To be fair to the Sixers, they’re somewhat limited here. Amick noted Embiid is “notoriously private” about his body, and he “basically pushes the Sixers to be as secretive as he wants them to be” about his injury status. Longtime NBA insider Jake Fischer echoed that in his first article on The Stein Line last week, writing, “Embiid has notoriously posed challenges to the Sixers’ medical updates, leading to numerous organizational fines, while the center prefers some level of control over what injury he’s listed for and how he’s listed with it.”

They’re hardly the only NBA team that bends to their stars’ whims when it comes to injury reporting. The New Orleans Pelicans have been doing the same dance with Zion Williamson for years. Multiple league sources told Christian Clark of the Times-Picayune that “Williamson’s inner circle has asked the team not to be transparent” about his injuries.

The main difference? Williamson’s contract is now fully non-guaranteed after this season because of how much time he’s missed, while the Sixers just handed Embiid a three-year, $193 million extension in September that runs through at least 2027-28. He has a $69.1 million player option in 2028-29, too. (Take a wild guess as to whether he’s picking that up.)

On Run It Back, Amick said he believed the Sixers “have clarity” about the full extent of Embiid’s injury, but “they just don’t feel like sharing it with the public.” Nurse alluded to that after the win over the Nets, as he told reporters that the swelling was “kind of something that we knew that we were going to be dealing with going into the season.” That’s certainly news to the rest of us.

Regardless of who’s the main culprit of the obfuscation—Embiid, the Sixers or some combination of the two—it’s clear that they’re taking their fans for granted here. They expect fans to continue showing up and supporting the team while they provide nothingburger updates about how injured their star center actually is. Maybe the Process years deluded them into thinking a subsect of fans would support the team regardless of the product they put out on the court.

If the Sixers continue trotting out an unwatchable on-court product (save for Jared McCain and Tyrese Maxey) and keep providing non-updates about Embiid’s health, they’re risking full-on apathy overtaking the fanbase. That’s a dangerous place for any team, especially for one trying to push through a controversial new arena downtown.

Embiid isn’t doing himself any favors here, either. It’s understandable if he’s sensitive about being labeled injury-prone, but he’d likely garner more sympathy if he just came clean about what he’s dealing with. Treating his injury status like a state secret allows people to come to their own conclusions about why he’s missing games. (Is it conditioning? Is he “ducking” certain matchups? Or is his knee just made of Swiss cheese at this point?)

Both Embiid and the Sixers have reason to continue their murky updates. They’d gain no competitive advantage by revealing the extent of his knee injury, and their ticket sales would likely plummet if they announced he’ll miss a set number of upcoming games.

But the more they jerk around fans like this, the more they’re risking said fans checking out until they can field a more competitive product. At this rate, who knows when that might be?