Philadelphia 76ers rookie Joel Embiid has yet to officially talk to the media during the 2014-15 NBA term. The team’s most-recent lottery pick hasn’t participated in a five-on-five scrimmage with his team; once he does, he’ll be due for regular sessions with reporters per NBA rules put in place after Derrick Rose routinely dodged the media following his all-out practices with Chicago in 2012-13.
As such, reporters (and, most importantly, Philadelphia fans that follow those reporters) have little clue as to what, exactly, is going on with Embiid. Touted as a potential top overall pick in last year’s draft, Joel’s draft stock fell to third overall when back and foot fractures knocked him both out of NCAA play, and a good chunk (if not all) of his first potential NBA season. The nature of his foot injury precludes him from participating in the sort of all-out rehab (much less practice) most other NBA players work through daily, which has allowed Embiid’s weight to noticeably balloon.
How much has it ballooned? The Philadelphia Inquirer, over the weekend, ventured an anonymously-sourced guess of sorts:
Embiid has a weight issue. Although the Sixers wouldn't disclose his weight, a source said he's close to 300 pounds after being 250 pounds at Kansas last season.
His work ethic is being questioned by some inside the organization.
And a blowup with assistant strength and conditioning coach James Davis is one of the reasons he was sent home during the team's recent West Coast road trip.
Even for a 20-year old – away from parental guidance, traveling through NBA towns rife with easy-access to high-calorie options, working with a contract that starts at over $4.4 million a year – tossing an extra 50 pounds on is pretty remarkable and borderline incredible. As in, “bordering on not credible.” Even on a 7-foot frame.
As the second report of Embiid’s weight gain this season hit the rounds, Joel most noticeably was the first Sixer to report for the team’s early morning shootaround on Monday, even though he won’t be playing in the squad’s matinee performance against the Washington Wizards:
Prior to that public workout, in one of his usual quick and unofficial discussions with reporters on Sunday evening, Embiid denied hitting three bills. From Dei Lynam at CSN Philly:
"I don't weigh that," Embiid said in passing at a D.C. hotel Sunday night with the Sixers in town to face the Wizards for a Martin Luther King Day matinee.
A team source backed him up, stating that 275 pounds has been the maximum weight for the 7-footer whom the Sixers selected with the third overall pick in last year's draft.
Lynam went on to say that the rookie “has expressed his frustrations with multiple people on the staff when working out this season.” That’s not the correct thing to do, and it’s far from professional, but in some ways it is understandable.
Joel Embiid won’t turn 21 until mid-March. He was drafted as an injured project big man 12 months after his team selected another injured project big man in Nerlens Noel that ended up sitting out of all of 2013-14. While many in Philadelphia celebrated Embiid’s selection, just as many outside of the team’s fan base snickered at the Sixers so blatantly sticking with the paradigm that put them in the lottery by choice – taking a project coming off of a major injury, scuttling any chance that some learning young stud could trip the 76ers into a few extra wins they don’t want.
He has only been playing basketball since 2009 – the year Derrick Rose won the Rookie of the Year and the year Blake Griffin was drafted prior to his sit-out of the entire 2009-10 season with injury. He is stuck on a miserable Sixer squad that lost its first 17 games of the season, hanging around teammates that even an NBA neophyte like Embiid knows what be around when the Sixers finally start to round into winners behind Joel, Noel, possibly Michael Carter-Williams, prospect Dario Saric, and however many other lottery picks they’ll grab. This isn’t ideal.
That doesn’t make fighting with those that know better the right thing to do. And that doesn’t make the obvious weight gain, even if it isn’t up to 300 pounds, appropriate.
No, Embiid can’t do much by way of cardio or NBA drills as he recovers from a rather scary stress fracture (the same kind that ended Bill Walton and Yao Ming’s careers and the same one that derailed Zydrunas Ilgauskas for so many years), but he can still manage to stay reasonably close to his hoped-for NBA weight even while indulging in the odd trip to The Cheesecake Factory. There are people that the 76ers pay to help teach Embiid the sort of nutritional rules that we all needed to have bashed over our heads in our early 20s.
It’ll also be nice when Philadelphia 76ers fans can start to click on anything to read that doesn’t label their team anything more than a raging dumpster fire.
(Twitter hat-tips to Deadspin.)
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