Joel Embiid’s three-game suspension was justified, but the NBA still has an issue to resolve

Three games are enough for Joel Embiid.

A one-game suspension for the 2023 NBA most valuable player for shoving a Philadelphia Inquirer columnist in a postgame incident Saturday night would have been too easy, a slap on the wrist for putting his hand on Marcus Hayes , no matter how inflammatory Hayes’ recent columns have been, or how callous Hayes first brought up Embiid’s late brother in a column last month. You still can’t put up with the media when they write or say things you don’t like. But five games or more would have made too much of what was not a strike or strikes. A push is rude and a shock to the system, but even one from a 9-foot, 250-pound man doesn’t break bones or tear ligaments.

The suspension begins Wednesday in Los Angeles, where the 76ers play the LA Clippers. The team had hoped that Embiid would finally make his season debut at Steve Ballmer’s $2 billion Intuit Dome. But now he must sit out three games, starting with the first for which he is eligible and healthy. That means he could play on the first night of the Emirates Cup on November 12 in Philadelphia against the New York Knicks.

But what the suspension doesn’t resolve is the still-simmering dichotomy between the NBA and its teams, which is only getting worse as the league begins its new, 11-year, $76 billion media rights agreement that suggests the 2025-26 season.

Apparently, the NBA has heard the whining of its current and future national television partners that top players are missing key games in the Tuesday-Friday night slots of games broadcast by ESPN or TNT. The league wasn’t thrilled when an ESPN report last month detailed the 76ers’ plans to keep Embiid out of back-to-back games during the regular season. When the league fined the team $100,000, it said the 76ers had been “inconsistent” in their public statements about Embiid’s readiness for the regular season as he rehabilitated his left knee.

Light up. That was because Philly told the truth about its plans for its superstar center and signing Paul George as a free agent during the regular season: They would be kept out of at least one end of most of the Sixers’ consecutive games during the regular season .

The league has continually tried to give more meaning to the regular season in recent years. The league’s player participation policy for most of the league’s top individual awards, implemented in 2023, and the, er, Emirates Cup, were two important markers. But the biggest change was the NBA’s official statement earlier this year that its own data over the past decade did not show that load management actually prevented injuries. It was a 180-degree turn from the long-held and stated position that NBA commissioner Adam Silver himself still held at the 2023 All-Star Game in Utah, namely that the league’s teams had autonomy over when and how much of their games Players played based on the confidential medical information collected about them.

That has changed.

If you ask teams across the league, you’ll learn that the NBA is not indifferent to the idea of ​​teams having to manage their best players, including holding back key players from time to time. But they need to be kept up to date. She hate be surprised.

But the league can’t have it both ways. The company knows full well that its teams show no mercy to coaches and general managers who don’t win championships or consistently make the playoffs, especially as more and more teams are bought by rarely patient hedge fund owners and corporations. Many people deride the Ringzz culture as antiquated, and yet Embiid is still mocked for never leading his team to an Eastern Conference Finals, let alone an NBA Finals, in his eight playing seasons. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown have been big winners in Boston since they arrived in town, but they needed to win a championship in Boston to be considered “real” Celtics worthy of the team’s winning tradition.

Embiid has earned hundreds of millions of dollars, including a $193 million extension in September. But he rarely survived the months of April and May healthy. Kawhi Leonard, then playing in Toronto, defeated Embiid and the Sixers in Game 7 of the 2019 Eastern semifinals. A healthy Kawhi then led the Raptors to their first NBA title over Golden State.

Neither has rarely been this healthy in the postseason since. That’s what it’s about.

If you’re Philadelphia’s brain trust, what’s more important: Embiid playing 60-70 regular season games and getting injured – as he has done year after year – either late in the regular season or in the playoffs? Or do you give yourself the best chance of great postseason success by keeping him in bubble wrap during the regular season? How patient will Josh Harris be with Daryl Morey or Nick Nurse if the Sixers don’t advance again because Embiid limps to the Celtics, Knicks or Cavaliers in the second round?

Understand this: Keeping Embiid out of many regular-season home games isn’t fair to 76ers fans. They have to buy their tickets with confidence and most don’t have the disposable income to come ten or more times during a season. Often it is once or twice a year. Just as I bought tickets to see Mos Def in Topdog/Underdog on Broadway a few years ago, only to have him turn off with a migraine after a few minutes on stage, I don’t have an answer. But most Sixers fans would certainly be fine with Embiid missing Tuesday or Friday nights in January if it means he’ll be the focus in May and June.

Embiid is certainly sensitive and always feels the pressure to live up to all of The Process hype. But the 76ers don’t believe he has long-term emotional issues. A team source said Tuesday that the team viewed this as an isolated incident that escalated because the team felt “deeply personal” references to Embiid’s family, including his late younger brother Arthur, who died in a car accident in 2014 when he was 13; Embiid named his baby son after his late brother. Hayes referenced both Arthurs in his Oct. 23 column criticizing Embiid.

In that column, Hayes began the paragraph: “Joel Embiid continually points to the birth of his son Arthur as the most important turning point in his basketball career.” He often says that he wants to be great, to leave a legacy for the boy, named after his little brother, who tragically died in a car accident when Embiid was in his first year as a 76er. Well, to be great at your job, you must first show up to work. In fact, Embiid was great.”

Hayes edited out this paragraph for later editions of his column and rewrote his editorial. Later that day, he said in a post on X that he “can understand why so many people were upset about this. “Sorry.”

The best way for Embiid to come out of his panic, the Sixers believe, is for their franchise player to finally get healthy and stay healthy. In this tiny space, the superstar, the team and the league all share the same hope. When it comes to when, the big gap remains and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

(Photo by Joel Embiid: Jesse D. Garrabrant / NBAE via Getty Images)