The Sixers had no choice but to commit to Joel Embiid. He has no choice but to live up to his end.

Throughout his two weeks in Paris this summer, throughout an Olympic tournament in which he fashioned a few marvelous moments and derived so much glee from antagonizing France’s basketball fans, Joel Embiid would do something curious and revealing.

Whenever the only Philadelphia-based writer covering the Games asked him a question, Embiid never failed to angle his answer toward one topic: his future with the 76ers. Never. The Olympics were teaching him how to play alongside other superstars, how to let Tyrese Maxey do his thing, how to get accustomed to Paul George’s presence, how to take a step back sometimes and assert himself again when necessary.

He was aware at all times of the audience to which he was speaking, and if it was a smart messaging strategy, it was also an indication of what his decision to sign a three-year, $193 million contract extension with the Sixers confirmed. This was his team. This was his home. He wasn’t going anywhere, and he knew it.

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The news of Embiid’s deal Friday morning was a significant formality. The Sixers had no choice but to offer him an extension, and Embiid, at 30 and entering his ninth season, really had no choice but to accept it.

The happiness is genuine on both sides, for sure. The Sixers keep their superstar, the foundational figure of their franchise, and Embiid remains with the only team he has known since joining the NBA, freeing himself from having to adjust to a new city and an entire roster of unfamiliar teammates while still toting the burden of the same old expectations.

But there was no other reasonable outcome here for either side. For all the games that Embiid has missed and might yet miss because of injury, for all the nights that he appears too dog tired and out of shape to drag himself up and down the court, for all the frustration over all those first- and second-round exits, the Sixers weren’t going to trade him. Nor should they. It was nonsensical to contemplate or suggest it.

They would never acquire a collection of players and draft picks equal in value to what he has given them and, if healthy, still can. Start over? Rebuild? Another Process? Please.

Hell, Embiid is the primary reason so many people have spent the last two years screaming at each other over the prospect of building a basketball arena at 10th and Market. He made the Sixers something they hadn’t been since Allen Iverson was in his prime: relevant.

Yes, the risks are obvious and ongoing with Embiid. He might injure himself so severely that this extension will end up crippling the Sixers. That’s the price of having a player who, when he’s at his best, garners comparisons to Wilt Chamberlain. A franchise is forever fortunate to stumble into someone like that, and it has no recourse but to ride with him until his career ends, and it’s to Embiid’s credit, in this age when NBA stars are expected to dictate terms and bounce from one convenient and comfy setting to another, that he wants to play for one team and only one team.

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Understand: Joel Embiid does not have to win a championship to validate his career with the Sixers. He does not. No one thinks less of Iverson and Charles Barkley for the fact that the 2000-01 Sixers faced Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, and a dynastic Lakers team in the Finals or that Barkley’s best teams kept running into Michael Jordan’s Bulls in the playoffs. Everyone recognizes their greatness and acknowledges the circumstances that prevented them from winning the whole thing.

What Embiid does have to do, though — for once — is perform better in the playoffs than he has in the regular season, perform better in the 2025 postseason than he did in ‘24 or ‘23 or any prior postseason. He has to change the perception, and what has sometimes been the reality, that the team’s playoff flameouts are his fault.

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Yes, the Sixers for too long have been too top-heavy, too dependent on Embiid, too vulnerable whenever he hasn’t been on the floor. Too much Tobias Harris. Too many Greg Monroes. Maybe Maxey, George, and a deeper, tougher roster will allow Embiid to have an off-night and still allow the Sixers to win a big game.

But Embiid bears a responsibility here, as well. The memories of that excruciating loss to the Toronto Raptors in 2019, of that second-round travesty against the Atlanta Hawks in 2021, of his disappearance in Games 6 and 7 against the Boston Celtics in 2023 are still fresh in a lot of minds, and when a similar moment comes around again — and it will — Joel Embiid will have to meet it.

That’s the final hill he has to climb during the duration of this contract. He and the Sixers are together until the end now. They had no choice. They never did.