Philadelphia 76ers<\/a> pinned their playoff hopes on the health of a player who is unable to stay healthy.<\/p>\nAgain, the same-old 76ers are stuck in the middle-of-the-road come April.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a big bummer, man,\u201d coach Nick Nurse said. \u201cFor him, first. And then everything else.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still easing back from knee injuries that shortened his season, Embiid got appendicitis last week and needed an appendectomy in Houston. While the 76ers haven\u2019t given a timetable on his return, the seven-time All-Star is out for the\u00a0NBA play-in tournament game\u00a0Wednesday night at home against Orlando and, should the Sixers win, is surely out of action at least for a first-round series against Boston.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the hell, appendicitis?\u201d his former coach, Doc Rivers, said over the weekend. \u201cYou can\u2019t make it up. You really can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s this time of year, right?” Rivers said.<\/p>\n
In 2024, Embiid played in the playoffs through a bout with\u00a0Bell\u2019s palsy, a form of facial paralysis. He wore sunglasses to the podium after he\u00a0scored 50 points\u00a0in the Sixers\u2019 Game 3 win over the Knicks and said at the time he was dealing with various symptoms, such as blurred vision and dry eyes.<\/p>\n
A year earlier, Embiid missed a playoff game in each of two series because of a\u00a0sprained right knee.<\/p>\n
How about 2022? The Sixers won 51 games under Rivers and had a great chance at a deep playoff run until Embiid suffered a\u00a0right orbital fracture\u00a0and a concussion when he was hit in the face by Toronto’s Pascal Siakam. He also suffered a torn ligament in his right thumb. Embiid missed two games in a second-round series against Miami. The Sixers lost both games and the series, 4-2.<\/p>\n
Embiid missed one game in the 2021 playoffs with a torn meniscus in his right knee.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still believe if we had one healthy year, probably more the first year, and the last year, we would have advanced,\u201d Rivers said. \u201cI hate saying that. But I think it’s pretty obvious we would have.\u201d<\/p>\n
Go back before Rivers’ tenure, and Embiid missed one playoff game in 2019 and two in 2018 with injuries.<\/p>\n
Embiid was hampered this season by a strained oblique muscle, a shin stress fracture and continued issues with both knees that limited him to 38 games. He hasn’t played since April 6.<\/p>\n
The Sixers had been doing a fine job of managing Embiid’s minutes, and it helped him turn a corner in January when he played in 14 of 17 games (he didn’t play a back-to-back set all season) and capped the month with 40 points and 11 rebounds in a win over New Orleans. He had 34 points against San Antonio in his final game.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old Embiid averaged 26.9 points and 7.7 rebounds this season until he needed the appendectomy.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll signs are pointing that everything\u2019s going just fine,\u201d Nurse said. \u201cExtremely tough. It\u2019s pretty serious, right? I think that\u2019s the big thing to kind of keep in mind. Obviously, the timing\u2019s not great. I think he was on an uptick as far as where he was going, as far as playing-wise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Led by All-Star guard Tyrese Maxey and rookie standout V.J. Edgecombe, the Sixers are 1 1\/2-point favourites to beat the Magic, according to BetMGM Sportsbook. The Sixers have 15-1 odds to win the NBA title, and while they would not have been the betting favourite even with a healthy Embiid, they surely would have been in the mix as stronger contenders.<\/p>\n
Sixers fans can rattle off the sombre statistics by heart.<\/p>\n
No NBA championship since 1983. No NBA Finals since 2001. No second-round series win since 2001.<\/p>\n
Rivers’ three-season coaching stint in Philadelphia was doomed in 2023 when the Sixers blew a 3-2 second-round series lead to the Celtics with a Game 6 loss at home and dropped Game 7 in Boston.<\/p>\n
Nurse hasn’t been any better, suffering a first-round loss to the Knicks in 2024, and they failed to make the playoffs last season when Embiid, Maxey and Paul George (who served a\u00a025-game suspension\u00a0this season for failing a drug test) all were hurt for the bulk of a 24-win season.<\/p>\n
They’ll go at it against Orlando’s Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner, who would love to attack the rim against the backup centre combination of Andre Drummond and Adem Bona the Sixers are forced to use.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey’ve been one of the many teams in the league that hasn’t been very healthy this year,\u201d Nurse said. \u201cReally tough game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just one more tough one in the playoffs for the Sixers without Embiid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA \u2014 The\u00a0Joel Embiid\u00a0medical malady update itself is no longer surprising. There will be one \u2014 there\u00a0always is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-603992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603992","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=603992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}