{"id":221803,"date":"2025-10-18T08:27:45","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T08:27:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/221803\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T08:27:45","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T08:27:45","slug":"joel-embiid-stamps-major-top-100-basketball-player-statement-in-his-nba-return-for-76ers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/221803\/","title":{"rendered":"Joel Embiid stamps major \u2018Top 100 basketball player\u2019 statement in his NBA return for 76ers"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a grinding process, but Joel Embiid finally made his highly anticipated comeback to the hardwood.<\/p>\n

After a long injury recovery, the superstar big man played for the 2025 preseason finale of the Philadelphia 76ers<\/a>, spearheading the team\u2019s dominant 126-110 victory over the visiting Minnesota Timberwolves<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Friday night, Embiid gave 76ers fans a special treat as he showed promising signs that he\u2019s still that dominant center that everybody knows. Numbers simply backed it up as for just 19 minutes of play, he dropped a near triple-double statline of 14 points, eight assists and seven rebounds.<\/p>\n

Embiid moved pretty well from dribbling the ball and driving through the basket. And from his assists numbers, he also flashed craftiness in locating his teammates to score.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a076ers\u2019 Nick Nurse reveals Paul George’s status for opening night<\/a><\/p>\n

With the hit-ahead passes he made throughout the game, Embiid offered an intriguing statement for those who are doubting his place in the league.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see all these guys. I\u2019m here to help out. According to a lot of your peers, I\u2019m not even a Top 100 basketball player in this league. So I guess I just got to fit in and see where I can help the team win,\u201d he told the media while smiling in his postgame presser.<\/a><\/p>\n

It was indeed a tremendous return-to-play performance for Embiid after being limited to just 19 games from the previous 2024-25 season and ultimately undergoing left knee arthroscopic surgery this past April.<\/p>\n

Embiid is fully ecstatic that his return is now in the books, as he and the Sixers will now take everything one step at a time in pursuing the upcoming 2025-26 regular season.<\/p>\n

“I don\u2019t want to think about the past,” Embiid further added. “I\u2019m just in a good space mentally, physically. I\u2019m just happy to touch a basketball and be able to play basketball and do what I love. When you don\u2019t get that, it\u2019s tough, but that\u2019s what I\u2019m most happy about.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cTonight, that\u2019s all I kept thinking about. I\u2019m on the court playing basketball, doing some good things, helping us win, and that\u2019s really what I was focusing on.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0More NBA News:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a grinding process, but Joel Embiid finally made his highly anticipated comeback to the hardwood. After…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28056,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-221803","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}