Until Sam Hinkie decided to trade Michael Carter-Williams and K.J. McDaniels, the 76ers' most intriguing activity at the trade deadline took place after practice early that afternoon.

At one of the six baskets ringing the court at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, Joel Embiid rolled through a succession of post moves with assistant coach Billy Lange. There was Embiid, spinning left to set up a baseline fadeaway. There was Embiid, pivoting right for a short hook shot.

There was Embiid, nimble and fluid and on the move within full view of a contingent of media members standing a few feet away.

Embiid did the same thing at the Wells Fargo Center, in front of a slightly larger crowd, before the Sixers' game Friday against the Washington Wizards, and these glimpses of him have become a thread in the tapestry of this Sixers season and the narrative of their restoration plan.

He is more than eight months removed from the surgery that repaired a stress fracture in the navicular bone in his right foot - the injury that allowed him to fall to the Sixers with the No. 3 pick in last year's draft - and these little displays of his skills are more than just a necessary aspect of his rehabilitation or a chance for him to feel part of the team. They whet the appetite of anyone curious to see what Embiid can and will do once the Sixers clear him to play.

Truth be told, the Sixers' public-relations people have dangled Embiid in front of the team's fans like a 7-foot-tall Bunyan Bug, posting video clips of his workouts and shooting drills on the team's Twitter account, putting him at the center of the team's campaign to sell 2015-16 season tickets. (The slogan: "This starts now.")

It's an obvious strategy for a franchise that has few marketable players on its current roster. (Nerlens Noel can't appear in every ad, can he?) But it does nothing to alleviate the expectations on Embiid, and it obscures a rather pertinent fact: Embiid, according to the Sixers themselves and the surgeon who operated on him, was supposed to be ready to play by now.

Embiid's surgery was on June 20. His rehab was supposed to take five to eight months - "a fair number," Richard Ferkel, his surgeon, said in a phone interview in July. That time line suggests that Embiid could have been cleared by Feb. 20.

"If he's completely healed, and he's gone through all the basketball drills and the rehab that we and the team specify, then I think he can play," Ferkel said in July. "That decision will be made based on if he's 100 percent and ready to go. It will also be determined by the time of the season that he's ready to go. That's probably going to be more of a decision that we all make together with the team, the trainer, and the team doctors for the 76ers."

Based on Nerlens Noel sitting out a full season after knee surgery and the team's 13-46 record following a 94-74 loss Sunday in Indianapolis to the Pacers, the decision makes itself, as far as the Sixers are concerned. Asked Sunday via text message if Embiid was healthy enough to play, Hinkie did not respond, and Ferkel didn't answer an e-mail last week requesting comment. No matter: It's safe to assume Embiid was never going to suit up this season, regardless of the speed and success of his rehab.

Defending the Sixers' apparent refusal to activate Embiid is easy enough. It's the prudent, patient course of action. There's too little potential benefit for him and too much of their rebuilding plan at stake to take the small chance that Embiid might again fracture his foot by playing this season.

"Could it re-break? Yes," Ferkel said. "It's very rare, but that can happen within any fracture that's occurred, especially a stress fracture." Better, then, to lower the odds of the injury's recurrence even more by minimizing as much risk as possible. And if sticking to that schedule means having to put up with the predictable weight gain and immaturity issues from a 20-year-old from Cameroon living on his own in America, those problems are still preferable to a catastrophic injury to the franchise's prospective centerpiece.

This isn't the Chicago Bulls and Derrick Rose's right knee or the Oklahoma City Thunder and the stress fracture in Kevin Durant's right foot. The Sixers aren't a team that could challenge for a championship if only their superstar were playing at even 85 percent. This isn't a close call, really, not from Hinkie's perspective as general manager or Brett Brown's as head coach, not from a pure basketball standpoint.

But as patient and low-key as Hinkie and Brown have been with Embiid, the people charged with shaping the Sixers' image have spent plenty of time and money tantalizing the public, selling Embiid as a savior. If he doesn't meet those expectations, whatever the reason, that kind of message can have damaging ramifications for a franchise trying to gain the trust of fans and customers.

Remember: Andrew Bynum was supposed to be a savior, too, and much of the backlash to the Carter-Williams trade was born of the perception - stoked by the Sixers themselves - that the flashy-yet-flawed MCW was a member of the team's indispensable core. He wasn't. Joel Embiid is. He might be its only member, and for the sake of the Sixers' future on the court and their credibility off it, he had better be worth the wait.