After shelling out max contracts to Paul George and Tyrese Maxey during the 2024 offseason, the Sixers weren\u2019t done quite yet. Shortly before training camp began, they signed Joel Embiid to a three-year max contract extension that will begin in 2026-27.<\/p>\n
At that time, Embiid still had two guaranteed years left on his current contract, along with a $59.0 million player option for the 2026-27 campaign. Had they not extended him before the start of the regular season, he wouldn\u2019t have been eligible to sign an extension until this offseason, but he still would have had one fully guaranteed season remaining.<\/p>\n
Just about the worst-case scenario unfolded from there, as Embiid seemed to never fully recover from the meniscus surgery he underwent in February 2024. He began the year sidelined with \u201cleft knee injury management,\u201d and he proceeded to play only 19 games before the Sixers shut him down again for the season.<\/p>\n
In retrospect, the decision to extend Embiid looks like a potentially franchise-crippling mistake. If he can\u2019t stay healthy, the Sixers won\u2019t be able to overcome his massive contract weighing them down. Handing him that deal before seeing him in action at training camp and the preseason\u2014where the scope of his knee issues started to become clear\u2014was the own-goal of all own-goals, although the Sixers continue to stand by it<\/a>.<\/p>\n The recent ESPN feature<\/a> on Embiid from Dotun Akintoye might shed some behind-the-scenes light on why they feel that way, results thus far be damned.<\/p>\n Throughout the story, it becomes increasingly clear how much Embiid struggles with trusting most people around him. That includes people within the Sixers organization over the past decade.<\/p>\n When Embiid was wrestling with his initial foot injury after being drafted along with the death of his brother, Akintoye wrote that \u201chis relationship with the 76ers unraveled.\u201d<\/p>\n Embiid believed something was wrong with his injury, but the team brushed it off as laziness, several sources told me. Frustrated, he quit showing up to rehab and training and stopped communicating with the team.<\/p>\n \u201cI had to start being an a\u2014hole,\u201d Embiid says. \u201cWhatever they asked me to do, I was, like, \u2018I\u2019m not doing it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The 76ers, unsure what to do, responded by repeatedly fining him. Embiid tells me he stopped keeping track of how much he was fined that year after the amount reached $300,000. \u201cIt\u2019s worth it,\u201d Embiid remembers thinking. \u201cThey\u2019re not listening to me, and I\u2019m not going to keep putting my body at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n In June 2015, Embiid met with the doctor who initially operated on his foot and found out that it wasn\u2019t healing properly. According to Akintoye, Embiid remembered \u201cfeeling disappointed but also vindicated.\u201d<\/p>\n He was right, and his critics within the organization were wrong. Something had been wrong with his foot. He wasn\u2019t imagining pain or making excuses. This was a difficult lesson to unlearn; it is easy to become a prisoner of one\u2019s own victories.<\/p>\n A nebulous and contradictory they began to form in Embiid\u2019s mind: the coaches, front office executives and medical staff who had \u201ccast him out,\u201d as one friend puts it. They wanted to save their jobs, he thought. They wanted him to play hurt \u2014 to prove themselves right for drafting him, to prove themselves right for not wanting to draft him, to sell tickets, to show that he didn\u2019t sell tickets. They would be just as happy if his career lasted 18 months or 18 years.<\/p>\n Loyalty became overwhelmingly important to him, and his search for it, his willingness to test it in others, became a way he forged a path within the organization. He remained in a protective bubble, amassing and shedding adherents.<\/p>\n The front office and medical staff who oversaw Embiid\u2019s original injury are long gone, although the ownership group largely remains the same. And he found himself right back in a similar situation this past season with his knee injury.<\/p>\n The uncertainty about his knee reignited old tensions between Embiid and the Sixers\u2019 front office.<\/p>\n After months of uncertainty, false starts and recurrent swelling, Embiid couldn\u2019t take it anymore. In February, before a loss to the Milwaukee Bucks<\/a>, Embiid told ESPN\u2019s Lisa Salters that he would need another surgery, which reportedly surprised the organization. Morey acknowledged that surprise in our meeting.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you don\u2019t want to listen to me, then I have to find something else, to make sure that I\u2019m going to be listened to,\u201d Embiid tells me. \u201cWhen I told Lisa that, I think it was a cry for help. … It feels like everybody refuses to acknowledge what\u2019s actually going on.\u201d<\/p>\n How does this all relate to the Sixers\u2019 decision to sign Embiid to an extension prior to last season, you might wonder? Well, think about the underlying message here. Loyalty is extremely important to him. By offering him that type of money with two guaranteed years left on his contract\u2014particularly before they could see his knee in action at training camp\u2014the Sixers were proving their loyalty to him. Had they held off, it could have sowed seeds of doubt in Embiid\u2019s mind about his future in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n The whole point in signing George to a max contract last offseason was that he could be an ideal third banana alongside Embiid and Tyrese Maxey. The Sixers were (hopefully) under no illusion that he could carry the team if Embiid missed extended time. Team president Daryl Morey has repeatedly spoken about how we never got to see the version of George that they anticipated specifically because he spent such little time alongside Embiid.<\/p>\n So, imagine what might have happened if the Sixers didn\u2019t offer Embiid an extension ahead of last season. Would that have set the stage for an eventual trade request, had he stayed healthy? Would he have tried to force his way to Miami to play with Jimmy Butler again? Would the Golden State Warriors<\/a> have gambled on him rather than Butler? The possibilities are nearly endless.<\/p>\n \u201c[George is] only here because he wants to play with the organization, but very specifically with Joel Embiid, and I think for us, that was the best plan to put the best team together, and that\u2019s a group decision,\u201d Morey told reporters<\/a> during his end-of-season press conference when asked why the Sixers didn\u2019t wait to extend Embiid. \u201cWhen you make those decisions. A long way of saying, when you have Paul signed long term, it\u2019s important for your MVP-level player to also be signed long term.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s fair to wonder whether the Sixers accurately weighed the downside risk of Embiid\u2019s extension. After all, he was extension-eligible up until the final day before the regular season began. Why not wait until after training camp at the very least to make sure his knee responded as expected? (In their defense, the Sixers did seek \u201chalf a dozen medical opinions\u201d before they extended him, according to ESPN\u2019s Ramona Shelburne<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Given Embiid\u2019s longstanding trust issues, they might have felt that was the best way to prevent questions about his future from bubbling to the surface. After all, the Sacramento Kings wound up trading star point guard De\u2019Aaron Fox\u2014whose current contract also expires after the 2025-26 season\u2014once Klutch Sports superagent Rich Paul \u201cinformed the Kings that it would be wise to move him sooner rather than later,\u201d per Sam Amick<\/a> of The Athletic.<\/p>\n Had the Sixers not extended Embiid and he stayed healthy at the start of last season, would he have considered a similar tactic? Particularly once injuries began mounting around him? We\u2019ll never know, but that might have been a factor that the Sixers had to weigh.<\/p>\n If nothing else, Akintoye\u2019s feature should be yet another reminder that behind-the-scenes factors often impact team-building decisions. We\u2019re only working with a limited set of knowledge when we analyze what moves the Sixers did or didn\u2019t make. Some are easier to read into than others, such as their decision not to offer Guerschon Yabusele the taxpayer mid-level exception this offseason. (You can thank Quentin Grimes and the second apron for that<\/a>.) Other times, we have no clue what may be fueling those moves or non-moves.<\/p>\n The Sixers can only hope that last year was an outlier and that Embiid will stay relatively healthy moving forward. Otherwise, regardless of what motivated them to extend him with two fully guaranteed years left on his contract, it could prove to be an insurmountable blunder.<\/p>\n Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com<\/a>, PBPStats<\/a>, Cleaning the Glass<\/a> or Basketball Reference<\/a>. All salary information via Salary Swish<\/a> and salary-cap information via RealGM<\/a>.<\/p>\n