It was the same old story. Same old song and dance.
Eight months ago, a report on a website forced 76ers president Bryan Colangelo to hastily call a bizarre news conference to more completely explain the severity of the sore knee that had sidelined franchise center Joel Embiid.
Shortly before noon Wednesday, a report on a website forced Colangelo to hastily call a bizarre news conference to more completely explain the severity of the sore shoulder that had hindered to current No. 1 overall pick Markelle Fultz.
During that news conference Wednesday, Colangelo said:
"I think we've been pretty transparent."
Trusting the Process gets harder each day.
For years, the Sixers have been as transparent as the Iron Curtain. From Andrew Bynum to Embiid, Jahlil Okafor, Nerlens Noel, Ben Simmons and, now, Fultz, they've displayed a pattern of incomplete medical reporting that erodes the very trust they are trying to build; odd, since hope and trust are really all they have to sell. Appropriately, they have exactly 76 wins since The Process began in 2013. That's a .229 winning percentage.
Medical issues have limited their current cornerstone players _ Embiid, Simmons, and Fultz _ to a combined 42 games since Embiid was drafted in 2014. That number won't grow as fast as might have. Fultz will miss at least the next three games, Colangelo said, then will be reevaluated Tuesday. Stay tuned. Or don't.
This is what the Sixers are; really, what they have been ever since Josh Harris bought them in 2011. They are run like a corporation. They inform their followers minimally. This leaves many fans asking the question: Why should they invest, emotionally and financially, in a team that won't tell them whole truths about their biggest assets?
Don't expect any change of tune.
"We don't necessarily report everything we do, medically, to players," Colangelo said.
There you have it, like it or not.
This is no different from Doug Pederson relying on analytics for fourth-down decisions or Dave Hakstol trusting his veteran skaters over the kids. Colangelo & Co. will tell you what they want, when they want ... unless you find out somewhere else.
Even if you allow for minutia to slip through cracks, not reporting a cortisone shot to Fultz's shoulder is not minutia. Furkan Aldemir's bunion treatment is minutia. (Aldemir does not have bunions.)
That doesn't mean the information won't get out. It always does, and then team scrambles to limit the damage.
This time, Colangelo addressed a report that, three weeks ago, Fultz had his right shoulder drained. Pain in the shoulder has kept Fultz from attempting deep outside shots in the Sixers' first four games, and it might be the reason his free-throw form resembles a bad break-dance move. This drainage was never discussed by the team, despite consistent questions about Fultz's shoulder and his shooting.
Colangelo on Wednesday disputed that report, sourced to Fultz's agent. Colangelo instead said Fultz underwent a "procedure," and indicated that it was a cortisone shot.
Again: Colangelo's defense was he didn't omit what was reported; rather, that they omitted something else. The point is, of course, that they omitted anything. Again.
And they'll do it next time, too. They don't think it's a big deal.
"If you want to know, I had my knee drained and a cortisone shot last week, which is why I walked around so funny," Colangelo joked.
Nobody noticed his altered gait because every 52-year-old ex-jock has a hitch in his giddy-up. Everybody notices when the 19-year-old No. 1 pick has a hitch in his foul shot. As per normal team policy concerning injured players, Fultz was not made available to the media Wednesday.
There's no law mandating that NBA teams must disclose every procedure every player undergoes, but the Sixers seem unusually reluctant to report relevant information regarding their most significant players. And yes, when one of the Big Three gets a six-inch needle full of chemicals jammed into his shooting shoulder, that's relevant. Especially when it doesn't appear to be helping.
Part of what made Wednesday's Q&A so bizarre was Colangelo's tone.
Colangelo said Fultz's shoulder was structurally sound but that it was Fultz who insisted on playing. Colangelo also indicated that he believed Fultz's sore shoulder resulted from the change in shooting form, which, Colangelo pointed out, Fultz undertook on his own in August.
"It could even be the cause of the irritation and inflammation in his shoulder, just the new mechanics," Colangelo said.
Could be? You would think, if any team, the Sixers would have gotten to the bottom of this. After all, they have invested millions of dollars in sports science and they just hired a new top doc, C. Daniel Medina Lael.
But then, you also would think they would be as transparent as possible after the Embiid debacle of 2016-17, which put Colangelo in the crosshairs.
On Jan. 20, Embiid injured his left knee. The team said it was a bone bruise. Embiid missed the next three games but played Jan. 27, and played well. He then missed eight games in a row before a report surfaced Feb. 11 that he also had a torn meniscus. That was eight months ago.
Colangelo hastily called the aforementioned bizarre news conference and confirmed the report, but downplayed the significance of the meniscus tear and said it was not believed to be the source of Embiid's pain. Embiid did not play again. He had meniscus surgery March 24. He remains on a minutes restriction. He does not play in back-to-back games.
That Embiid timeline capped a series of Sixers crises shrouded in mystery. It began in 2012, when the Sixers traded four first-round picks for one season of Bynum, whose bad knees kept him from ever playing for the Sixers as the team issued minimal injury updates.
In 2013, the Sixers drafted Noel, who was recovering from a knee injury suffered in college. Much of that season was spent chasing information about the possible return of Noel before the season's end, but Noel did not play that season. In 2014, they drafted Embiid, who entered the league with a broken foot and that forced him to miss his entire rookie season ... and which, after that season, required a subsequent surgery. Again, the club declined to make this procedure public until it had been reported.
The team then drafted Okafor in 2015, who saw his first two seasons end due to knee injuries that were minimized throughout. In 2016, the team drafted Simmons, who broke his foot in the preseason but was not ruled out for the season until late February. Noel, meanwhile, missed the first 23 games last season with knee surgery Colangelo deemed "elective."
Which makes it so easy to name that tune during the Fultz fiasco. Then again, perhaps this incident is as frustrating for Colangelo as for the fans.
Colangelo said he discussed the matter with Fultz on Wednesday morning, but Colangelo was still unable to answer the question: Does Fultz believe the shot change hurt his shoulder, or did Fultz change his shot because his shoulder was already hurting?
"Sometimes it's tough for a month an half to have passed and know exactly what happened and what caused it," Colangelo said.
No. No, it's not.
What's tough is believing that an NBA shooting guard does not know whether his shoulder hurt when he radically changed his shooting mechanics. Maybe this time it's Colangelo who isn't getting all of the information about an injury.
