As the Sixers' season began on Wednesday night, there was some unfortunate injury news that marred an otherwise exciting start to the season after an offseason that appeared to revitalize the fan base. Neither Joel Embiid nor Paul George played for the Sixers in Wednesday's game against the Milwaukee Bucks at the Wells Fargo Center.

The news of George comes as no surprise as the newly acquired veteran winger suffered a knee injury in pre-season and appears to have thankfully avoided a lengthy absence. However, Embiid's holdout in Toronto on Wednesday and Friday before being “reassessed over the weekend” has raised questions about what's going on with the franchise cornerstone.

Dave Early wrote about the mixed messages coming from the Sixers on the Embiid front. Last week, Bryan Toporek wrote about how refreshing it was to see Embiid distance himself from chasing individual accolades and focus on doing everything he could to ensure he was healthy for the entire postseason. My point here is that both views remain true today, although many fans and local media raise further questions about Embiid's ability to stay healthy.

It's entirely fair to criticize the Sixers, a franchise known for its lack of transparency, for not disclosing more information about their load management plan for Embiid unless the big man is seriously injured. If he is injured, why hasn't a statement been released describing what the injury is and how long he will be out?

Could there be something worse than load management happening to Embiid? Absolutely. The Sixers have not earned the benefit of the doubt in such matters. But if this is just a case of poorly communicated load management, any anger and frustration directed at the franchise this week will go down as much ado about nothing.

Had Embiid played on Wednesday, the postgame reaction would be one of two things. In a win accompanied by a strong performance from the former MVP, most cynical fans would simply say, “Wake me up in April.” In a loss, even if Embiid played well, that same cynical portion of the fan base would be rooting for the loss Eastern Conference competitors as a sign of things to come and trying to prepare the rest of the fan base for another early exit after the season. In other words, there's not much to be gained by using Embiid in just one of 82 regular-season games.

It's time to treat all 82 regular season games equally if you haven't already. Nationally televised games are fun and it's cool to beat big opponents in October and March, but that's not the goal of the season. So is there really that much of a difference between Embiid playing Wednesday and Friday and resting next week and Embiid playing those first two games and debuting sometime next week if that's how it plays out?

Unfortunately, we all expected Embiid to fail at the end of the season. Now the Sixers are saying, “Wake me up in April,” and who can blame them? Say what you will about the progression of his meniscus injury last season and his participation in that terrible regular-season game at Golden State in January. Maybe I'm an eternal optimist, but I was hoping that Embiid would recover from his serious injury and return in time for the playoffs healthier than he was in previous postseasons. Had the Sixers survived the Knicks, I think a lot of people would have picked them to beat the Pacers and advance to the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time in over two decades.

The only thing you gain from winning a lot of regular season games is a better playoff seeding. But we saw the Sixers squander a seemingly easy path to the conference finals in 2021 as the No. 1 seed in the East. As I just described, the road to the conference finals as last year's No. 7 seed didn't look too daunting either.

We all agree that this is still a playoff team regardless of how many games Embiid plays this season, and they've already shown us that their ability doesn't matter are to get into the depths or fail. Ultimately, the team just has to play its best basketball in the spring and let the chips fall where they may. They don't need a fully healthy roster for all 82 games of the regular season to find the best version of themselves for the playoffs. However many games Embiid, George and Tyrese Maxey play in the regular season, you have to be okay with that number being enough.

Also: What is the better approach here? We've already seen Embiid devastated and unable to last a full season. As previously mentioned, delaying your season debut by a week doesn't hurt anyone.

Nick Nurse led Kawhi Leonard to a championship in 2019. Maybe there's something bigger going on with Embiid that raises bigger concerns. But we don't know that at this point, so let's not flood the internet with unnecessary speculation. The Knicks were defeated by Boston on Tuesday with (almost) everyone playing. Even if Milwaukee wins on Wednesday, I think we'll all be fine.