PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia 76ers are laboring beneath one large question mark, and it’s not the one elucidated daily on the injury report.
Joel Embiid’s status had long been straightforward. When Embiid was healthy, the 76ers tended to win games. When he wasn’t, they struggled. The only quandary was how to get and keep him healthy.
But a disaster of a 2024-25 season has introduced a middle path, where a version of Embiid at less than full strength has dragged the 76ers down.
They escaped that fate Monday night with Chicago in town for a meeting of teams sitting 10th and 12th in the Eastern Conference, carrying losing streaks that summed to 15 and teetering on the line between tanking and pushing for the playoffs.
Embiid was ruled out with left knee management, though the more apt euphemistic noun was probably “exploration,” the 76ers testing the knee and trying to divine a way forward.
According to reports, that direction might include another surgical procedure to clean up last February’s left meniscus repair, something Embiid hinted at this month.
“He did have some testing earlier today, which ruled him out of tonight’s game,” coach Nick Nurse said pregame. “There’s still further testing going on today and continuing tomorrow.”
Embiid’s lingering knee issues have thrown a wrench into what had been a tidy binary.
Embiid, the 2023-24 NBA MVP, was limited to 39 games last season. The 76ers were 31-8 with him, 16-27 without.
This year, that duality has broken down, as has about everything else for the 20-36 76ers, losers of seven straight and 9 of 10 entering Monday.
Embiid has not been the All-Star version of himself. The 76ers have lost each of his last five appearances and are just 8-11 with him this year.
In six games since returning from a 15-game absence with a foot sprain and then a flareup of the knee, Embiid has been negative on plus-minus five times.
He’s averaging 32 minutes per contest, shooting 42.7 percent from the field with 22.5 points, 8.7 rebounds and 5.8 assists per outing.
He scored 15 points and was a minus-20 in 27 minutes Thursday in a loss to Boston, then didn’t play in the fourth quarter of Saturday’s loss to Brooklyn, which Nurse said was for purely strategic reasons.
“Where I was playing a year ago is not the way I’m playing right now,” he said Thursday after a loss to Boston, before declining to speak to media Saturday. “It sucks, but I believe I probably need to fix the problem and then I’ll be back at that level. It’s hard to get that trust when you’re not yourself. I’m not as dominant as I was a couple of months ago, but that doesn’t mean I still can’t have a lot of impact on the game.”
The reception from the locker room has, so far, been outwardly understanding.
Tyrese Maxey, the leader in Embiid’s absence, has seen the seven-time All-Star at his best and joins him in mourning that version’s absence. He’s spending his efforts checking in to make sure Embiid is OK on a personal level, on and off the court.
“It’s bigger than basketball for us,” Maxey said. “We just appreciate him putting his body on the line for us every night, coming out here and trying to fight with us.”
Nurse echoed the sentiment, grateful that Embiid is giving what he can, however diminished that is. It’s intertwined with Nurse’s nightly quest to assemble the team best suited to win basketball games, though even that aim is not as straightforward as it once was.
The 76ers entered Tuesday 12th in the East, a game and a half behind the Bulls for the final spot in the play-in tournament.
President of basketball operations Daryl Morey’s stated goal at the trade deadline, in pruning the salary budget to obtain long-term flexibility, was to do what it took to reach the play-in as they did last year and see what they could do.
Without control of their 2025 first-round pick, which conveys to Oklahoma City if outside the top 6, losing would increase the 76ers’ chances of retaining the pick.
All the messaging thus far has continued to focus on trying to win. A healthy Embiid is the biggest asset to that.
If that is physically impossible, then the next biggest might be a concrete determination that Embiid is out. The 76ers, for instance, won four straight games in January without Embiid in part because they knew who and what they would have every night.
“It’s all been challenging,” Nurse said. “The sheer number of guys that have been out, and in and out, and him not playing and then him playing at less than his best. All those things have all been a challenge that we just try to figure out night to night and take it as it comes.”
Source: Berkshire mont
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