The Sixers and their medical staff need to be investigated.

With Embiid out again, we have seen yet another of countless examples of the Sixers medical staff misrepresenting or straight up lying about the health statuses of players, primarily Joel Embiid.

As a Sixers fan, I can’t tell you how many times the Sixers said Embiid would be out a few games and instead missed weeks or even MONTHS over the years. Even at the start of this season, I remember his and Paul George’s prognoses being “starting game 3 or 4” only for Embiid to debut in the 11th game three weeks into the season.

More recently, he “hurt his foot” tripping over a rope thing during warmups, played 4 games, and now has missed 6. He’s been “day to day” every time. And unless I’m completely wrong, I think the Sixers said he would miss last night’s game to play the Knicks tonight — he’s out.

All of this feeds into a ridiculous pattern of the Sixers and their medical staff failing to correctly report on his and other players’ health, including:

— downplaying the severity of injuries

— vastly underestimating or underreporting return timelines

— reporting him available but changing him to a late scratch last minute

— reporting him doubtful or unavailable but changing him to available last minute

— deflecting questions about these discrepancies in coach and GM press conferences by saying they aren’t sure about the specifics and that reporters should ask the medical staff (they can’t)

Anyone who has paid attention to the Sixers over the past 5 seasons or so will know what I’m talking about. It’s as regular as the days of the week. Several times over the years, we’ve been led to believe he has a short return timetable only for us to learn later he was never going to be coming back that quickly.

So why do they do this? I see it as one of three options:

1) the Sixers medical staff is incompetent

2) the Sixers medical staff is corruptly influenced by upper management

3) both.

In my view, it feels like the Sixers have developed a strategy of lying about Embiid’s health to goad fans into buying tickets and make it harder for other teams to prepare. It’s tough watching the Sixers play without Embiid, and I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if the Sixers postured that he would return soon at the beginning of the season to ensure fans would buy tickets.

If you have any more specific examples of what I’m talking about, I’d love to see them in the comments — I’ll add some after work haha