Flagrant foul by LeBron James led to Joel Embiid's lingering back issue?

Three weeks later, the ramifications from that particularly sequence continue to loom large.

“That’s when it started,” Embiid said this week in regards to when his back issues really began.

After a reporter pressed the Sixers big man on how much it was bothering him, Embiid tried to play it off.

“It was pretty tight,” he acknowledged. “I just wanted to make sure we got the win. That’s all that matters.”

Embiid was emphatic about not using his lingering back issues as any sort of excuse.

“It’s not alarming,” he continued. “You know, it’s just tightness. Some days it’s tighter than usual — some days, it’s not. In Utah, or even after the Suns game, it got more tighter than usual, and today, especially when we started the game, it was tighter than usual.”

Still, it’s hard to ignore the facts here.

James committed a foul on Embiid that he’s still feeling the effects of nearly a month later – yet there was no substantive punishment handed out.

Jonas Valanciunas literally fractured a guy’s wrist for no reason – yet no punishment was handed out.

At a certain point, you’d think the NBA would want to restore some integrity to the game.

You already have a situation where refs seemingly blatantly help the Lakers win games, rob the Chicago Bulls of victories and are so careless in protecting certain players that one of the best players in the league literally had to call them out for it.

At a certain point, once fans lose enough faith in the way basketball is policed, the NBA will not be able to do anything to get it back. The league would be wise to address this situation and take a more proactive approach in the future, else the consequences to the game’s reputation will be extremely dire.