The Philadelphia Sixers have been the subject of increasing scrutiny in the media due to high pre-season expectations. The Sixers are currently the fifth seed in the Eastern conference, but despite having one of the best home records in the NBA, they are ten games under .500 on the road.
The Sixers recent 0-4 road trip, losing each game by at least 10 points, only served to stoke the flames even more as far as criticism goes. Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley called the Sixers “soft,” and the fans booed several Sixers, including Embiid, when the Sixers returned home from their road trip.
The next game at home plying the Bulls, Embiid hit a game-sealing three and took the opportunity to shush the Philadelphia crowd. Embiid explained the gesture in his post-game press conference by saying he didn’t care how it, looked and he was “just being a good a-hole.”
Now according to ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, NBA teams around the league are discussing the possibility of Embiid being traded.
But anyways, one of the conversations people are starting to have in the league is ‘will they move Embiid? What’s the price? Where would he go?’
I’m not going to get into that, but my point is people are talking about that. I don’t think they would do that without making an adjustment to the head coach. It’s such a radical thing, but the fact that we’re in mid-February and the people who work in the league, who have to prepare in advance, are mulling over Joel Embiid potentially coming to market, whether that’s true or not… I mean, Josh Harris can come on this podcast and deny it if he wants, but the fact people are talking about it is not good. It’s a symptom of where they are.”
The talk around the league so far seems to be purely exploratory, and there doesn’t seem to be any concrete evidence that the Sixers are looking to move Embiid in the near future.
Embiid is in the second year of a five year $147 Million deal. Embiid, along with point guard Ben Simmons has been the crown jewels of the Sixers “Process Era.” Despite chatter of breaking the duo up, they’ve been relatively successful coming a Kawhi Leonard bounce away from reaching the Eastern Conference Finals last year.
Flip the page to hear Brian Windhorst talk about the possibility of Joel Embiid getting traded on the “Big Time Bucket Getter” podcast.