It’s increasingly rare for a player to remain with the team that drafted him for his entire career. Even in the previous generation, only Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki, Tim Duncan, a small handful of others we’re forgetting managed to accomplish that feat.
The way the CBA works now, there is more player movement than ever before, and the pressure to compete for a championship requires multiple superstars to team up in a single location. Beyond that, players also have the freedom to choose their own adventures based on a variety of factors.
Just look at Kyrie Irving’s departure from the Cavs last summer, or the Kawhi Leonard situation this offseason, or more recently, Jimmy Butler requesting a trade from Minnesota. Amid that type of uncertainty, it isn’t usually in a player’s best interest to make blanket proclamations about their futures, the way Joel Embiid did on Friday when he reportedly said that he’d like to play the rest of his career in Philadelphia.
https://twitter.com/KevinFLove/status/1043165377600135168
Now, we’ve seen these types of promises come back to bite players more times than we can remember. Things happen. Losses pile up. Relationships deteriorate. Locker room and inter-organizational stasis sinks its claws in and refuses to let go.
Still, Embiid is that even rarer bird who says exactly what he means and doesn’t worry about the consequences and ramifications, so Sixers fans can be forgiven if they feel pretty good about this one. They didn’t suffer through “The Process” for nothing, and if their reward is a career worth of Embiid at his healthy best, then it will have all been worth it.
