PHILADELPHIA — Sometimes, the best thing a leader can do is listen to the universe. It is screaming at Daryl Morey right now. Five days ago, the Sixers president sat in front of a crowd of reporters and delivered the ol’ Inverted Jim Mora.
Playoffs?
Playoffs?
Are you kidding me?
“We’re just focused on the championship,” Morey said.
Maybe he was speaking for the mouse in his pocket. It sure wasn’t his players. A few hours after Morey’s news conference, the Sixers gave up 125 points to a Pistons squad playing without leading scorers Cade Cunningham and Jaden Ivey. Two days later, they were manhandled by another team that did not have its main man, losing to the Bucks, 135-127.
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The state of affairs is a sad one. After Morey spent the trade deadline tinkering around the blast radius of this epic crater of a season, he had little choice but to try to sell the fan base on the hope of a brighter tomorrow. First came that night, unfortunately. By the end of the weekend, Joel Embiid was fielding questions about the need for another surgery on his ailing left knee and the Sixers were losers of five of their last six. With a 20-33 record, the Sixers are 7.5 games behind Tobias Harris and the Pistons for the postseason’s last non-play-in berth.
Embiid is the most important piece of the puzzle, as always. The big man’s left knee is clearly a problem. The lack of consistent messaging from him and the team suggests a lack of a simple solution. During Sunday’s telecast, ESPN’s Lisa Salters reported that Embiid told her his knee “will likely take another surgery and a long recovery period, something he didn’t have after the initial injury last February.” A team source later told The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Keith Pompey that another surgery is not as foregone a conclusion as the ESPN report suggested.
