1. Joel Embiid, landing with some regard for human life
Lost in the noise of the “He’s only played 31 games!” crowd is that Joel Embiid’s injury, which kept him out of the last two and a half months of his rookie season, was an acute injury caused by one bad landing. Not a stress fracture. Not a torn muscle from over-work. A bad landing was, at the very least, the provenance of Embiid’s season-ending injury.
And that’s not to lionize his durability. Bad landings are more likely with Embiid than with other players, and as the sample size of games grew, so too did the chances of an injury-inducing landing.
Five key developments for Sixers players this season
