That’s partly because his appeal goes beyond his skills on the court he’s also a social-media sensation who has attracted nearly a million followers with a playful self-awareness that’s rare in the micromanaged, focus-grouped-to-death world of professional athletes. The 22-year-old Embiid has given die-hard Sixers fans a reason to feel hopeful, and casual fans a reason to start paying attention to the team again. (Watch him channel Hakeem Olajuwon’s “Dream Shake” and you’ll feel your jaw slightly unhinge.) He’s a force on both ends of the court, moving with a grace that belies his size. He’s twice been named Eastern Conference Rookie of the Month, thanks to performances like this game against the Brooklyn Nets: 33 points, 10 rebounds, three blocked shots and two steals, all in just 27 minutes of action. Embiid missed his first two seasons thanks, ironically, to foot injuries, and there was a palpable fear he’d turn out to be nothing more than the punch line to a trivia question.īut the imposing center is healthy now, and a certified sensation. The cheers grow loudest when Cord bellows the name of the guy who’s unexpectedly taken the league by storm: Joel Embiid.Īt this point last year, Embiid was a seven-foot-two-inch question mark, the biggest gamble of The Process, former general manager Sam Hinkie’s star-crossed roster-building experiment. A little surge of excitement flickers as public-address announcer Matt Cord rattles off one booming player introduction after the next. The team has just six wins at this point, but ESPN is televising the game, and the arena is packed. The house lights in the Wells Fargo Center go down. He was going to be out for three months, maybe more, and the franchise’s plan to begin crawling out from the shadows of its wretched Dark Age was put on hold. So of course Simmons stepped on a teammate’s foot during the final training-camp scrimmage in September and cracked a piece of the load-bearing part of his own foot. Actually, this desire to show people what he can do has been burning since his childhood in Australia.īut we all know the only law on the books around here is Murphy’s. He planned to show people why he’d been the number one pick in the 2016 NBA draft, why analysts and scouts had compared him to legends like Magic Johnson and LeBron James ever since he was old enough to grow a bad teenage mustache. This isn’t how his first year in Philadelphia was supposed to unfold. ![]() Hey, Simmons! Bennnn! He turns and walks down a tunnel to the locker room, frustrated, injured, alone. Pockets of fans who show up early for this mid-December matchup against the Los Angeles Lakers start to notice him standing there - the savior in the flesh. ![]() Simmons wants to be out there with them, but for the moment he can only hover at the edge of the court and stare at the gleaming maple floor and the UFO-size Sixers logo. His teammates on the 76ers are within arm’s reach, laughing and joking as they go through a pregame practice in gray t-shirts and blue shorts at the Wells Fargo Center. He looks the part, too, a neatly buttoned white dress shirt and skinny black pants clinging to his lanky six-foot-10-inch, 20-year-old frame. ![]() Left: Joel Embiid (Cal Sport Media/Associated Press) right: Ben Simmons (Steven Freeman/NBAE/Getty Images)īen Simmons wears the face of a kid getting dragged to Sunday school when he’d rather settle in for a Call of Duty marathon with friends.
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