Joel Embiid opens up about ex-Sixers teammate: “He’s not talking to me”

Now 31, Joel Embiid has been an NBA MVP, a seven-time All-Star, a two-time Leading Scorer, and five All-NBA titles… He’s earned more than $266 million in contracts with the Sixers alone, with whom he signed a three-year extension worth more than $187 million last September. In the summer of 2028, at 34 years old, he’ll have a player option of more than $67M for the following season. And on top of all of that, he also has an Olympic gold medal, won in Paris with one of the best Team USA ever, led by LeBron James, Stephen Curry, and Kevin Durant.

Embiid’s early years

An incredible career for a player who has broken down many barriers to get to where he is today: he grew up in Cameroon and didn’t start playing basketball until he was 15. He joined the renowned Montverde Academy in the United States at 16, not really knowing what he was getting into. In 2013, he made his debut with the Kansas Jayhawks, one of the country’s top college teams, with whom he thought he’d have a full career, developing into a good player, and perhaps with a chance of becoming someone relevant in the NBA. Just a year later, however, he was the number 3 overall pick... and not the number 1 overall due to concerns about his physical problems.

Since then, his career has been nothing short of excellent... although he hasn’t played in a single Conference Final. And constant injuries have betrayed him a thousand times, especially in the playoffs, and now they have turned him into a great unknown, making it hard to express a bit of optimism. According to The Ringer‘s latest ranking, there are now 85 players better than him in the NBA. ESPN journalist Tim McMahon has just stated that the Sixers have as a starting point “what are surely the two worst contracts in the NBA”: Embiid’s and Paul George’s, another veteran star who has declined due to the effects of constant injuries.

In and out of the sickbay

Embiid only played 19 games last season, and in most of them he was little more than a shadow of his best self. A year earlier, a fatal meniscus injury stopped him in one of the best moments of his career: the Sixers were 26-7 and he was averaging 35.3 points in 34 minutes per night, on track to be second only to Wilt Chamberlain in terms of points per average minute. He had scored at least 30 points in 22 consecutive games, and by December 2023 his team had gone 8-1, with him averaging 40.2 points and 12.6 rebounds on 60.6% shooting. The streak included a 51-12 game and a 70-18 game.

But right at that moment, his meniscus ruptured, just as he was trying to get into shape for the playoffs. He played, but it didn’t go well: “I sat next to him in the locker room. I saw his knee before and after every game. I have no idea how he even walked,” says Nico Batum, then a teammate with the Sixers.

“He was alone in his agony. It was his knee, the eye problem… his entire system failed,” says one of his trainers as he explains how he felt when his team again missed out on reaching the Eastern Conference finals (4-2 against the Knicks in the first round): “I knew I was only good for two quarters. And my body was telling me that this was it. I couldn’t do anything else. In the final quarters, I was shooting about 10%. In moments like that, what you wish was for someone in the upper echelons to be on your side, to tell you that it couldn’t be and that it was better for you not to play.”

Criticisms, narratives, comparisons...

These quotes are part of an exceptional and extensive article that Dotun Akintoye wrote for ESPN about Embiid, his extremely complicated and highly scrutinized career and life, a life shaped by his childhood in Cameroon: “I care about how I’m going to be remembered when it comes to basketball, but not as a man. As a man, you can’t tell me nothing. I’ve never been the one to have a lot of friends. And even then, with the ones that I consider close, I never try to go deep into anything. My family was like that… Dad, extremely quiet. Mom, quiet too. ... From the moment that I was really young, you could never really open up about anything. You know they love you... But it is not all love like, ‘Come here and give me a hug.’ That’s not happening. I never got any of that. The way I was raised is also one of the main reasons why I’m here. he way I was raised is not the way I’m raising my kids”.

“I have a reputation of being not a good texter”

He has also obviously been affected by the death of his brother, Arthur, who was hit by a truck in Cameroon at just 13 years old. Embiid, at the time (2014), was an injured rookie alone in the United States. That day, he didn’t answer several calls, and when he did, he received the terrible news. So even now, the article says, every time his phone rings, it sends shivers down his spine, as if it means someone has died: a feeling of panic. In fact, he rarely answers calls or messages and has all notifications turned off. Those who want something from him contact his assistant or his wife. It can take him months to answer. They say he still blames himself for not being with his brother, that his reaction was against himself (“it’s my fault, I’m a piece of shit”) and that’s why, when Akintoye looked at his phone screen, there were 9,500 unread messages, some years old, and 875 unanswered calls. “I just can’t do it. Who bothers me the most? Everyone,” says Embiid, who has become increasingly serious: “I like to troll a lot. I wouldn’t say I’m an asshole… sometimes, yes, I can be an asshole.”

That’s why he has no remorse for having confronted a Philadelphia journalist, whom he even pushed for linking his lack of preparation and unprofessionalism (that’s how he expressed his opinion to the Philadelphia Inquirer) to his brother’s death: “I don’t care if the NBA wants to fine me $1 million, $2 million, $5 million, $10 million, I would still do it. If he walked up to me just like he did, I would push him away again.”

And that’s also why he reacted badly publicly when a players-only meeting was leaked to the press. The team was 2-11, there was a lot of tension, and his friend Tyrese Maxey accused him of being a bad example in the locker room, among other things for not being punctual: “I know who leaked it, but I’m not going to... the past is the past. The one thing I’ll say is, it’s hard being around people that do those sorts of stuff. That goes back to the trust thing. Once you cross that, you can’t expect me to be part of a team meeting again. That’s just not going to happen.”

During the article, Embiid explains how he views several of the narratives commonly used to criticize him. For example, that he doesn’t take things as seriously as he should, at least as seriously as other NBA greats have done throughout history: “I still see a lot of people bring it up, talking about the silly stuff I used to do as a kid, just my second, my third year in the league. I started playing basketball at 16. You would not be in this position by being lazy. Starting so much later than everybody else, having to learn the game at the rapid rate that I did, coming to a new country, not knowing the language, learning a different culture, adjusting, being by yourself, that would not happen if you weren’t focused,” he reasons.

No excuses

Also, of course, he always has an excuse for what ends up being bad seasons for his Sixers: “It’s not making excuses. When you’re hurt every year and everybody knows it, it’s the truth. Now, do you believe, if he was 100 percent, does he have what it takes to have a chance at winning? I think a lot of people believe that because I’ve shown it in the regular season when I was healthy. What if I did this and I was like, ‘You know what? I’m just going to chill all season and coast and average 25? Or 20.’ And in the playoffs, I go average 30. Would that make me look great? Probably. If I went from averaging 23 to 30 - a playoff riser. Oh, my God. Joel Jordan. Whatever. So, if that’s the narrative that’s out there, I’m OK with that because I know what I’m going through and I know what’s going on. And no one is in my body to understand what I’m going through.”

And, of course, he cares too much about individual accolades: “If you are in a position to win an MVP, I don’t care who you are, you’re going after it because I never believed I would be in this position, first of all. Second of all, when I got in the league, I thought, ‘Yeah, maybe I’ll have a chance to be a great defensive player.’ I never thought I was going to be this good offensively. You’re basically saying that he’s playing harder in the regular season than he’s playing in the playoffs, which doesn’t make sense because if you look at the minutes, the minutes rise. And you’re playing harder. And you do more on both ends of the floor”

Or, the last one, that he’s really good but doesn’t have what it takes to be a leader, a franchise player with whom you can go far: “No one is a winner until they’ve done it. I’m fine with that narrative because I haven’t done it. Charles Barkley, great player, right? But he never won. [Allen Iverson] never won. ... But that doesn’t mean they weren’t great. They were amazing. Everybody leads in his own way. I lead on the court. Over the years, you also grow, and you learn a lot. If you ask my teammates now, they’ll tell you a way different story than my teammates a couple years ago, because years ago, I was nowhere to be found. I don’t know why; I think it goes back to how I was raised. I don’t want to say, lonely but I came to the States, I was alone. I always taught myself to not trust anybody.”

Stubborn streak leads to fines

The article gives an excellent account of Embiid’s start in the NBA, two blank seasons and a third with only 31 games played. Problems with the Sixers, doubts about whether he would even be able to make his professional debut, hours and hours playing the console, ignoring his work and recovery schedule, facing off against his team and homeless, locked in a room at the Ritz-Carlton: “I had to start being an a--hole. Whatever they asked me to do, I was, like, ‘I’m not doing it. The fines started coming in and I stopped counting them when they were up to $300,000. It was worth it. They weren’t listening to me, so I wasn’t going to put my body on the line for them.”

“He was hanging by a thread,” says a friend of his, while admitting that he seriously considered quitting everything, retiring without making his NBA debut. “If you had been there, in his early years, you would realize that the fact that he’s here, that he was an NBA MVP, is a miracle. There were important coaches, high-ranking executives who didn’t believe he would be able to play again,” says another of his collaborators.

Now, Embiid is in therapy to, among other things, deal with the decisions he’s made throughout his career, the management of his body and injuries, and the eternal doubts about how he should have done each thing: “It’s basically damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Because if you don’t play, then, you know, there’s this whole narrative. ... I never cared about the ‘soft’ comments. All I cared about was the team and my teammates. I never wanted to feel like I was quitting on them. And obviously, that goes back to the whole thing in therapy about not wanting to disappoint people. We can sit here and I’ll tell you I’m changing, but I know myself. I don’t think that’s going to happen. ... I always want to play.

Reflecting on his 11 years with the Sixers, he says: “I hope one day someone makes a show or, whatever, writes a book about it. We went from GMs having burner accounts. And then we’ve had great guys that we drafted, but then again, stuff happened that no one could ever figure it out. The drama, Sam Hinkie being kicked out, bringing in the Colangelos. It’s been a lot of things that have happened. And that’s what I’m talking about when I’m talking about continuity. It starts at the top”. During is time with the franchise, he freely admits that there were and still are several thorns in his side.

Embiid on falling out with James Harden

One of the main ones, the way in which his relationship, both sporting and personal, with James Harden ended: “I kept going back to it, the continuity. When you feel like you have something, instead of building up on it, you just start over. And that’s been like that every single year. I always told myself I will never be responsible for someone losing their job, someone getting traded, someone getting fired. Don’t ask me about if we should sign and if we should trade anybody.

“No one knows this, but even James [Harden] is not talking to me,” he reveals. “That’s the part I don’t like about being ‘that guy,’ because it puts you in the middle of those situations. Because if you ask James, he probably believes I had something to do with him not being here. And I’m just like, ‘I won the scoring title. You won the assists title. We had a pick-and-roll that was unstoppable.’ It hurts when you feel like you haven’t done anything wrong. When you think you have a relationship like that with somebody ... you lose a lot.”

Embiid, quietly leading by example

He concluded: “I never wanted to be a vocal leader. The way I was going to lead is my action. When I get on the court, whether it’s playing hard, carrying the team, doing whatever I have to do to put us in a position to win, that’s how I always saw myself as leading. You try to find yourself. You don’t really know who you are. I tried to become a little bit more serious because I felt like that was more me... The trolling part, which I still do, I couldn’t keep up with it because that just wasn’t me,” he says about how he relates to his teammates now.

Also in his own way, and even more so now that he’s trying to return and be in a position to be, once again, one of the best players in the NBA. Although the offices may get nervous: “I’m not going to force anything. I don’t think I’ve ever had that approach in my entire career. There’s no timeline; I hope it’s as soon as possible, but I don’t know. And I don’t know how the Sixers feel about that. The only thing I would say is that this is a business. Everything revolves around results. If I come back too soon and I’m not at my best, we’re not going to win games.”

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