NBA deserves blame for Joel Embiid’s latest injury

The three most serious charges you can levy against an athlete:

Which is why you never, ever, ever question an athlete’s injury. When you do, you effectively accuse them of all three of those mortal sins. It may not be your intent, but it doesn’t matter. They think you are thinking it because they themselves have already thought it. Somewhere deep down in their competitive soul, they are still thinking it. They spend every waking moment battling a voice in their head that plays two nagging questions in a perpetual loop.

Can I play?

Should I play?

Add your voice to the chorus, and the best-case scenario is that they shrug off the affront and file you away in the mental space marked “Fools.” Worst-case scenario? They do what Joel Embiid did on Tuesday night. They take it as a challenge. Or, they accept it as truth. They stop listening to their body. They force themselves to play. They hurt themselves even worse.

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Embiid should not have been out there on the court on Tuesday night, and everybody who suggested he should have been out there sooner should have a good long think about that. That goes for fans, for members of the media, and most of all the NBA. Turns out, Embiid had a legitimate reason for his controversial late scratch against the Nuggets.

He was hurt. In Denver. In Portland. In San Francisco, most obviously. That was clear to anybody who watched the big man hobble his way through the Sixers’ 119-107 loss to the Golden State Warriors on Tuesday. He wasn’t in any condition to be playing competitive basketball. He barely looked capable of crossing a street against a red light. There was a moment late in the first half when Embiid tried to contest a layup and never got off the ground. He planted with his left, shifted half his weight to his right, and tumbled forward onto the court.

Watching from afar, it felt like a moment that foreshadowed doom. The payoff soon arrived. Late fourth quarter, half-court set, Embiid backing down toward the paint. He plants his left foot, loses his balance, loses the ball, hits the court in an attempt to corral it. He ends up on his back. An opponent ends up on his knee. At least there will be no doubt about this one.

The big questions remain unanswered. Was the injury as bad as it looked? How much time will Embiid miss? Is this really happening again?

Also, why the heck was he playing?

It’s too early to assign blame. But it’s a bad look. The Sixers are well aware of that, judging by Nick Nurse’s postgame comments. The coach said all the things a coach typically says when he knows the way things look. That the Sixers are in wait-and-see mode. That Embiid’s new injury is unrelated to the one that had sidelined him the previous two games. That the team’s medical staff had cleared him while relying heavily on Embiid’s characterization of his symptoms.

“It’s kind of unrelated to what he’s been going through,” Nurse said. “So we just wait on that. Obviously, medical cleared him. Joel obviously is a big part of that. He said he was feeling good. He said he’s a little rusty and he hadn’t been on the court for five days, but he said he felt good.”

I’m not going to sit here and accuse the Sixers of malpractice without knowing more information. Nobody has a bigger stake in keeping Embiid healthy for the long haul. There is a reason a team assigns these decisions to a medical staff rather than a quorum of folks watching on TV. They are the ones with the relevant information. They are the ones paid to make judgments based upon that information. And, like all doctors, they are somewhat reliant on self-reporting from their patient.

Which brings us to the NBA.

In the wake of Embiid’s decision to sit out the game in Denver, the league let it be known that it would be conducting an investigation into the circumstances of his absence. The NBA will tell you that it isn’t investigating whether Embiid should have played so much as the fact that he was announced as capable of playing. That’s what prompted Nuggets coach Michael Malone to weigh in on the matter after his team beat the Sixers on Saturday.

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“We found out very late,” Malone said. “I don’t know how you go from being active, available, to out. I’m sure the league will do their due diligence, because that’s frowned upon. We’ve had situations where we’ve talked to the league and they’ve told us if a player goes from active to out, there’s going to be an investigation. I’m sure that will happen. I’m sure Joel hurt his knee in the Indiana game. That’s real. We watched the game. I’m sure he is hurt. It’s just tough when a player and a team like us preparing for them and then all of a sudden last minute he’s out.”

That’s perfectly understandable, as is the league’s acquiescence. But Adam Silver and the gang may also want to investigate why a player might declare himself active and ready to play even when he is not healthy enough to do so. For the last year, the NBA has done everything in its power to emphasize the importance of its stars being out on the court. It has instituted a minimum games-played threshold for regular-season awards, and kept a watchful eye on inactive lists. It is a sensible agenda, aimed more at limiting load management rest days than forcing injured players to play through pain.

But the second-order effects are worth consideration. As is often the case with second-order effects, they suggest a battle that simply isn’t worth fighting. Nobody understands their bodies better than the players themselves. Nobody tries to understand them better than their teams. At the end of the day, these load management regulations put a bureaucracy in charge of deciding what’s best for an individual’s health. They also put pressure on players, subliminal or otherwise.

The focus on Embiid’s absence in Denver was there in part because the NBA sent a message that his absence was worthy of investigation. It became a multiple-day story.

Well, message received. Embiid was out there. Now, he isn’t.