Joel Embiid will not return to Game 4 of the Sixers’ first-round series against Washington with right knee soreness, the team tweets.
Embiid played 11 minutes on Monday before retreating to the locker room. Initial speculation was that Embiid had a tailbone injury after taking a fall, but the team’s official announcement could be even more ominous.
Embiid underwent surgery on his left knee in 2017 and has dealt with soreness in that knee at times.
An extended absence for Embiid, who averaged 29.3 PPG in Philadelphia’s three victories in the series, would obviously be a crushing blow to the Sixers’ title hopes. If the Sixers are able to close out the series quickly, it would buy more time for Embiid to heal for the conference semifinals.
Luckily they still have a chance against Atlanta or NY if it’s not too major.
But it seems like this is what it is with Joel. And it’s a legitimate asterisk I think you have to put next to Philly when talking about them as a contender.
In the NBA, every team gets significantly weaker if their star player goes down. The Nets may be the exception with their big 3. But Embiid has had more injury concerns over his career than most.
This is why sixers fans like myself keep alcohol fully stocked.
Embiid and AD out \(o)(o)/
O
Some terrible officiating tonight. League clearly wanted another game for the $$$$. How it goes sometimes, hasn’t been a good year overall for officiating in any league though so I shouldn’t expect anything else except for Doc to get fined tonight for 25k.
Doc up 3-1… uh oh
Except those other times he wasn’t up 3-0 first.
If the Sixers find a way to blow a 3-0 lead, Doc should be fired.
Grizzlies can sweep 76ers without Embiid but not Wizards
Wizards are comparable to Pelicans
Lol I don’t expect WAS to win four straight against the Sixers. Just joking about 3-1. I’d love for it to get to 3-2 tho and see what happens!
He actually played well after the injury
It’s starting to happen to Anthony Davis. As NBA fans, we usually are not aware that we are watching just the handfull of seven foot men who are able to even walk around easily. Men that tall/large have typically had bone, muscle, joint problems. Doesn’t happen to ALL of them of course (Wilt, Kareem,etc). I remember San Bowie, Bill walton, Greg Oden, now Cousins. Embiid is the best center in the league , but it’s gonna be hold your breathe his whole career (like Bogut).
Strange that it was knee soreness since he landed squarely on his backside. I would have thought it would be a tailbone or lower back injury.
Stephen A jinxed them! He just announced yesterday he was predicting Sixers to win it all
If only Simmons could shoot. Doc & the fan boys continue to defend him though. So he won’t put in efforts to expand his game.
Nah, we are ready to deal him if he comes up small this playoff run. ESP if they get bounced early. Morey won’t let his value decline any more than this.
As a Pro-Simmons guy, his FT shooting is more of a problem than his lack of actual shooting. One of the reasons I valued the Jimmy Butler and JJ roster was if you kept those 2 and got swapped Simmons for a better shooting guard, you’d have a starting 5 shooting 80 to 95% from the line. And that is a huge deal in the playoffs. Sixers never got that guard on their bench at the time tho.
Not sure at this time who the return would be for Simmons, but my shopping list starts with Beal/Lillard and I’m willing to add the 1sts to do the deal. Younger than Harden matters.
I think if Simmons did start shooting 3s… fans would say… okay you can stop now.
Yup. This is why the Sixers should be looking for an Embiid trade, rather than a Simmons trade.