Derek, how are you man? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me.
I appreciate the time. Worst case scenario for the Sixers, right? The most reliable guy goes down. There's still time to turn this around, right? You got a little bit of hope?
Yeah, no, there certainly is. But you just have to get some players on the floor. Obviously, Joel Embiid has missed all of the first seven games. He will miss two more. Paul George missed the first five and now Tyrese Maxey is out at least a week or probably multiple weeks after the latest injury.
Yeah, it's tough. Whenever Joel Embiid plays, they win at least 60% of their basketball games. So if he comes back, even without having a full supporting cast, I expect them to start winning some games. They've put themselves pretty far behind the 8-ball, obviously, with that 1-6 start.
I think there's a little bit of comfort in the fact that there's only two teams currently in the Asian Conference with an above 500 record, so they haven't lost as much ground as you would maybe expect. But they are not playing good basketball. They are not, obviously, going to have Joel Embiid for the next two games. Paul George is still getting himself acclimated after missing the first five games with the Bone Brews and now you get to Tyrese Maxey's news. Maxey was a one guy. Obviously, you were banking a lot on two injured stars in Embiid and Paul George. Maxey was sort of the one reliable one and now he is going down. It has been pretty much a disaster start for the Sixers so far.
Well, Derek, you see everything and follow first-hand. Are the Sixers not just rolling the dice to try to get to the end of the season and just say, hey, let's see what we can do in the postseason? Are they kind of skipping out on the regular season? Well, they certainly are prioritizing the playoffs and getting everyone there healthy. There's a fine line to walk. You don't want to fall too deep into the standings.
You would prefer to get a top three seed so you could avoid Boston until the conference finals. But none of it really matters if Joel Embiid is not healthy and he's really the only one that they have sort of taken a slow path with. Paul George had a bone bruise in preseason.
That wasn't planned. Tyrese Maxey, obviously, this injury, the hamstring injury, that wasn't planned either. Joel Embiid is the only one where they are slowly ramping him up and he's the one who's never really been healthy in the playoffs. So I sort of get why they are trying a new tactic, but you do at some point have to win games and starting off one and six, they are, like I said, they've blown a lot of really good opportunities.
I've had some very winnable games against the Raptors, against the Pistons, last two against the Suns and the Clippers for the first half at least. There were some winnable games that they let slip away and you hope that doesn't come back to bite them. Derek Bodnar is joining us from PHLY Sports. When you think about prioritizing the postseason, certainly you want to get as much as you can out of Joel Embiid, how in the hell does Daryl Morey and Elton Brand, how do the Sixers organization, how do they sell this to the fan base?
There are 41 home games and how do you get these tickets across? What is the fan sentiment right now? Yeah, I mean I think fan sentiment is frustrated in large part because of messaging coming out of training camp. Nobody really expected Joel Embiid to not be ready for opening night.
Nobody really had any great explanation for why he wasn't. I think the fans for the most part are actually pretty okay with a cautious process. If he comes out and he doesn't play in the back-to-backs, he only plays in the front half of all the back-to-backs throughout the season, I think the fan base is actually relatively okay with it because they've lived the experience. They know the injury history he has had. They know the struggles they've had to have him healthy in the playoffs. I think for the most part they're okay with that.
They just want a little more communication, a little more transparency on what is going on. I think it's a lot more the uncertainty and the lack of communication with regards to his availability to start the season is actually him missing games. Like I said, I think not everyone, there's always going to be differences in the fan base.
They're never a monolith. But I think for the most part fans are okay with a strategy to try to get him healthy for the playoffs. They just want that communicated a little more clearly. Well, Derek, you talk about the lack of communication when it came down to his availability. We know about the situation last week, the shove, the suspension. Is there a change in, I don't know, attitude towards Joel Embiid?
I mean, he's always been a happy-go-lucky, but things have been pretty negative in Darkey over the past couple of weeks. Yeah, I mean, they've never really been great at communicating his injury status. Like last year, for example, when he had the meniscus injury, they didn't even call it a surgery at the time. They called it a procedure. They didn't call it a tear.
They called it an injury. And you don't really know why they were messaging it that way. So they've always been a little murky in the messaging. You know, with regards to Embiid, for the most part, I don't think his attitude has changed. I think he had one real problem with a column that a specific columnist wrote, and that's where that sort of press conference came out when he said it was BS, you know, basically the way that column was written.
And that's where that interaction in the locker room came from. I don't think he's necessarily changed per se, but I think he had a real problem with the column, which basically invoked his dead brother and his son in a way that he didn't feel was appropriate. So I think it's more of an isolated incident, but certainly has not been a good week and a half or so for Joel.
So, Derek, you talk about Joel Embiid, his availability, the man that has to answer the questions seemingly almost every day is a championship winning coach and Nick Nurse. He seems a little stressed at this point in time, granted what the record looks like, but also having to answer questions that don't relate to what's going on on the court. Yeah, no, he definitely does not enjoy giving the injury update every day, specifically because there's no really good way to, he hasn't found a good way to phrase it and explain Embiid's lack of availability.
And then they got the fine coming down for the way they spoke about it. And he's just gotten even more quiet. At one point, he refused to take any questions on it. Yeah, no, I think Nick is frustrated with the play on the court. I think he's frustrated with having to message the availability and the injury status.
He's frustrated, I think, with the fine that came down. And probably most of all, he's just frustrated because he wants to get back to coaching his full team and winning basketball games. When you get down to brass tacks, when you look at the Sixers and how they've been put together, we didn't even talk about Paul George. You know, just came back, only played two games. What do you expect from this team? What, a playoff appearance and getting bounced?
I can't imagine anything else because they can never really stay healthy. Yeah, I mean, we'll, we'll, we'll see. We'll see whether or not, like the Paul George bone bruise, whether that lingers at all. We'll see Joel Embiid whether or not he is able to, with that meniscus injury, stay on the court with any regularity. I can't really put an upside on the team because we haven't seen all three of them on the floor together yet. And we've only seen Paul George for two games. And Joel Embiid is most important of the three and he has not played. Certainly if you're talking about probability, no, you would not go out there and bet on all three of them lasting throughout the season.
That is a huge concern. But I still think the team has a lot of upside. Like I said, the potential of the team, I think, is still really high.
And we haven't really gotten a chance to see that yet. The probability of it, certainly you could call into question. When you look at the contract that was given out to Embiid, he'll be 31 years old come March. Contract is running to what, 27, 28? Did they have no choice but to hand this over to him?
They kind of hamstrung, no? Yeah, I think Daryl's philosophy is always that, you know, first of all, if he's going to win title, Joel Embiid has to be here. I don't think he's through the pathway to a title without Joel Embiid.
I don't think he's necessarily all that interested in rebuilding. So even if the probability of Joel Embiid being healthy for the next five years is low, he wants to keep him happy because that title is the only thing he's really concerned about. So if this is what it takes to get, keep Joel Embiid happy and in Philadelphia, I think, like I said, he will deal with the bad years on that contract if he has to down the line.
That's tomorrow's problem. He's going to do what he needs to, or at least what he feels like he needs to, to keep Joel happy and to give them a chance. Certainly there is massive risk in that contract extension, which was essentially a two-year extension on top of the three years he already had on that contract. You know, he will be 35, and you don't expect that need to be any better at 35 than it is at 30, but I think Daryl just views that as what he needs to do to, like I said, to keep everyone happy, keep him in Philadelphia and give him a chance to contend, whether that's for a year, two years, three years, however long Joel Embiid and his body can hold out.
That's what Daryl's going to do. Outside of the three main players on the Philadelphia 76ers, what are your thoughts on some of the adjustments that they've made? Some stalwarts, Tobias Harris is now gone.
This is a little bit different of a squad that they've assembled. Yeah, I mean, Tobias was a disappointment with that contract, and they needed to clear that contract to go out there and try to get Paul George, so I certainly can't fault them for that. A lot of the role players they brought in, whether that's bringing back Kelly Oubre, signing Caleb Martin from the Heat, they have not played well so far, and they're shooting poorly from the perimeter, they're struggling to sort of ramp up and take on a bigger role offensively with Joel out, and they've just really not played well so far. So far, at this point, I don't think they are, like I said, a lot of the moves around the edges are not playing well. I think Daryl will argue that he needs to see them around Joel Embiid with a much larger sample size to really gauge whether or not they were good signings, but the early returns for sure have not been great.
No, not at all. Philadelphia 76ers currently with a record of 1-6. No Joel Embiid yet.
Paul George just came back, and now Tyrese Maxey is out. Hey, Derek, thank you so much for taking the time to join us. Where can people follow you in all of your work with PHY Sports? Yep, it was my pleasure. Just go to allphly.com.
