Faulty reasoning signals

• Hasty Generalization - 28.5%
• Biased Writer Voice - 23.7%
• Negativity Bias - 15.7%

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Mike Gansey said of Joel Embiid that “the big fella is the X-factor.” Read more Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer

by David Murphy | Columnist

Updated July 10, 2026, 8:22 a.m. ET

Published July 10, 2026, 5:01 a.m. ET

With all due respect to LeBron James, the Sixers’ greatest and most impactful unknown is the same as it has always been.

Mike Gansey acknowledged as much on Thursday.

“Obviously,” the Sixers new president of basketball operations said in a courtside interview during ESPN’s broadcast of the team’s summer league opener, “the big fella is the X-factor.”

It speaks to the magnitude of Joel Embiid that such a sentiment can be qualified as obvious. Nothing about the Sixers over the last two months has been obvious. From the firing of Daryl Morey to the hiring of Gansey as his replacement to the dramatic trade of Paul George and a couple of first- and second-round picks to the Celtics for some guy named Jaylen Brown to the front office’s attempt to woo James , the Sixers are in the midst of an overhaul more radical than any Embiid has seen in his decade with the team.

For maybe the first summer of his career, everyone’s focus is elsewhere. Yet, everyone is fooling themselves if they think they can talk about the Sixers as a legitimate contender without factoring the big fella into the equation.

» READ MORE: Jaylen Brown is ‘going to push’ Joel Embiid, Mike Gansey says in local radio hit

The exact nature of the question has changed. There’s no doubt about that. It is no longer, “How far can Embiid carry the Sixers?” In Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe , they have young guards who carried them to a Game 2 playoff win over Brown and the Celtics without Embiid. In Brown, they have a player who was overwhelmingly responsible for Boston’s win over the Sixers in Game 1 of the same series. That trio is talented enough to pencil in the Sixers for a playoff spot and, potentially, a top four seed even if Embiid were not to play a game. At no point prior in the Embiid era have we been able to say such a thing.

That’s more than a good thing. It’s the reason that a jaded city can now deconstruct its emotional walls and allow itself to invest time and energy in the Sixers again. The potential outcomes are no longer as divergent as “championship contention” or “No. 3 overall draft pick.” The exhaustion that people feel with regard to Embiid is in large part a function of his inordinate importance over the years. With him, the Sixers could beat anybody. Without him, there was little point in watching.

So, yeah, the question has changed. But it is still the one that matters most when it comes to handicapping the Sixers’ 2026-27 title odds.

What do they expect out of Embiid?

The first part is more interesting. The organization’s public rhetoric regarding their big man has shifted since the change in regimes.

For Morey, Embiid was something like a mission statement: any time the former president spoke publicly about his team, his comments were centered around the center. He took the job in 2020 with the idea that Embiid was the exact sort of front line, once-in-a-generation superstar that teams need to win a title. The goal was to get him whatever help he needed. Morey professed that belief to (virtually) the bitter end.

Gansey and ownership proxy Bob Myers have been far less committed in their public sentiments about Embiid. In his introductory press conference a month ago, Gansey avoided talking with much specificity about the big man beyond including him in the framing of the Sixers’ existing roster structure as a “Big Four.”

“They’re our four guys, they’re under contract. We got to do the best to get them to their best self,” Gansey said on his first day on the job, “because I think every night at 7 p.m., we got to get them to their best to help us win.”

Barely a month later, George was en route to Boston and the Sixers “Big Four” was now a “Big Three.”

» READ MORE: Brad Stevens says he would rather have not traded Jaylen Brown to Philly, but the Celtics did what they had to do

Perhaps it is notable, then, that Gansey now feels comfortable speaking of Embiid in such terms as the ones he deployed in his ESPN interview on Thursday.

“Joel’s in a good space,” Gansey said. “He’s finally healthy going into the offseason. He’s excited about this summer. He’s getting to work here shortly. He expects to have a good year, as we all do.”

Embiid has been conspicuously silent since the Brown trade. His lone Twitter post in the wake of the deal was about the Tour de France. In an interview with the Sixers’ flagship radio station on Thursday, Gansey said that Embiid was excited and “fired up” when Gansey informed him of the trade.

Whatever the case, the Sixers are well past the point of factoring Embiid’s feelings into their actions. The Brown trade was as much about the Sixers’ ability to compete without him as with him. At the same time, the only way they contend for a title this season is with him.

April’s playoff series against the Celtics offers a tidy encapsulation of where the Sixers are. As dominant as Brown was during various stretches, Boston still lost. As impressive as Maxey and Edgecombe were at times, the Sixers still needed to win a Game 7 against the Jayson Tatum-less Celtics just to earn the right of getting blown out of the playoffs by the Knicks. Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla offered the definitive sound byte after the Sixers finished off their series comeback.

“What changed in this series was Joel Embiid came back and they’re a completely different team,” Mazzulla said.

Embiid missed Game 2 of the next series. The Sixers were outscored by 57 points in the 88 minutes he played against the Knicks. Somewhere on that continuum, their immediate hopes lie.

I write opinion and analysis pieces, with a heavy emphasis on the four professional sports teams.

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