DON’T COMPLAIN ABOUT EMBIID WHEN, NINE TIMES, JORDAN PLAYED 82 GAMES

It’s a bore hearing players and media mope about the NBA’s 65-game limit when, if you look into history, you’ll find the G.O.A.T. routinely fought through injuries and moped only when he couldn’t play

     A crippling knee injury, I thought, would terminate Michael Jordan for the season. It happened in front of my courtside seat in Atlanta, where the Bulls would have to plot a postseason path without him. What happened? Oh, he didn’t miss a game, one of nine times in his 15-year career in which he played all 82 assignments during the regular season, along with one at 81, one at 80 and one at 78.

     Know how often Jordan was banged up? And how often he charged through the pain, including the famous Flu Game/Bad Pizza/Drunk Night in Utah? Forgive me for chuckling that Joel Embiid is being extorted by the NBA, all because he can’t win back-to-back MVP awards by not meeting the new criteria of playing 65 games. Look, the poor man has issues staying healthy holding 300 pounds on a balky 7-foot frame. Injuries are a pox on his career. We’ve seen fighters carry on, including Nikola Jokic, who is nearly as tall and heavy yet always plays more than 65.

     And Jordan, forevermore.

     Yet Embiid’s problem has become a sad weapon for those who think the league is unfair to impose rules for postseason awards. The intention is upright — protecting fans and media from petty load-management sitouts — and if a player such as Embiid keeps having knee troubles, he’ll unfortunately miss another MVP ceremony. It’s nuts for players and reporters in 2024 to defend his right to miss more than 17 games and remain in the hunt for a trophy. They say he shouldn’t have played Tuesday night at Golden State, where he re-injured his left knee in the fourth quarter and returned to Philadelphia for further evaluation.

     Now we have turbulence. Before the season, commissioner Adam Silver used his top cop, Joe Dumars, to say players no longer can rest to protect careers. “Before, it was a given conclusion that the data showed that you had to rest players a certain amount, and that justified them sitting out,” Dumars said. “We’ve gotten more data, and it just doesn’t show that resting, sitting guys out correlates with lack of injuries, or fatigue, or anything like that. What it does show is maybe guys aren’t as efficient on the second night of a back-to-back.”

     Well, playing two consecutive nights has been a distress for decades. Please don’t tell me today’s players, on private jets with lobster and steak and wine, have it more difficult than a generation ago. Or that today’s games feature more physicality when, as the crazy scoring binges show, defenses often don’t exist. It’s easier to play in the NBA today than ever before. As Embiid left the 76ers with a four-game losing streak, he was supported by players around the league, all but calling Silver a bully.

     “I think it’s a stupid rule, like plenty of the guys in the league, but this is what the owners want,” said Indiana guard Tyrese Haliburton, who recently became a star and now has robust opinions.

     “Now we got one of the premier faces of this league possibly hurt because he’s forcing it,” said Draymond Green, already back in our faces after two suspensions, calling it a “bullshit” rule.

     “(People are) pressuring him to force being great when he’s 300 pounds (and) 7 foot 5?” said teammate Kelly Oubre, embellishing a bit. “Like, c’mon bro. I think this year, people will really understand that his whole career he’s been having to make sure his body’s right. This is like NASCAR, right? If their cars ain’t working, and their mechanics ain’t really able to get the job done before the race, then what can they do? They can’t race. This is our bodies. Our body is our car and we have to treat it with respect. He’s 350 pounds, bro. So you know, I’m praying for him for a speedy recovery, so he can come in and give himself the best chance. But at the end of the day, that’s not important. His body and his career are most important.”

     It was Embiid’s decision to play in San Francisco. The recent injury apparently is a new development on the same left knee. “It’s kind of unrelated to what he’s been going through,” coach Nick Nurse said. “So we just wait on that. Obviously, medical cleared him. Joel obviously is a big part of that. He said he was feeling good. He said he’s rusty and he hadn’t been on the court for five days, but he said he felt good.”

     The league criteria won’t change. Play 65 — and miss 17 — or watch someone else win hardware. These are different times, but even if Jordan had social media, I doubt he’d use it at 2:26 a.m. Eastern time and post an hourglass emoji. That’s what LeBron James did as the 24-25 Los Angeles Lakers allowed at least 125 points for the fifth straight game. Before that, he said,  “We could, on any given night, beat any team in the NBA. And then on any given night, we can get our ass kicked by any team in the NBA. That’s just the (facts). What’s our record? Under .500? What, 24-25? That’s where we are. I don’t have any message for my teammates. Just go out and do your job.”

     When a Lakers staffer stopped a James comment and ended the interview, he said, “Way to cut me off. Because I was about to go in.”

     Today, everyone goes in. Or goes home.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.