The Joel Embid era in Philadelphia was feeling pretty good for a while there, wasn't it?
The Sixers announced tonight that Embiid's surgically repaired right foot has undergone "less healing than anticipated at this point." (The story was originally broken by Yahoo Sports.) One can only speculate at what the hell "less healing" actually means, but it's clearly not a good thing.
While we haven't seen much of Embiid since the season ended, he was looking fit and spry during the last of his pre-game warm ups. Shortly after those pre-game antics ramped up, Embiid was back in a walking boot and many saw that as a sign of a set back. However the Sixers assured everyone this was normal, and his activity continued to ramp up in the offseason. In fact it was only a few weeks ago that coach Brett Brown was assuring us all that Embiid would definitely be playing in Summer league, a sure sign that the rehab was progressing as planned.
While tempting to read into the language of the official release, it really is hard to know what this truly means from a health perspective. It might just be doctors and team execs taking extreme caution with someone who they believe to be the savior of the franchise. Maybe Joel feels fine and looks fine, but the docs saw something odd on a CT and want to shut him down. Sixers beat writer Bob Cooney had an interesting take:
Here's what should concern Sixers fans: team rarely issues statements on reports. The fact that they did on Embiid is curious.
— Bob Cooney (@BobCooney76) June 14, 2015
The Sixers are an incredibly tight lipped franchise under Sam Hinkie, and extremely calculating as well. They easily could have sat on this news for a while (maybe they did?), so why bother bringing it up? Is it to get ahead of the story for when they pull him from Summer league? Is it something else? All we know for sure is, it's time to FREAK OUT MAN!!!
