Joel Embiid hoping for continuity as Sixers enter important offseason
PHILADELPHIA — Throughout Joel Embiid’s time with the Philadelphia 76ers, he has had to undergo a lot of change. There have been a lot of moving parts around him as the Sixers look to find the right pieces to go deep into the playoffs and give themselves a chance to contend for a title.
The Sixers had a lot of change in the 2023-24 season. Philadelphia had to move James Harden in October due to his trade request and then the Sixers made a flurry of moves at the deadline.
On the flip side, Embiid and Tyrese Maxey were able to grow as a pair and that continuity is something that the big fella hopes he can keep.
“Like I said, all of them lasted one year,” Embiid said after the Round 1 loss to the New York Knicks. “That’s the problem. Who won last year? Denver. Jamal (Murray), Nikola (Jokic), they’ve been together for eight years or something like that. Seven? You look at some of the teams that have won — Golden State Warriors — they’ve been together for a long time. I don’t remember you just put a team together and hoped that it worked out for one year.”
The Sixers have gone through different iterations of their group to try and get to the mountaintop in the NBA. After every shortcoming, they would make some changes around Embiid and try again.
The big fella is a student of the game. He sees the teams that have won in the past. The Denver Nuggets kept their core together despite some shortcomings and they won a championship. He wants the same in Philadelphia.
“That’s on those (front office) guys,” Embiid added. “That’s what they get paid for. Our job is to get better as basketball players. Every single year, I find a way to get better. Tyrese has gotten so much better, and I think there’s even another step that he can take. Some of the guys in the locker room, they’ve gotten better. Every single year, I’ve gotten better, so I’m excited to keep working on my game and myself, keep getting better, but when it comes to guys around, I like our group of guys.”
The Sixers have a slew of free agents–and a ton of cap space to add another max player possibly–that they have to make decisions on. Obviously, Embiid has nothing to do with those decisions as those questions will be answered by the front office, but the Knicks have some chemistry with their core and it’s something he pointed out after the loss.
“I think we have an amazing group of guys,” Embiid added. “Obviously it didn’t work out this year, but we also played a great team. The New York Knicks, they did a great job, and they’ve played together for a long time. So I like our guys. Obviously, they’ve got a lot of decisions to be made, but I think the group of guys we had this year, they were amazing. I still believe that, if everything went right, we had a chance, but everything didn’t go right.”
