The NBA has launched an investigation into the Philadelphia 76ers’ involvement in All-NBA center Joel Embiid, league officials told ESPN.
Embiid did not play in preseason games for what the team called shock control in his left knee, nor in Wednesday’s season-opening 124-109 loss to the Milwaukee Dollars. He will miss two more games this month: Friday against the Toronto Raptors and Sunday against the Indiana Pacers.
It is traditional for the NBA to investigate a team whenever a famous player misses a nationally televised game, as per its player participation policy.
The 76ers said Embiid is “responding well to his individualized plan” and will ramp up his return-to-play activities this month in addition to holding scrimmages.
This is part of Embiid’s pristine standard this season, resources say, a way to keep the 2022-23 NBA MVP healthy for the postseason. The plan was expected to include periodic off weeks during the regular season and routine checkups by the 76ers’ doctors and clinical staff, resources said.
Sixers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey told ESPN’s Tim Bontemps earlier this year that Philadelphia would try to keep Embiid and Paul George out of back-to-back games this season.
“Let’s be smart about it. Part of being smart is having both Paul [George] and Joel probably won’t play many consecutive games, if any,” Morey said.
Embiid also told Bontemps that “if I had to guess, I’d probably never play back-to-back games for the rest of my career.”
Embiid has lost between 25 and 30 pounds, with hopes of losing more, and will continue to wear a brace on his left knee even though it’s something he’d rather not do, rather than opting to keep it structurally. solid and safe as you can imagine.
Embiid played only 39 games last season due to knee injuries. He returned in the week to play games against the New York Knicks in the playoffs, but he wasn’t at 100%, and that was before he was dealing with an unexpected case of lineup-wide Bell’s palsy. He went straight to playing matches for Team USA this summer, helping the Americans win a fifth straight gold medal at the Paris Olympics.
