Sixer 4 Lyfe

Plus thoughts on Woj and more.

Good morning. It’s going to be a bloggy newsletter today. Let’s basketball.

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Still Life With Pots; Francisco de Zurbaran; 1650

The Sixers announced early Friday that they have signed Joel Embiid to an extension. Shams Charania reported that the deal is at the maximum salary for three years, $193 million, with a player option for 2028-29. Embiid already had a lucrative player option on the books for 2026-27; this deal effectively locks in that season at a higher dollar figure, locks in 2027-28 at a high dollar figure and creates a likely high-dollar figure contract in 2028-29. Embiid will be 34 years old when that final season begins.

This is a huge two-way commitment. Pushing an exit date into the future leaves Embiid at the mercy of Daryl Morey’s team-building for longer, or puts him in the position of demanding a trade and making himself a local villain in the interim. Pushing an exit date into the future leaves Morey and the Sixers at the mercy of Embiid’s health, or puts them in the position of trading him before his career fades. Clearly, Embiid is pleased with how the great unwinding of the failed James Harden era, which succeeded the failed Ben Simmons era, has gone. This is a major victory after Embiid was clearly displeased at the unwinding of the Jimmy Butler era.

We can’t really tell anything about how Morey and the Sixers feel about anything, because this is what you do with top-tier superstars: you try to extend them as long as possible at whatever the cost. I suspect that at no point in the recent past did the Sixers consider moving beyond the Embiid era. Winning MVP in 2022-23 followed by performing even better last season before getting injured surely contributed to the Sixers’ assurance that this path remained viable.

Embiid critics and chronically contract-averse analysts will raise hell about Joel’s injury risk and playoff shortcomings. When you hear and read those comments, don’t lose sight of the fact that Embiid is legitimately one of the most productive players in the history of the league on a per-game and per-minute basis.