Joel Embiid’s 3-game suspension was just, but NBA still has a problem to solve

Three games is right for Joel Embiid.

A one-game suspension for the 2023 NBA Most Valuable Player shoving a Philadelphia Inquirer columnist in a postgame incident Saturday night would have been too light, a slap on the wrist for putting his hands on Marcus Hayes, no matter how incendiary Hayes’ recent columns have been, or how callous Hayes was in initially bringing up Embiid’s late brother in a column last month. You still can’t knuckle up with the media when they write or say things you don’t like. But five games or more would have made too much out of what wasn’t a punch, or punches. A shove is rude and a shock to the system, but even one from a 7-foot-2, 270-pound man doesn’t break bones or tear ligaments.

The suspension will begin Wednesday in Los Angeles, where the 76ers will play the LA Clippers. The team had hoped that Embiid would finally make his season debut in Steve Ballmer’s $2 billion Intuit Dome. But now, he has to sit out three games, beginning with the first one for which he is eligible and healthy. That means he’d be able to play on Nov. 12 in Philadelphia against the New York Knicks on the first night of the, uh, Emirates Cup.

But what isn’t resolved by the suspension is the still-smoldering dichotomy between the NBA and its teams, one made even starker as the league embarks on its new 11-year, $76 billion extravaganza of a media-rights deal that tips off with the 2025-26 season.

Clearly, the NBA has heard the wails from its national TV partners, both current and future, about marquee players missing big games in the Tuesday through Friday night windows for games aired by ESPN or TNT. The league was not thrilled when an ESPN story last month detailed the 76ers’ plans to hold Embiid out of back-to-back games during the regular season. When the league fined the team $100,000, it said the 76ers were “inconsistent” in their public statements about Embiid’s readiness for the regular season as he rehabbed his left knee.

Come on. It was because Philly told the truth about its plans for its superstar center and for splash free agent signing Paul George during the regular season: They would be held out of at least one end of most of the Sixers’ back-to-backs during the year.

The league has leaned, incessantly, into making the regular season mean more in the last couple of years. The league’s Player Participation Policy for most of the league’s top individual awards, implemented in 2023, and the, uh, Emirates Cup, were two big markers. But, the NBA officially opining, earlier this year, that its own data over the last decade didn’t show load management actually prevented injuries, was the biggest change. It was a 180-degree turn from its long-held, avowed position, which NBA Commissioner Adam Silver himself continued arguing as late as the 2023 All-Star Game in Utah, that the league’s teams had autonomy over when and how much their players played, based on the proprietary medical information they collected on them.

That has changed.

You ask teams around the league, and they’ll tell you that the NBA isn’t insensitive to the idea that teams need to manage their best players, including holding out key players from time to time. But they need to be kept in the loop. They hate being surprised.

But the league can’t have it both ways. It knows full well that its teams don’t extend grace to coaches and general managers who don’t win championships or consistently make the playoffs, and especially as more and more teams are bought by rarely patient hedge fund owners and corporations. Lots of people deride Ringzz Culture as antiquated, and yet, Embiid is still clowned because he’s never lifted his team to an Eastern Conference final in his eight active seasons, much less an NBA Finals. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown have been big, big winners in Boston since they got to town, but they had to win a championship in Boston to be considered “real” Celtics, worthy of the team’s winning heritage.

Embiid has made hundreds of millions of dollars, including earning a $193-million extension in September. But he’s rarely gotten to April and May healthy. One of the rare times he did, Kawhi Leonard, then playing in Toronto, took Embiid and the Sixers out in Game 7 of the 2019 Eastern semis. A healthy Kawhi then led the Raptors to their first NBA title, over Golden State.

Neither has rarely been as healthy in the postseason since. Which is the point.

If you’re Philadelphia’s brain trust, what’s more important: Embiid playing 60-70 regular season games, and getting hurt – as he has, year after year – either late in the regular season, or in the playoffs? Or giving yourself the best chance at a deep postseason run by keeping him in bubble wrap during the regular season? How patient is Josh Harris going to be with Daryl Morey or Nick Nurse if the Sixers don’t advance again because Embiid is limping around against the Celtics or Knicks or Cavaliers in the second round?

Understand this: Holding Embiid out of a lot of regular-season home games is not fair to 76ers fans. They have to buy their tickets on faith, and most don’t have the disposable income to come 10 times or more during a season. Often, it’s once or twice a year. Just as I bought tickets to see Mos Def on Broadway a few years ago in “Topdog/Underdog,” only to have him tap out after a few minutes onstage with a migraine, I don’t have an answer for this. But, surely, most Sixers fans would be just fine with Embiid missing Tuesday or Friday nights in January if it means he’s center stage in May and June.

Embiid is sensitive, to be sure, and he always feels the pressure of trying to live up to all of “The Process” hype. But the 76ers don’t think he has long-term emotional issues. A team source indicated Tuesday that the team viewed this as an isolated incident, which escalated because of what the team felt were “deeply personal” references to Embiid’s family, including his late younger brother Arthur, who was killed in 2014 in a car accident at age 13; Embiid named his young son after his late brother. Hayes referred to both Arthurs in his Oct. 23 column criticizing Embiid.

In that column, Hayes initially led with the paragraph, “Joel Embiid consistently points to the birth of his son, Arthur, as the major inflection 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 an automobile accident when Embiid was in his first year as a 76er. Well, in order to be great at your job, you first have to show up for work. Embiid has been great at just the opposite.”

Hayes took that paragraph out for later editions of his column and re-wrote his lede, saying in a post on X later in the day that he “can see why so many people were upset about it. Sorry about that.”

The best way for Embiid to get out of his funk, the Sixers believe, is for their franchise player to, at long last, get healthy and stay healthy. In that sliver of space, the superstar and team and league all share common hope. The when is where the great divide remains, and is likely to remain, for the foreseeable future.

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