Joel Embiid continues to insist on falling to the ground every time he struggles to maintain balance, scaring Doc Rivers and his daughter Callie.
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For most sports and sportspersons, one of the most important principles is learning how to land properly. This is true not just of regulation jumps, explosive moments and hops, but also of situations where you’re not in balance.
If you can’t dissipate the decelerating force through your bones, the cumulative stress could do tons of damage. You could get injured bad. In fact, most knee injuries occur in non-contact settings.
Embiid realizes this. As a 7-foot big man weighing more than any other NBA player, Embiid knows he’s got to protect himself from his own exertions. He says falling in his characteristic manner is his way of dealing with it:
“People are always worried, asking, ‘Why does he fall so much?’ I always just fall because I don’t want to land awkwardly and put too much weight on my lower body. That’s why a lot of injuries don’t happen.”
Doc Rivers says the manner of Joel Embiid’s falls scare his daughter Callie
That’s not how Doc Rivers views Embiid’s tactic to prevent injuries though. In his mind, Embiid would do better trying to stay upright and making less explosive movements. His concern came to the fore when the 26-year-old suffered an injury scare in late March:
“I didn’t have a great feeling right away. I had an ACL [injury] once, and he fell the way I fell. He didn’t land normally, he landed on the back of his heel.”
The Doc remarked that his daughter (Seth Curry’s wife) Callie often finds it tough to watch Embiid falling. In Doc’s eyes, not only is Joel scaring his team’s medical staff, he’s also scaring his daughter:
“His falls are terrible. Callie called me and said ‘Joel scares the s*** out of me every game’.”
