{"id":17510,"date":"2025-07-17T23:11:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T23:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/17510\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T23:11:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T23:11:11","slug":"patient-joel-embiid-says-no-timeline-set-for-his-return-but-hopes-its-sooner-rather-than-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/17510\/","title":{"rendered":"Patient Joel Embiid says no timeline set for his return, but hopes it’s ‘sooner rather than later’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Philadelphia is the hardest team to project in next season\u2019s Eastern Conference. If healthy, they are legit title contenders \u2014 but \u201cif\u201d is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Paul George has had offseason knee surgery<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As for former MVP Joel Embiid, he is taking a more patient approach with his body this season, following knee issues and an eventual surgery that limited him to 19 games last season. In a fantastic in-depth profile of Embiid by Dotun Akintoye at ESPN<\/a>, Embiid said he was going to be patient with getting his body right for this season, but that means there is no timeline for his return.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not going to push anything,\u201d he says. \u201cFor my whole career, I felt like we never took that approach…<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have a timeline,\u201d Embiid tells me. \u201cHopefully, sooner rather than later.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 76ers are hopeful that timeline will have him back for training camp in September. That\u2019s also when George will be re-evaluated.<\/p>\n

Pain in his left knee had sidelined Embiid at the start of last season \u2014 coming off winning a gold medal with USA Basketball at the Paris Olympics, where his defense on Nikola Jokic in the Serbian game was critical \u2014 but he eventually played 19 games spaced out between November and February. When he did he was his dominant self, averaging 23.8 points and 8.2 rebounds a game, but the pain became too much and he had knee surgery that ended his season. <\/p>\n

Embiid wants to be playing at the end of the season, in the playoffs, and hopes this patient approach gets him there. He\u2019s also dictating to the team, this is how things are going to go.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only thing I\u2019d say is — this is a business,\u201d Embiid tells me. \u201cIt\u2019s all about the results. … If I come back early enough and I\u2019m still not myself, guess what? You\u2019re not winning any games.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Philadelphia is the hardest team to project in next season\u2019s Eastern Conference. If healthy, they are legit title…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17511,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":["post-17510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}