You mean the year they lost Embid for the NCAA tourney?

I dunno, it was a year where Bail's stale offense ground to a halt and we exited with 50-something points scored. There are so many I can't even keep track

Bail. LMAO

PB stepping up the troll game today.

Self's fault. - PB

+1

it's time to begin the new thread

Wiggins could board really well. Particularly on the OREB. His second jump was quicker than everyone else's first jump.

It kind of was, actually. He didn't believe Embiid was hurt earlier in the season, and he brow beat him into coming back before he was ready.

I'm going to ask you a question that I once asked someone in real life.

Why are you such a dick?

By the way, the guy in real life stopped being a dick. I don't expect you to do that.

Link?

You aren't going to find articles about it, but Self ridiculed Embiid multiple times in interviews and made it clear that he didn't think Joel was all that injured. Bill has never been shy about using media interviews to send messages to his players.

It's pretty clear that Embiid was legitimately injured, and he likely came back too soon. There's no way to prove the correlation/causation, but I firmly believe that Self was worried about his stars coasting to the draft and not giving it their all. (He was right, by the way...at least as far as Wiggins. Andrew set out to not get injured in the tournament once his top draft spot was assured, and that's exactly what he did.)

So the narrative that Saul is going with is that Wiggins packed it in once his top draft spot was "assured" (which it never was, both Parker and Embiid were in conversation for that #1 spot at that point) and despite the fact that he played his two best games all season for KU the week before that at WVU and vs. OSU in the Big 12 tournament (and then also played well against EKU in R1). It couldn't just be that he played a bad game against a team in Stanford that game planned well to shut him down. Nah, that never happens to players in the NCAA tournament.

Also, Self didn't conduct himself any differently with Embiid than any other player. He has always pushed his guys to tough it out and play while hurt (while stressing the difference between playing hurt and playing injured). I'm pretty sure Frank Mason could have collapsed on the court from all his various issues this season and Self would have pushed him out there for 40 minutes a game. What he (and nobody else knew) at the time unfortunately was that Joel Embiid's bones were as brittle as Samuel L Jackson's in Unbreakable.

I always chuckle to myself when I hear people tell the "Wiggins wasn't trying hard" story.

Wiggins was in danger of slipping. He put up a week's worth of monster games, secured his spot, and went into self preservation mode...which is exactly what he should have done.

Some need something more than the "good player plays bad game" explanation, I guess, even though such things happen all the time.