Is it Initiation or a curse?
The news of Jared McCain’s potentially season-ending injury shines a light on a bizarre trend that has existed for over a decade. Sixers rookies are in danger. It feels like almost every rookie has some fluke or legitimate injury and general bizarre circumstances. Let’s briefly discuss the early paths for some Sixers players in their first seasons.
Honorable Mention Michael Carter-Williams
MCW is on this list because he did the opposite of the rookie curse. He had a tremendous rookie season which won him the 13/14 ROTY and was traded from the Sixers by the following January. He would only once over the next decade play more than 60 games in a season.
Nerlens Noel
This one is the least concerning. Noel missed the entirety of his first year because he was hurt. Noel had torn his ACL the February before the 2013 draft and with the Sixers tanking there wasn’t any real rush to get him back on the court at any point during what would be his rookie season.
Joel Embiid
To keep it as simple as possible Embiid was drafted in 2014 with the knowledge that he would miss the upcoming season. He had a back injury in college and then broke his foot. The foot injury and the Sixers’ desire to keep losing games, would keep him out for the 14/15 and 15/16 season.
Dario Saric
No injury, but international commitments kept him away from the Sixers as The Homie spent two more seasons overseas in Croatia before ever playing for the Sixers.
Jahlil Okafor
He started the season playing actual basketball with the Sixers. Then sixteen games into the season, he got in a fistfight and whooped a couple of Bostonians on the street (respect). This was not the only time he got into altercations and the Sixers hired security to follow Jahlil moving forward. At the beginning of March he would miss the final twenty games or so due to injury.
Ben Simmons
Turn off the rage alerts for a second. In 2017 the Sixers finally won the Draft Lottery and got to take the Australian. There was LeBron 2.0 talk and his early Summer League performances were legendary. Then he broke his foot in the last Summer League game and missed his rookie season. Go ahead, turn the rage back on.
Markelle Fultz
He was supposed to be the final piece to the Sixers’ ‘Big Three’. The Sixers got fleeced by Danny Ainge in Boston for the first pick for a guy they probably could have taken at three and then Markelle showed up for the season and seemingly forgot how to shoot a basketball. There was some sort of vague/undefined, most likely non-basketball injury that left Fultz completely lost on how to shoot that also could have been something mental too. Needless to say, he would end up only playing 33 TOTAL GAMES as a Sixer over two seasons.
Mikal Bridges
Do you remember the exact stretch forward this team desperately needed for years? Who was a local kid from the local best college basketball team in the country at the time? You know the same player whose mom works for the Sixers and they let go on national TV after his son was drafted by the Sixers and gush about how excited and proud she was? Yeah, they traded him 30 minutes later to watch him turn into a fringe all-star caliber player who would have filled an exact need.
Zhaire Smith
The guy they traded Bridges for. Smith had some interesting upside as a raw basketball player; he had a ton of athleticism. He too followed the tradition of breaking his foot, which was most likely going to derail the majority of his rookie season and then the Sixers poisoned him… LITERALLY. Despite a deathly allergy to sesame, Smith was fed something with sesame AT THE SIXERS FACILITY. He spent six weeks in the hospital and lost 40lbs while nearly dying from the ordeal. In large part because of this he never really got off the ground playing 13 total NBA games.
Jared McCain
Things started okay for McCain as he started to look primed for a run at ROTY, but even the TikTokking GenZer fell victim to the curse. Feared to have suffered a concussion in a game it turned out that he did not; he actually tore his Meniscus and needed surgery to repair it. There is a solid chance we do not see him until next season.
You could create a 10-part documentary on what has happened to the Sixers organization just since 2013. A bizarre franchise that seemingly takes the road less followed every single time. Things rarely work out for them and one way this glaringly shows is the luck they’ve had with rookies and just getting them to play basketball. It is one thing to miss on talent, but the Sixers have found a way to somehow almost guarantee that something will happen to you as a Sixer in your rookie season. Get drafted by Philadelphia? Better make sure you have good health insurance.
