\/a><\/li><li class=\"\"><a href=\"#embiid-is-unlikely-to-ever-bring-a-championship-to-philly\">Embiid Is Unlikely to Ever Bring a Championship to Philly<\/a><\/li><li class=\"\"><a href=\"#can-the-76-ers-move-embiid\">Can the 76ers Move Embiid?<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"too-many-injuries-for-embiid\"><strong>Too Many Injuries for Embiid<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>If you said Joel Embiid was never 100% since Day 1 for the 76ers, you would be correct. In fact, his durability problems go back to his lone year of college basketball at Kansas (2013-14) when a stress fracture in his back kept him from playing in the Big 12 tournament and NCAA tournament that year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the very week he was drafted by the 76ers in 2014, he had just undergone surgery on a broken navicular bone in his foot. The team still drafted him despite a recovery period of 4-to-6 months, but Embiid ended up missing the entire 2014-15 season. Then after a setback in his recovery led to a second operation, he missed the entire 2015-16 season as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, technically, we are in Year 11 of Embiid\u2019s career with the 76ers. In 5-of-11 years, he played in fewer than 40 regular-season games. In 7-of-11 seasons, he didn\u2019t play more than 51 games. He\u2019s never played more than 68 games in a season in his career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>When you add it all together, Embiid has played 452 regular-season games in his career, but he will have missed 431 games (48.8%) in the regular season in that same time.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\u2019s a staggering amount that does not even include <a href=\"https:\/\/www.365scores.com\/news\/nba-playoffs-more-nba-star-players-injured\">the postseason,<\/a> where we know Embiid has missed eight games, affecting five different postseason runs for his 76ers. Incredibly, he didn\u2019t miss a game last year despite coming down awkwardly in Game 1 on a play where he needlessly put himself at risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed aligncenter is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The Embiid landing Doesn\u2019t look that bad, but because he\u2019s already been injured, it could be worse than appears <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/kP4qknvnoX\">pic.twitter.com\/kP4qknvnoX<\/a><\/p>&mdash; BBALLBREAKDOWN (@bballbreakdown) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/bballbreakdown\/status\/1781827229674344865?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 20, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>But sometimes you can play through injury and still hurt your team if your play is affected by it. You can say that happened to Embiid a bit in the first-round loss against the Knicks last year, and you can definitely say health problems plagued him in his 19 games this season as he averaged career worsts in FG% (.444), 3P% (.299), blocks per game (0.9), and he averaged just 23.8 points per game after he was above 30.0 points the last three seasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Remember, we aren\u2019t talking about a \u201cwhat could have been\u201d talent here. Embiid averages 27.7 points per game for his career, which ranks No. 4 in NBA history. Embiid\u2019s Player Efficiency Rating (PER) is 28.3, which if he qualified with enough games played, he would rank second in NBA history behind only Nikola Jokic (28.48).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You may not love his playing style, and personally, I have never been a fan. I\u2019ve probably called him a \u201cfree throw merchant\u201d before on Twitter. But Embiid is a superstar with big production throughout his career. He just doesn\u2019t play as often as you\u2019d like, and some say the <em>best ability is availability<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The sad truth is that chronic knee problems are unlikely going to get better for a big man in his 30s. Embiid turns 31 in two weeks. There are rumors that he could look into doing a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/us\/nba\/philadelphia-76ers\/news\/joel-embiid-considering-route-nba-legend-took-deal-persistent-knee-injury\/65a875d1c3799963723c9b9a\">special treatment that Kobe Bryant had done<\/a> to extend his career five years that involved removing blood from the affected area and injecting it back into the knee as part of a serum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Maybe that works for Embiid if he does it, but the fact is he\u2019s gone his whole career with durability issues. They\u2019ve tried load management, and the results are what they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He is who he is, and that\u2019s the other reason the 76ers should just move on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"embiid-is-unlikely-to-ever-bring-a-championship-to-philly\"><strong>Embiid Is Unlikely to Ever Bring a Championship to Philly<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The Philadelphia Eagles just won their second Super Bowl in their third appearance since 2017, the same year Embiid became an NBA All-Star for the first time. But while the Eagles have broken the mold in the NFC and become a consistent contender for deep playoff runs, the 76ers have been a disappointment in the NBA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Philadelphia is on a run more like the Dallas Cowboys, the Eagles\u2019 rivals. The Cowboys haven\u2019t been to the NFC Championship Game since the 1995 season when they won Super Bowl XXX. Since then, Dallas has made the playoffs 13 times and never advanced past the second round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>If you think that sounds bad, then consider the 76ers. After they had a spirited run to the NBA Finals in 2001 behind Allen Iverson, they haven\u2019t advanced past the second round (semifinals) in their last 14 playoff appearances, including seven straight years during the Embiid era.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The 76ers have tried three head coaches for Embiid, including a couple of championship winners in Doc Rivers and Nick Nurse.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>They used a No. 1 overall pick on Ben Simmons and couldn\u2019t make it work out.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>They had Jimmy Butler and didn\u2019t keep him in Philly before he helped lead the Miami Heat to the NBA Finals twice in 2020 and 2023.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>They made a power move to acquire James Harden to go along with a developing scorer in Tyrese Maxey, and that wasn\u2019t enough to get past the semifinals either.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>They thought adding Paul George this year would form a new Big 3 with Embiid and an improved Maxey, and it\u2019s been a disastrous season so far.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Have the 76ers ever had the best roster in the NBA in the last decade? No, but it\u2019s not like they haven\u2019t had good teams with higher expectations than what they\u2019ve done. It\u2019s not like the Eastern Conference is loaded to the brim with contenders, especially after LeBron James left for the Lakers in 2018. Hell, there are only six teams with a winning record in the East right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The last NFL comparison I want to make is I\u2019ve had this thing called the <a href=\"https:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/why-coaches-and-qbs-should-divorce-after-five-years-of-not-winning\/\">Five-Year Rule<\/a>: No team has won its first Super Bowl by starting the same quarterback for the same head coach for more than five seasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Legitimate championship windows are short, and if it\u2019s going to happen for you in your career, it usually happens rather quickly, especially after a big change like getting an elite coach or teammate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While I have yet to find anything for the NBA as well-defined as the Five-Year Rule for quarterbacks and coaches, I will say something is wrong if you\u2019re an NBA MVP and it\u2019s going to take you 10-plus seasons to reach even one Conference Finals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Embiid is the 36th player to win an MVP award in NBA history. Sure, we can argue he only won because the voters had Nikola Jokic fatigue and didn\u2019t want to pick him again. We can add that Embiid publicly campaigned \u2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/nba\/news\/76ers-joel-embiid-says-if-he-doesnt-win-mvp-this-season-ill-feel-like-they-hate-me\/\">some would say whined<\/a> \u2013 for it too. But the fact is he\u2019s in an exclusive club of MVP winners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>But you can argue that out of those 36 NBA MVP winners, Embiid has had the worst postseason success by failing to get past the second round.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You could even argue Embiid is already the greatest NBA player to never reach a Conference Finals, with respect to Pete Maravich, Bernard King, and Dominique Wilkins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We\u2019re even being generous and only counting Embiid\u2019s career as nine seasons, giving him a pass for those first two years where he never played. Meanwhile, 33 of those 36 MVP winners reached the Conference Finals (or the equivalent Division Finals before expansion) in Years 1-7 of their careers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kevin Garnett needed Year 9 to take the Minnesota Timberwolves to the Western Conference Finals in 2003-04 after seven straight seasons of losing in the first round. You can argue he was at a disadvantage for coming straight out of high school, and his Minnesota teams weren\u2019t quite as talented as Embiid\u2019s 76ers. Also, Garnett only needed one season when he joined Boston in 2007-08 to go all the way to a championship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the fact is we know it\u2019s going to take Embiid at least 10 playing seasons to get to even one Conference Finals. The only precedent for that for an MVP is Bob McAdoo, who got there in Year 10 as a role player for the 1981-82 Lakers, a team he joined that season and immediately won a championship with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>McAdoo was an elite scoring champion early in his career, but he didn\u2019t play for great teams and was bounced around several franchises before a solid stint to help the Magic Johnson-era Lakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>But that means if Embiid doesn\u2019t get to a Conference Finals in the 2025-26 season, he\u2019ll need at least 11 seasons to do it, the longest wait ever for an NBA MVP.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We have a graphical representation of this data for the 36 NBA MVP winners, showing the season they reached their first Conference Finals and how long it took to reach their first NBA Finals. Note that a few players never got to the NBA Finals like Derrick Rose (15 seasons) and Steve Nash (18 seasons).<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"922\" height=\"714\" src=\"https:\/\/www.365scores.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/NBAMVPs.png\" alt=\"Joel Embiid\" class=\"wp-image-8741\"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p>As far as winning a championship goes, we know 28 of the 36 MVP winners (77.8%) eventually won a ring. Of the eight who didn\u2019t, we know five of them reached an NBA Finals in their career:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Charles Barkley, another 76ers great, made the NBA Finals in Year 9 of his career (1992-93), but it was his first season with the Phoenix Suns where he made an immediate impact.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>James Harden (Year 3) and Russell Westbrook (Year 4) were together with Kevin Durant on that young 2011-12 Oklahoma City Thunder team that lost to LeBron and the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals before that trio was broken up.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The aforementioned Allen Iverson led the 76ers to the NBA Finals in his fifth season in 2000-01.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The only MVP who needed more than nine years to reach the NBA Finals was Karl Malone, who did it in Year 12 (and 13) with the Utah Jazz in 1997. But at least Malone was in the Western Conference Finals in Year 7, unlike Embiid.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>If there\u2019s a silver lining for Embiid, it would be that eight MVP winners needed at least 10 seasons to win their first championship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, half of those players did it by joining a different team and immediately winning in their first year like Garnett (2007-08 Celtics), McAdoo (1981-82 Lakers), Oscar Robertson (1970-71 Bucks), and Kevin Durant (2016-17 Warriors).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That leaves just four players who needed at least a decade with their team to win a championship:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Wes Unseld: Led the Bullets to the Finals in Year 3 but didn\u2019t win a ring until Year 10.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Hakeem Olajuwon: Led the Rockets to the Finals in Year 2 but didn\u2019t win a ring until Year 10.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>David Robinson: Led the Spurs to the Western Conference Finals in Year 6, but his first NBA Finals and ring came in Year 10 soon after the team acquired Tim Duncan.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Dirk Nowitzki: Led the Mavericks to the Finals in Year 8 but didn\u2019t win a ring until Year 13.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Notice all of those players got further in nine years than Embiid has, but three of them came through finally in Year 10 to win it all, something the 76ers don\u2019t feel like they\u2019re ready to do next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nowitzki is really the outlier in NBA history when it comes to a great player sticking with one team his whole career and winning a championship so late. Maybe Embiid can do the same with the 76ers, but I would bet against it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"can-the-76-ers-move-embiid\"><strong>Can the 76ers Move Embiid?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Again, after the Luka Doncic trade, anything feels possible in the NBA with trades. For Philadelphia, the process is broken, and it\u2019s time to move on, because you don\u2019t want to be going into the 2028-29 season with a player who is taking up a $69 million cap hit at 34 years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The 76ers gave Embiid a 3-year contract extension before this season worth $192.9 million. The extension doesn\u2019t actually begin until 2026-27, and with a player option, they can control him through the 2028-29 season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I think it\u2019s best if they just tank the rest of this season for a better draft pick, build around Maxey, and move Embiid for a king\u2019s ransom if possible. There will certainly be suitors as elite scoring big men are rare in today\u2019s game. A team like the Warriors could be interested as a last hurrah in the Steph Curry era for competing for a championship. A&nbsp; younger team like the Houston Rockets could also be interested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We can rule out the Nuggets (Jokic), and Embiid might be the only MVP talent the Los Angeles Lakers don\u2019t find themselves interested in should they want to keep Doncic and LeBron together beyond this season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But much of the league should be fair game for Embiid. The 76ers gave him more than enough time and opportunities to prove he can be that franchise difference-maker, and it just hasn\u2019t gotten them past the second round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Thinking that Embiid can get it done if he just stays healthy is a tired act in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Start a new process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Related Articles:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.365scores.com\/news\/2025-nba-finals-odds-update-all-star-break\">2024-25 NBA Finals Odds Update: Celtics and Thunder Still Lead the Way at All-Star Break<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.365scores.com\/news\/do-nfl-teams-blueprint-beat-chiefs-mahomes\">Do NFL Teams Have a Great Blueprint to Beat Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs in 2025?<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.365scores.com\/news\/2025-nfl-quarterbacks-predictions\">2025 NFL Season: Predicting the New Starting Quarterbacks from Aaron Rodgers to Cameron Ward<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One NBA story we won\u2019t have to worry about anymore this season is when Joel Embiid will be healthy for the Philadelphia 76ers. Last week, the team announced they are shutting him down for the rest of the 2024-25 season to rehab his left knee after he was limited to just 19 games. It\u2019s been &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":8745,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[237,933,239,389,3243,1208,758,44,1248,3244,1293,1251],"class_list":["post-8740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba","tag-76ers","tag-james-harden","tag-joel-embiid","tag-kevin-durant","tag-kevin-garnett","tag-lakers","tag-luka-doncic","tag-nba","tag-nba-finals","tag-the-process","tag-tyrese-maxey","tag-warriors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.365scores.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.365scores.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.365scores.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.365scores.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.365scores.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.365scores.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.365scores.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.365scores.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.365scores.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.365scores.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}