Sixers fans vent over Joel Embiid’s sidelining injury: ‘We just can’t catch a break’
One Center City resident likened the injury to some kind of cosmic punishment, an inevitability in a playoff start that seemed almost too good to be true.
On a sunny Saturday in Philadelphia, few people were more hated than Pascal Siakam.
In a fourth-quarter drive to the basket Thursday, the Toronto Raptors’ power forward slammed his left elbow into Joel Embiid’s face, fracturing his right orbital bone and giving him a concussion. The Sixers won, but at a great cost: Embiid, on pace to be the league MVP, has been sidelined indefinitely by team doctors.
Fans woke up to the news Saturday with a mixture of anger and disappointment. Some, like Alex Perez, pointed their frustration at head coach Doc Rivers, who kept Embiid on the floor despite the team’s victory being sealed with a double-digit lead.
“None of the starters should’ve been in that long, not when you’re up by 30 points,” Perez said while walking through Center City. “This was the only team that had any chance of winning anything. I have no faith in the Phillies’ bullpen, and thank God hockey is over.”
Scott Geftman, a Lower Merion native who traveled home from New York for the Broad Street Run on Sunday, agreed that Rivers should shoulder some of the blame for the injury. But he said Embiid himself can’t escape responsibility.
“Part of me wonders how much of that decision to keep him in was Joel,” Geftman said. “He wanted to keep his numbers up, rather than make the smart decision to sit.”
Losing their star player during the playoffs seemed, for some, to be a fitting ending to a season rocked by controversy. Embiid’s injury was the absolute lowest point for the Sixers, even eclipsing the drama over Ben Simmons and his eventual trade, according to Daniel Ott.
Earlier this season, Simmons spent months off the court, citing mental health issues, and earning the ire of fans and his teammates who felt he wasn’t pushing himself hard enough to get help and return to play.
Simmons was eventually traded to the Brooklyn Nets for point guard James Harden.
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“This is definitely a huge upset, and compared to what we just went through with Simmons, this just feels like a slap in the face,” Ott said. “But Embiid is always accident-prone, which is something I’m trying to keep in mind. He’ll bounce back.”
John Matthews felt that comparisons to the issues with Simmons were overblown. The Center City resident instead likened the injury to some kind of cosmic punishment, an inevitability in a playoff start that seemed almost too good to be true.
“It’s just like ‘Here we go again,’ you know?” Matthews said. “We just can’t catch a break. It’s just going to be brutal without him.”
Other fans turned their eyes toward the future, and the conference semifinals against the Miami Heat. Between sips of coffee in Dilworth Park, Kathleen Liebsch and Thomas Rocca said the team’s best chances lie in Harden and Tyrese Maxey.
“Harden is just going to have to work harder to make up for it, and prove to be the star player he was in Brooklyn,” Liebsch said.
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Nearby, in Reading Terminal Market, Tina Lacuesta agreed. The lifelong Sixers fan is holding out hope, she said, through what she called “such a typically Philly moment.”
“As long as Maxey shows up, we’ll be fine,” she said. “The team just needs to just be themselves, and be the best version of themselves when they play.”