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

Three games is right for Joel Embiid.

A one-game suspension for the 2023 NBA MVP 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, wherever rousing Hayes’ recent columns were. has been, or how harsh Hayes was when he initially brought up Embiid’s late brother in a column last month. You still can’t argue with the media when they write or say things you don’t like. But five games or more would have made too much of what wasn’t a hit or a beat. 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 begins Wednesday in Los Angeles, where the 76ers will play the LA Clippers. The team had hoped Embiid would finally make his season debut in Steve Ballmer’s $2 billion Intuit Dome. But now he has to sit out three games, starting with the first one, for which he is eligible and healthy. That means he would be able to play on November 12 in Philadelphia against the New York Knicks on the first night of the Emirates Cup.

But what the suspension won’t resolve is the still-simmering dichotomy between the NBA and its teams, one that has grown even sharper as the league embarks on its new 11-year, $76 billion extravaganza of a media rights deal that tip with the 2025-26 season.

Clearly, the NBA has heard the lament of its national television partners, both current and future, about marquee players missing big games in the Tuesday through Friday night windows of games televised by ESPN or TNT. The league was not thrilled as an ESPN story last month detailed the 76ers’ plans to keep Embiid out of back-to-back regular-season games. 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 now. That was because Philly told the truth about its plans for its superstar center and for splash free-agent target Paul George during the regular season: They would be kept out of at least one end by most of the Sixers’ back-to- backs during the year.

The league has leaned relentlessly on making the regular season mean more in the past few years. League’s Player Participation Policy for most of the league’s best individual awards, implemented in 2023, and the Emirates Cup were two major markers. But the NBA, which earlier this year officially held that its own data over the past decade did not show that load management actually prevented injuries, was the biggest change. It was a 180-degree turn from his long-standing, stated position that NBA commissioner Adam Silver himself continued to argue as recently 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 about them.

That has changed.

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

But the league can’t have it both ways. It knows its teams show no mercy to coaches and general managers who don’t win championships or consistently make the playoffs, especially as more and more teams are bought by rarely patient hedge fund owners and corporations. Many people deride the Ringzz Culture as outdated, and yet Embiid is still the clown because he has never lifted his team to an Eastern Conference Finals in his eight active seasons, much less an NBA Finals. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown have been big, big winners in Boston since coming to town, but they would have to win a championship in Boston to be considered “real” Celtics, worthy of the team’s winning legacy.

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

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

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

Understand this: Keeping Embiid out of a bunch of regular-season home games isn’t 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 in a season. Often it is once or twice a year. Just like I bought tickets to see Mos Def on Broadway a few years ago in “Topdog/Underdog” only to have him pass out after a few minutes on stage with a migraine, I don’t have an answer for this. But most Sixers fans would certainly be fine with Embiid missing Tuesday or Friday nights in January if it means he’s in center stage in May and June.

Embiid is touchy-feely, 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 lingering emotional issues. A team source said Tuesday that the team viewed this as an isolated incident that escalated due to what the team believed 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 referenced both Arthurs in his Oct. 23 column criticizing Embiid.

In that column, Hayes led initially with the paragraph: “Joel Embiid consistently points to the birth of his son, Arthur, as the major turning point in his basketball career. He often says that he wants to be great to leave a legacy for the boy named after his younger brother, who tragically died in a car accident when Embiid was in his first year at 76. Well, to be good at your job, you have to show up for work. Embiid has been great at just the opposite.”

Hayes took that section out for later editions of his column and rewrote his lead, says 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 eventually get healthy and stay healthy. In that sliver of space, the superstar and the team and the league all share common hopes. 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)