Embiid has endured the unfortunate burden of major injuries every year since his rookie season, including sitting out his first two years while rehabbing a broken navicular bone and a left knee injury. During his career, the majority of his injuries have been lower-body related, but he also fractured his face twice: once in 2018 and again in 2022. Leading into the 2024-2025 season, the media reported that the Sixers would not play Embiid on back-to-back nights to avoid injury and fatigue leading into the postseason. As NBA officials have become suspicious of Embiid’s recurring injuries, the question must be asked, are all of these injuries Embiid’s fault or the league’s?
Dating back to the 1967-1968 season, the NBA has had an 82 regular game season. For many years the season’s length and difficulty were never brought up in the media. In recent years, teams have instilled concepts of load management which include purposefully resting players out of precaution; sometimes without reason. It is important to keep players healthy throughout the long season, but as a drawback, teams are required to release an official statement of injury or illness for a player to be ruled out. After years of star players sitting out 25-30 games a year, the league instilled a new “minimum games played” mark of 65 games. Therefore, star players would have to reach this number to be eligible for end-of-the-season awards and honors. Would resting Embiid more in the regular season lead to a heroic playoff run Sixers fans have been waiting for? While that could be true, some of Embiid’s best seasons were those where he played the most games in the regular season.
In Embiid’s career, he has averaged 54.1 games played a year with outlier years like last season (39) and Embiid’s first official season in 2016-2017 (31). In the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 seasons, Joel Embiid played 68 and 66 games. In these two years, he averaged career numbers and won an MVP. This year, Embiid has sat out the first six games of the season to manage his left knee injury from last year’s playoffs. If Embiid were to make his return in the next week, he would only be able to play 35-45 games this season if he never plays back-to-back. Embiid is not the only player to struggle with injuries leading into the postseason. Many NBA stars were unable to play in and or finish last year’s postseason due to injuries. Stars like Kawhi Leonard, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Damian Lillard, Jalen Brunson, Jimmy Butler, and more had to be sidelined due to injuries. While the majority of these players are north of 30 years old, age might not be the only reason for their season-ending injuries. Many NBA stars play summer basketball, train in the offseason, play preseason basketball, practice nearly every day, and play anywhere from 65-82 regular season games just to make the playoffs. And from there, they have to win 16 more games to win the whole thing. Ultimately, NBA players have to play 100 or more games every calendar year and travel across the country nearly every day. Even for the best athletes in the world, this is too much.
In order to keep NBA players healthy, the NBA should shorten its regular season to somewhere around 70-75 games. As a result, players could rest more between games and have with their loved ones during the very busy NBA season. With that being said, I think Embiid’s injuries are more his fault than the league’s. It is no secret that Embiid is what some would call a “foul merchant.” In nearly every game Embiid can be seen drawing fouls by use of his pump fakes or his not-so-legal tricks to bait players into touch fouls. And almost every game, Embiid shoots 15-20 free throws a game. The problem with this is that Embiid proceeds to throw his 7 ft 280 lb body onto the floor to draw contact and get foul calls. In all, most of Embiid’s injuries have occurred when Embiid has gone to the floor. Embiid may still get injured even if he changes his play style, but he has to be willing to play enough games to stay in shape and improve the sixer’s record going into the postseason. There is no perfect formula for keeping players healthy, but I think the league shortening its season would benefit more players than just Embiid. If Embiid wants to take the Sixers to the promised land, he has to stay off the floor.
