Joel Embiid is on the verge of becoming the next Greg Oden
Remember 2016, when the Philadelphia 76ers were on top of the tanking world?
Joel Embiid looked like a superstar, Ben Simmons' return was just around the corner, and the team that made "The Process" famous was talking about a potential playoff berth.
Two months later, everything that could go wrong in Philly has gone wrong. The most recent blow came on Wednesday, when the team announced Embiid will miss the remainder of the 2016-17 season with a meniscus tear that is "more pronounced" than originally believed.
With that, all the hype surrounding Embiid's emergence this season dies with a whimper.
It's a moment as unsurprising as it is depressing. This was always the worst-case scenario for a big man who suffered his first major lower-body injury before he was even drafted. Embiid was the purest distillation of risk vs. reward in the NBA, a player so talented with such a high ceiling that former GM Sam Hinkie felt compelled to flip the coin.
Heads, you're bankrupt. Tails, you're a champion. And tails always fails, friends.
Now, the soon-to-be 23-year-old is staring into the abyss — as the ghosts of Greg Oden, Yao Ming, Sam Bowie, Bill Walton and the like stare right back.
There's no way around the math. To make an impact in the NBA, you have to be on the court. For all of Embiid's splendor, he'll have played in 31 out of 246 possible games by the end of this season. Oden? He played 82 times in his first three seasons, or more than twice as often as Embiid.
Yao played 234 times. Bowie made 101 appearances in that same time frame. And even Walton, who entered the NBA with foot problems like Embiid, managed 151 regular-season games during his first three years as a pro.
The history is clear: Embiid is in serious danger of becoming the latest in a long line of legendary big men who flamed out before their time.
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(A quick aside: With all this said, I still defend Hinkie and the Process. It's not like there was a Michael Jordan or Kevin Durant waiting in the draft after Embiid, and besides, the Process was never about results. It's right there in the name! The argument comes down to expected value. If you were able to live out this universe 1,000 times, Embiid wouldn't be injured in all of them; there are too many variables at play when it comes to the complicated system that is the human body. In some of them, he would be a fine role player who's injury prone. In fewer instances than that, he'd be an All-Star who fell apart later in his career. And in even fewer still, he's the all-world force we hoped he'd be. It's that understanding of probability that underlined the entire Process.
If I'm playing poker against you, and you have pocket aces, and I have a 2-7 offsuit, and you decide to put $1 million in the pot and only charge me $1 to see the flop — I HAVE to call, regardless of the fact I know I'm beat. Similarly, Hinkie believed the odds that Embiid could become the kind of player who wins you a championship was worth the chance that he would burn out. You can quibble with the individual decisions to draft multiple players with injury histories. You can argue Ben Simmons will suffer the same fate. You can rail against trading Nerlens Noel, which I've done. But please, please don't conflate the results in this one instance with the idea that risk is a bad thing.)
The only upside for the 76ers is the steady march of science. Embiid has access to the greatest medical treatment our world has ever known, and Philly will spare no expense in trying to put its franchise cornerstone back together again.
Yet there's every chance the Sixers are throwing good money after bad. At some point, the body begins to break down. Injuries pile up. A fractured foot begets a torn knee ligament, which leads to hip problems — and before you know it, one of the greatest athletes in NBA history is rendered a heap of flesh, bone and despair.
Perhaps Embiid will recover in time. Perhaps four years into his career, he'll finally discover a modicum of health. Or perhaps the process starts anew, with the 76ers trying to figure out how in the hell to turn around their franchise with Jahlil Okafor as their star.
Persoanlly? I'd bet on the latter.
