The Sixers’ new era is almost here, and Joel Embiid still sits at the center of the whole thing - even if the spotlight around him looks different now.
With LeBron James, Jaylen Brown, Tyrese Maxey and last year’s Rising Stars MVP Edgecombe all projected to be part of the Sixers’ starting group, Embiid won’t walk into media day Monday as the lone gravitational force he’s been for so long. But the team’s championship hopes still run through him, and the big question hanging over camp is the same one that’s followed him for years: can he finally deliver a real playoff breakthrough?
The answer starts with health. That’s always been the story with Embiid, and last season offered a reminder of both his value and the constant fragility around it.
When he was on the floor, the 32-year-old was excellent, averaging 26.9 points, 7.7 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 1.2 blocks in the regular season. He also powered the Sixers through a seven-game first-round win over the Celtics, giving them tough, skilled minutes after returning from a late-season emergency appendectomy.
Then Round 2 hit, and the body problems came back. The Sixers were swept by the Knicks, and Embiid’s playoff résumé now stands at 66 games, six second-round exits and two first-round losses.
The franchise hasn’t made the conference finals since 2001, a long drought shaped by plenty of weird and painful turns. However the Sixers got here, the mandate now is clear: Embiid wants more, and this roster is being built to chase a title.
The encouraging part for Philadelphia is that Embiid sounded far more optimistic after last season than he has in a while. At his May exit interview, he explained how uncertain things felt coming in and how much better the outlook seemed by the end.
“I came into this year not knowing where I was going to be, how long I was going to play, if I was even going to play based on how the knee was the last two years,” Embiid said at his exit interview in May. “I came in just hoping for the best and I feel like we’re in a position where we’ve figured out the knee.
It hasn’t been an issue. If it weren’t for the oblique or some of the other stuff I had, it could’ve been different as far as how many games I would’ve played.
“We came into this season thinking there was not much left based on the last two years. Now I’m sitting here not even worried about my knee even after all the stuff that’s happened, people falling on me. You’re obviously going to have setbacks as you go along, but those setbacks have been so much different than in the past.
“So I hate losing, but … I thought I was done. That’s the best way to put it. And then we found something as a group … to figure out how we’re quite frankly in a better position next year to play a lot of games.”
The Sixers will take that any day. Embiid has played just 96 regular-season games over the last three years, so the first order of business is simply getting him to the finish line in one piece. If he does hit a few bumps, the hope is that they’re manageable, that he can keep building chemistry with the new stars around him, and that the whole thing is still intact when the postseason arrives.
There’s also reason to think Embiid has approached the offseason with purpose. Mike Gansey sounded bullish in August after Brown’s introductory press conference, saying Embiid had been locked in.
“I remember when I got the job, I went over there and he was like, ‘I want to have a great year. I want to play a lot of games.
I want to be All-NBA Joel.’ He’s talked the talk and now he’s walking the walk,” Gansey said.
“He’s lost some weight; you saw the pictures. He’s been in the gym.
He’s doing all the right things and he’s super motivated.”
Even with all the firepower around him now, Embiid is not going to fade into the background. He should still be a major piece as a post-up scorer, a mid-range threat and a connector in two-man actions with his teammates.
And while his game is likely to lean less on brute force as he gets older, his three-point shot could matter even more. Last season he attempted a career-high 4.2 threes per game and shot 33.3 percent, while his best mark from deep came in 2023-24 at 38.8 percent.
Defensively, the numbers and the eye test point in the same direction: Embiid probably isn’t going to be the same wrecking ball every night. His estimated defensive plus-minus last season was plus-0.6, compared with Victor Wembanyama’s NBA-leading plus-4.4.
The Sixers don’t need Embiid to erase everything behind him anymore, but they do need enough. Solid pick-and-roll coverage.
Enough rim deterrence. Enough rebounding in his area.
That’s the broader ask for Nick Nurse’s stars, really: contribute in all the ways that go beyond scoring.
And for Embiid, that’s probably enough. If the basketball leads to a deep postseason run, he’ll be happy with whatever version of it gets the Sixers there.
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