Joel Embiid and Paul George Just Destroyed The Philadelphia 76ers Season

Joel Embiid and Paul George Just Destroyed The Philadelphia 76ers Season

I’ve had so many injuries. The one thing that I’ve always told myself is, you know, you can’t give up, you know, get back up and keep pushing through. We got to earn our way back into this thing, man. Today, we need to talk about one of the most frustrating situations in the NBA right now. The Philadelphia 76ers. And I’m not talking about last season’s disaster where they won 24 games, which is the worst record they’ve had since the process era. No, I’m talking about right now as we head into the 2025 to 26 season. And somehow someway things just got way worse. Before we dive into this mess, make sure you drop like, subscribe, and turn on our notifications to get the latest NBA news to your device. And now that we got all that out of the way, cue the intro. Mic check 1212. What’s going on everybody? So, here’s where we’re at right now. The Philadelphia 76ers just held media day on Friday, September 26th, and both Joel Embiid and Paul George just gave Sixers fans some news that should terrify them. Both of these star players don’t have definitive timelines for their returns from knee surgeries. Let that sink in for a second. We’re about 3 weeks away from the start of the season and two of the Sixers max contract players, two guys that they’re paying a combined $17 million next season, can’t tell you when they’ll be ready to play basketball. Paul George had arthoscopic surgery on his left knee back in July after injuring it during a workout. Now, here’s what makes this even more concerning. This was the same knee injury that plagued him all of last season, limiting him to just 41 games and contributing to the worst statistical season of his career since 2014. We’re talking about a guy who averaged 16.2 points per game on 43% shooting. 16 points is terrible for Paul George. Now, for context, the 76ers signed George to a 4-year, $212 million contract in the summer of 2024, and his first season was an absolute disaster. At media day, Paul George said this, “Getting better and better, feeling stronger and stronger. You know, this next couple weeks is very important. Um, leading into the season, the start of the season, the opening night, all of that stuff. All I can do is is just focus day after day, taking it one day at a time. I do think I will be at a good place. Hopefully earlier than sooner or than later. But he also admitted that he can do pretty much everything but full contact. Translation, he’s not ready and they have no idea when he will be. And Joel Embiid, oh my god, this is going to be even worse. I mean, where do we even start with Joel Embiid? He had arthoscopic surgery on his left knee in April. And at media day, he said he feels pretty good, but was very upfront about the reality of his situation. Embiid told reporters this. Feel pretty good. I think we uh we made a lot of progress over the last couple months. You know, just taking day by day, keep getting stronger. Uh keep getting better. You know, everything is, you know, on schedule. So, but I think that’s not necessarily an expectation. It’s more about making sure everything is right and doing everything right and um yeah, and then go from there. Did you catch that? The center of your franchise just told you his availability is going to be unpredictable. Last season, Embiid played just 19 games, while Paul George played 41. Then the star trio of Joel Embiid, Paul George, and Tyrese Maxi played in only 15 games together for a total of 294 minutes. Let me repeat that. 15 games. In an 82 game season, they played 15 games together. Now, before we go any further, let’s talk about the money situation because this is where things get absolutely terrifying for Philadelphia. It’s not like they can move away from these two star players easily. Joel Embiid signed a three-year, $193 million extension in September of 2024. This extension hasn’t even kicked in yet. It actually kicks in after the 2025 to 26 season. So, next season, Embiid is making $55.2 million. And then his extension starts in the 2026 to 27 season. By the 2028 to 29 season, when Embiid will be 34 years old, he’ll have a player option worth nearly $70 million. Guys, do you think he’s going to decline that option? Let that marinate for a second. $70 million for a 34year-old center with a documented history of chronic knee problems. Paul George is on a 4-year $212 million deal that includes a player option for the 2027 to 28 season. Next season, George will make $51.7 million. So, you’ve got two guys, both with extensive injury histories, both on the wrong side of 30, and you’re committed to paying them over $106 million combined next year. And it only gets worse from there. Just the big three of Embiid, Maxi, and George will eat up between 88 to 90% of the salary cap over the next four seasons. The Sixers are essentially locked into this core. And if it doesn’t work, and let’s be real, it’s not exactly looking great. The Sixers are completely stuck. Now, let me break down exactly how bad this salary cap situation is, because it’s not just about the total dollars. It’s about how the new CBA absolutely destroys teams that get into this position. The Sixers entered this season well over the $154.6 million salary cap, and they’re currently about $10 million below the first apron at roughly $195.9 million and about $21.9 million below the second apron at $27.8 million. Now, you might be thinking, “Okay, Mike, what’s the big deal? They’ve got some room to work with.” But here’s the thing, that room disappears really quickly. You only get the smaller taxpayer mid-level exception at about $5.7 million instead of the $14 million non-taxpayer version. You can’t use the bannual exception. You can’t acquire players and sign in and trade deals and you can only take back 100% of salary in trades instead of the usual 125%. But the second apron, that’s where teams go to die. If you go over the second apron, you can’t use the taxpayer mid-level exception at all. You can’t aggregate player salaries in trades, which means you can’t package multiple guys together to get a star back. You can’t send out cash in trades. And here’s the killer. Your first round pick seven years out automatically moves to the end of the first round. If you’re above the second apron for two consecutive seasons, that pick gets frozen and you can’t even trade it. So, the Sixers are basically handcuffed. They can’t make any meaningful moves to improve this team without getting creative. And when you’re already paying two guys over a hundred million dollars combined, there’s not a lot of creativity available. If Kelly Ubé, Andre Drummond, and Eric Gordon all opted into their player options, the Sixers would be roughly $18.6 million below the second apron. That sounds like flexibility. But when you need to fill out a 15-man roster and you can only use minimum contracts, you’re basically running it back with the same team that won 24 games last year, just hoping that Embiid and George magically stay healthy. The really scary part, look at how much of the cap space the big three take up in future seasons. It just gets worse and worse, climbing toward 90% of the total cap. That means you’re trying to build a championship contender with 10 to 12% of the cap for your other 12 roster spots. That’s impossible in today’s NBA, where depth matters more than ever. Here’s where the sixer situation becomes truly hopeless. Trade value, or rather the complete lack of it. Multiple sources have indicated that Joel Embiid might be essentially untradable right now. Brian Winhorse flat out said that he’s not tradable right now when discussing Embiid’s contract. Think about that for a second. This is a guy who won MVP two seasons ago in the 2022 to23 season and he completely deserved it over Nicole Joic too. And now teams won’t touch him. Why? As one Liberty Ballers article put it, Joel Embiid on the books for $55.2 $2 million next year before his three-year $193 million contract extension begins with a $69.1 million player option in the 2028 to 29 season at the age of 34 is a tough pill to swallow for any team that considers buying low on him. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, they even said right now I don’t think that Embiid and George’s contracts are tradable. And it’s not hard to see why. What team is going to take on that level of financial commitment for players who can’t stay healthy? Ambida has never played more than 68 games in a season and George played 74 games in his final season with the Clippers. This was the first time he’s played more than 56 games since the 2018 to 2019 season. Jake Fischer reported that there is little to no chance that they could optimize a trade return for a 35year-old after his injuryridden season last year with the Philadelphia 76ers, especially with three seasons remaining on Paul George’s max deal. One analysis even listed George as a trade candidate, noting that his hefty contract could complicate trade talks because what team wants to take on three years and $162 million for a 35-year-old who just had the worst season of his career? The Philadelphia 76ers are trapped. They can’t trade these guys without attaching significant draft capital just to get off of the money. But they also can’t compete if these guys keep getting injured. It’s literal basketball purgatory. And if you think I’m being dramatic, let me give you some history lessons on what happens to teams that get stuck in situations like this. Remember the Brooklyn Nets from 2013 to 2017? They went allin, traded all their picks to Boston for an aging Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, thinking that they could win immediately. Those guys were cooked. The team never made it past the second round and the Nets spent years in basketball hell. They didn’t have their own first round picks. They couldn’t build through the draft and they were stuck with terrible contracts. It took them until 2019, 6 years later, to finally become relevant again. Six years of misery because of one summer of bad decisions. Or look at the Los Angeles Lakers from 2013 to 2018 after the Dwight Howard experiment failed. They were stuck with Kobe’s massive contract as he declined. They tried to build around an aging superstar who just couldn’t stay healthy anymore. They couldn’t attract free agents because they had no cap space and they ended with four straight seasons of missing the playoffs. The only reason they recovered is because LeBron James decided he wanted to live in LA and make movies. The Sixers don’t have that luxury. Nobody’s choosing Philadelphia for the lifestyle. More recently, look at what the Suns are dealing with. They went all in trading for Bradley Beal. They gave up draft picks and now they’re stuck. They had no choice but to wave and stretch Bradley Beal. They traded away Kevin Durant to the Houston Rockets and now they have one of the strangest teams ever. I mean, Jaylen Green, Dylan Brooks, and Devin Booker. The Sixers are heading down that same path. They mortgaged their flexibility for this court. And if it doesn’t work, which it’s not working, they could be looking at half a decade of irrelevance. The difference is at least the Nets could eventually rebuild through the draft. At least the Lakers landed LeBron. What’s the Sixers escape hatch? There isn’t one. They’re locked in. And the only way out is if Embiid George’s body completely breaks down to the point where they can get some sort of injury exception, which is a terrible thing to even think about. The NBA has seen this story before and it never ends well. Teams that get capstrapped with aging, injuryp-prone players on max deals don’t magically turn it around. They suffer, wait for the contracts to expire, and then they pray that they can survive long enough to rebuild. And the new CBA makes it even worse than it was for those Nets or Lakers teams because now you’ve got aprons and restrictions that make it almost impossible to maneuver. But the good news is that the Sixers actually have a bright future because they’ve hit on their draft picks. They have Jared McCain, who was the runaway favorite for rookie of the year last season before he tore his meniscus after just 23 games. Prior to that, he averaged 15.3 points on 46% shooting and 38% from three. They just drafted VJ Edgecomb with the third overall pick, a high-flying athletic guard who averaged 15 points, 5.6 six rebounds and 2.1 steals at Baylor and was named Big 12 freshman of the year. The two of them even get along with each other and have developed a close bond with Jared McCain joking at media day that he tried to recruit Edgecomb to Duke. The organization is excited about their young core which includes players like Adam Bona and others who showed flashes last season. But the problem is Joel Embiid, Paul George, Tyrese Maxi, and Caleb Martin are the only players currently on the roster with guaranteed money after the 2025 to 26 season. So while McCain and Edgecom are developing, the Sixers are hamstrung financially by Embid and George’s contract. Even worse is Jared McCain suffered a UCL tear in his right thumb during a pre-training camp workout, and he’s already expected to miss four to 6 weeks, which means he’ll probably miss the start of the season, too. So even the silver lining of watching these young guys develop is getting clouded by injuries. The cruel irony is that by the time McCain and Edome are ready to truly compete at a high level, let’s say in about 3 or 4 years from now, Embiid will be in his mid30s and George will be approaching 40. The timelines just don’t match up at all. So what does this season really look like for the Sixers? Well, the projections aren’t pretty. Bleacher Reports Andy Bailey predicts that the Sixers will finish with a 38 and 44 record, which puts them right on the bubble for the playin tournament. Their overunder win total at Sportsbooks is set at 42.5 wins with oddsmakers basically saying if everything goes right with health and George turns back the clock, maybe they can win 43 games. The 76ers enter the season as 40 to1 long shots to win the championship at Bet MGM Sportsbook. For context, that’s longer odds than teams like the Orlando Magic or Cleveland Cavaliers. Teams that don’t have two former MVP level players. And you know who’s really feeling the heat right now, Daryl my Nurse. Because if this season goes sideways, and all signs of it point to it going sideways, we could be looking at the end of an era in Philadelphia. Nick Nurse admitted that he spent the summer pissed off about last season, and he should be. This was supposed to be his championship roster. He came to Philly with the ring from Toronto with a reputation as one of the best coaches in the league and instead he got stuck trying to manage load management schedules and injury reports. He’s basically been a babysitter for two max contract players who can’t stay on the court. At media day, nurse said, “We got to earn our way back into this thing, man.” Which is coach speak for we know we’re terrible and nobody believes in us anymore. My walks around the city center seeing Phillies and Eagles fans excited about their team’s postseason runs and he knows the Sixers are the forgotten franchise in their own city. That’s embarrassing for a guy who’s supposed to be one of the smartest executives in basketball. Here’s the reality. Mory bet everything on this core. He orchestrated the James Harden trade to clear up cap space. He signed Paul George to that massive deal. He extended Joel Embiid for a quarter of a billion dollars. These were his moves, his bets, his vision. And if it fails, when it fails, that’s on him. Some reports suggest both Mory and Nurse might be fighting for their spots this year. Think about Mory’s position. He’s been in Philly since 2020. And what does he have to show for it? A bunch of second round exits, a disgruntled James Harden who forced his way out, a Ben Simmons situation that imploded spectacularly. And now this Joel Embiid and Paul George mess. At some point, ownership is going to look at this and say, “Maybe the problem isn’t just the injuries. Maybe it’s the construction of the roster.” The Philadelphia 76ers are a cautionary tale about the dangers of the modern NBA. They went all in on their championship windows, sacrificed all their flexibility and now they’re stuck with two max contracts that nobody wants and a future that looks increasingly bleak despite having some exciting young talent. Embiid said at media day, I’ve had so many injuries. The one thing that I’ve always told myself is, you know, you can’t give up. No matter what comes, you just got to, you know, get back up and keep pushing through. That’s admirable and nobody questions his heart or his will to compete. But at some point, the body just doesn’t cooperate. And when you’re 31 years old with a history of knee problems, time isn’t on your side. But let me know in the comments section down below. What do you guys think about all this? Aside from that, I’m your boy Mike. I’m dropping our mic. Until our next upload.

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