The way Joel Embiid throws himself to the floor is a danger to the people he plays with. The scene at Barclays Center on Thursday made that plain.
In the first quarter of Thursday's preseason game against Brooklyn, Embiid got a light shove in the back from Mo Wagner during a box-out. A seven-footer does not fall down from that. Embiid did anyway, dramatically, and landed on Jaylen Brown. Brown was on the ground in visible pain for a while before he got up, walked it off, and stayed in the game. He wasn't injured. He also came within a bad angle of a wrecked knee, and the only reason this isn't a catastrophe is luck.
The clip landed as hard as it did because of what Brown had already said about him. Brown spent the summer, before he was a Sixer, saying the quiet part out loud on a Twitch stream: "Joel Embiid is a great player, one of the best bigs in basketball history. He flops." He'd made the same complaint after Boston lost to Philadelphia, pointing at the whistle: "He also was flopping around. He got some extra calls, and they rewarded him for that, but that's the league we're in." Then Philadelphia traded for him, sending Paul George and a stack of picks to Boston to make it happen. So Brown's reward for calling Embiid a flopper is becoming the mattress Embiid flops onto.
It's happened before, too, with a far worse ending. In Game 6 of the 2022 Eastern Conference semifinals, Embiid fell into Danny Green's left leg after a shot attempt. Green tore his ACL and LCL. Philadelphia lost that game, and Green's season ended right there on the floor.
That 2022 fall was described as inadvertent, a big man coming down awkwardly. The Brown collision was a soft push sold into a tumble. The mechanism was different, but the danger was the same. You can argue all day about whether frame 14 technically qualifies as a flop. You cannot argue about what a grown man's full weight does to a planted knee.
The defense of Embiid, and there is one, is that this was a meaningless October game, the contact really was light, and nobody got hurt. All of that is true, and it still doubles the case against him. Why is a man who has played fewer than 40 games in each of the last three seasons, who managed 38 last year, hitting the deck on a box-out in a game that counts for nothing? He reportedly slimmed down this summer and rebuilt his body to put less stress on his lower half. All of that work, and the instinct to collapse on contact is still the first thing that shows up.
Embiid owns that instinct. He's turned falling into a competitive tool, and a tool used this often becomes a reflex. Reflexes don't check who's standing behind you.
Philadelphia bet its whole season on health. They put Brown and LeBron James next to Embiid, gave up real assets to do it, and the whole plan depends on this core staying upright long enough to matter. The season tips off October 20 on the road against the defending champion Knicks. If the Sixers are going to spend the year holding their breath every time Embiid touches the paint, the scariest injury threat on this roster might be the guy who keeps landing on his own teammates.
