Tonight at the TD Garden, the Philadelphia 76ers and the league-leading Boston Celtics will play in primetime. With Joel Embiid sidelined as he continues to treat his damaged knee, Philadelphia has been losing ground in the standings over the past few weeks, and it looks as though their misery may never end.
The league’s reigning MVP was already injured going into the Sixers game against Golden State on the 6th of February. He gutted it out that game, trying to help his team keep pace with this Celtics team while simultaneously trying to reach the obligatory 65 games needed to be eligible for the MVP trophy and First-Team All NBA for a second straight year.
He played in that game with a brace on that already banged up knee, and things went from bad to worse for him and the Sixers late in that game when he hit the deck trying to recover a loose ball. Johnathan Kuminga dove for the loose ball as well and landed on Embiid’s injured knee sending him limping off to the locker room, and the Cameroonian center hasn’t played since.
He underwent surgery to repair the meniscus in his left knee, and his initial appointment was for a follow-up evaluation in four weeks. The Sixers have postponed that projection to six to eight weeks, which is concerning news for their playoff situation. That would have been sometime next week.
Embiid was in the hunt for a second straight MVP award this season, as the league’s leading scorer with 35.3 points to go along with his 11.3 rebounds and 5.7 assists. Since his injury the Sixers have plummeted down the Eastern Conference standings, from 2nd all the way to 5th and are now closer to the Play-In (1.5 games ahead of Orlando in 8th) than they are to the first place Celtics (12 games ahead of Philly).
After the rescheduling of his evaluation, the earliest he can return is mid-March, and that’s if he even returns this season. If and when the news comes that their big man can make a comeback, the Sixers will go back to being one of the most dangerous teams in the East. The questions are, will he be back? When will that be? And where will the Sixers be in the East after Embiid’s long spell on the sidelines?
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