Philadelphia is the hardest team to project in next season’s Eastern Conference. If healthy, they are legit title contenders — but “if” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Paul George has had offseason knee surgery.
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, 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.
“We’re not going to push anything,” he says. “For my whole career, I felt like we never took that approach…
“We don’t have a timeline,” Embiid tells me. “Hopefully, sooner rather than later.”
The 76ers are hopeful that timeline will have him back for training camp in September. That’s also when George will be re-evaluated.
Pain in his left knee had sidelined Embiid at the start of last season — 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 — 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.
Embiid wants to be playing at the end of the season, in the playoffs, and hopes this patient approach gets him there. He’s also dictating to the team, this is how things are going to go.
“The only thing I’d say is — this is a business,” Embiid tells me. “It’s all about the results. … If I come back early enough and I’m still not myself, guess what? You’re not winning any games.”
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