Joel Embiid's $55.2M bought 38 games last season, and the Sixers start this one with him healthy
Tyrese Maxey said Thursday at practice in Camden that having a healthy Joel Embiid “changes everything” for Philadelphia, according to ESPN's Kris Rhim. ESPN reported that Embiid was healthy for training camp and the preseason this year. In past years, injuries kept him out of that stretch.
“You can put in more packages,” Maxey said. “There's been times where he hasn't been healthy and we get into the game and now we're trying to learn on the flow.”
The reps matter most for the new arrivals. ESPN reported that LeBron James and Jaylen Brown are among this season's additions. Maxey, who has six years of knowing where Embiid likes to catch the ball and where he wants guards to cut, said learning to play with a big like him is “very hard, very difficult” without that time: “It's been what, like two, three weeks that we've had just drilling and drilling. That's a good thing.”
A full camp is news because of the games column. ESPN reported that Embiid played 38 games last season, double his total from 2024, while dealing with right hip complications, left knee management and appendicitis. Bleacher Report noted he has not played more than 39 games in a season since his 2022-23 MVP campaign.
The money followed that column. Per WAGE, the Philadelphia 76ers paid Embiid $55.2M in 2025-26, the third-highest salary among the league's rated players, with one other player paid the same. About $29.6M of it went to games he did not play.
What he did produce has to be read the same way. His season total ranked 109th of the 435 rated players, tied with Pelle Larsson of the Miami Heat, who earned $2.0M. That tie measures volume, not who is the better player: a season total grows with games and minutes, and Larsson reached the same number by being on the floor far more often.
On Philadelphia's own sheet, the gap shows up as a share. Embiid took 29% of the team's payroll last season and supplied 10% of its production.
That added up to a WAGE Score of 12 in 2025-26, a Sunk Cost reading. Measured as cost per unit of production, he ranked 351st cheapest of the 399 rated players whose production was above zero.
There is a real other side. In a playoff run that ended in the conference semifinals, he accounted for 15% of the team's playoff production.
I'd argue the healthy camp speaks to the specific thing last season's salary was missing, and Maxey's description fits it. The figures cannot separate how well Embiid played from how often, but they do show where the shortfall sat: in the games he missed, and in a season total built in too few of them.
Camp cannot settle that. The reporting does not state his salary for 2026-27 or the rest of his contract's terms, and the team has not described a minutes plan for him. Bleacher Report expects Philadelphia to be cautious with Embiid through the regular season and to manage its stars' minutes so that he, James and Maxey are at their best in the playoffs.
That leaves a tension for the new season. Managed minutes may protect the spring, but fewer games is what produced last season's number. For the money to buy more this time, the healthy start Maxey described has to become games played.