Joel Embiid admitted he was “hurt” after former Philadelphia 76ers team-mate James Harden stopped talking to him.
Embiid and Harden spent a season and a half together at the franchise and showed signs of a championship-winning duo.
In the 2022-23 regular season, Embiid secured the second of his back-to-back scoring titles after averaging 33.1 points per game and won the MVP award. Harden won the assist title in the same campaign, providing 10.7 assists per game.
The Sixers swept the Brooklyn Nets in the first round of the 2023 NBA playoffs before losing in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semi-finals against the Boston Celtics.
Harden was traded to the Los Angeles Clippers at the end of that season, joining the likes of Jimmy Butler and Ben Simmons as stars who abruptly left the organisation, while head coach Doc Rivers was also fired.
Embiid revealed Harden no longer speaks with him because of the fallout from their playoff exit and eventual trade. The 31-year-old also believes the Sixers must grow in perseverance rather than constantly restarting every season.
“I kept going back to it, the continuity,” Embiid told ESPN. “When you feel like you have something, instead of building up on it, you just start over. And that’s been like that every single year.
“No one knows this, but even James [Harden] is not talking to me. That’s the part I don’t like about being ‘that guy’, because it puts you in the middle of those situations.
“Because if you ask James, he probably believes I had something to do with him not being here. And I’m just like, ‘I won the scoring title. You won the assists title. We had a pick-and-roll that was unstoppable’.
“It hurts when you feel like you haven’t done anything wrong. When you think you have a relationship like that with somebody … you lose a lot.
“I always told myself I will never be responsible for someone losing their job, someone getting traded, someone getting fired. Don’t ask me about if we should sign and if we should trade anybody.”
