Joel Embiid Knows Winning Is The Only Thing That Matters

The Sixers had a disappointing end to the 2018-19 season with Kawhi Leonard sinking a last-second buzzer-beating shot to send the squad back to Philadelphia. While the team has to move on from the monumental event, Joel Embiid still feels like he left meat on the bone.

“I can’t blame that I wasn’t feeling well, but I know I didn’t do what I could do,” Embiid said of the Game 7 contest (via an interview with Shams Charania of The Athletic). Embiid was reportedly dealing with an illness during the series against the Raptors last May.

Outside of the Bucks, there arguably isn’t another team in the Eastern Conference with the ceiling of the Sixers. Embiid, Ben Simmons, Al Horford, and Tobias Harris have each been All-Stars or have played near an All-Star level. Embiid knows that the team looks potent on paper but it doesn’t matter unless Philadelphia wins a championship.

“At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if you don’t win it all. You got to win it all. If you look at guys like Charles Barkley…he had a great career but everyone always looks at him like ‘where’s your championship?’ so like I said, at the end of the day you have to win,” Embiid explained.

The Embiid-Simmons pairing has been scrutinized as a mismatch but the pair of All-Stars don’t see it that way. “On court, we want to win. Off court, Jo does his thing, I do my thing,” Simmons said.