Sixers legend reveals old training camp story about Joel Embiid
Philadelphia 76ers superstar big man Joel Embiid is dealing with a lot at the moment. The 2023 MVP winner is dealing with a bothersome left knee injury that required a second surgery in 14 months. He played only 19 games in the 2024-25 season as he is dealing with a ton of adversity.
The Sixers have always been careful when it comes to Embiid. He has always been on a load management type of plan. They will go as far as he takes them so he needs to be at his best which means he has to take some days off.
With that being said, Sixers legend Charles Barkley hopped on "The Mike Missanelli Show" and gave a not-so-inspiring training camp story about Embiid. He and another franchise legend, Billy Cunningham, attended camp and didn't like what he saw:
This was like the first day of training camp, because, you know, in the old days we do two-a-days. We didn't care who the hell you were. You were going to practice twice a day. We went to the Sixers' facility, and they started to scrimmage, and Joel goes to sit down instead of scrimmaging, and Billy says, 'We got to go.' I go, 'Billy, we just got here.' He says 'The best player on their team when they started scrimmaging, went and sat down.' This is like, probably five years ago. He says, 'This team is never going to be successful. Your best player has to set the tone.' He says, 'This is the first day of training camp.' Now, if we had been a week or two in a week or whatever. Yeah, you know what? You don't want to run your best player in the ground, but this was the first day of training camp, and when they started the scrimmage, he went and sat down. Brett said, 'Hey, let's scrimmage,' and Joel went to sit down.
Embiid, for now, has to be able to focus on his rehab. The expectation is that Philadelphia will have him for opening night in October and the hope is he can get back to being that dominant player he once was out on the floor.
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