Training is exactly a week away for the Philadelphia 76ers and will be quickly followed by the beginning of the preseason. As the Sixers continue their ramp-up to the regular season, it's the perfect time for a new mini-series of articles on some of the major storylines this year.
First up: What if Joel Embiid was right about his surgery?
When Embiid underwent an arthroscopic procedure on his left knee earlier this summer, the decision was met with an understandable amount of skepticism. Embiid's injury history, especially lower-body injury history, is a list long and well-documented.
A knee scope—another name for the type of minimally invasive procedure Embiid had—is far from a guarantee of a solution when the greater issue is that, after years of damage from both injuries and the grind of the NBA, Embiid's knees have certainly seen a significant reduction in cartilage.
Coming back to that thought in a moment, let's first discuss how Joel Embiid got here, and why, despite the skepticism from the public and even the Sixers organization, Embiid may be right about his need for surgery.
On Jan. 30, 2024, Joel Embiid tore his meniscus in a game against the Golden State Warriors after forward Jonathan Kuminga dove after a loose ball, landing directly on Embiid's knee. After undergoing a meniscectomy—a removal of a portion of the meniscus—in February, Embiid returned to action two months later after missing 29 games.
The expected recovery was one to two months, so one cannot exactly say that he was rushed back, but given his size and injury history, some argued he should sit out the year and live to fight another day.
Regardless, Embiid returned to action ahead of the playoffs and, surprisingly, looked like his old self early on. That was the case until the Sixers faced the Orlando Magic on April 12, 2024.
Just before the first half came to a close, Embiid drove past Magic forward Jonathan Issac, eurostepping into the paint for the basket. He would immediately come up limping and would sub out on the very next possession.
Embiid returned in the second half but struggled and would then sit out in the team's final regular-season game, a matchup against the Brooklyn Nets, in preparation to face the Miami Heat in the play-in tournament.
Embiid's struggles continued against Miami, as he continued to look far less mobile than even a few days prior. Had it not been for the Nic Batum Game, the Sixers would have likely fallen in the matchup, in large part to Embiid's struggles.
As the team moved on to the first round of the playoffs, they faced the New York Knicks. Embiid began Game 1 on a solid enough note, scoring 19 points in the first half on relative efficiency. As that half came to a close, Embiid made a critical error, one that may have set his recovery back some ways.
In a moment of extreme confidence, Joel Embiid made an incredible, though completely ill-advised, highlight by throwing himself a lob off the glass and crashing down hard on the dunk for the bucket. Eventually, Embiid had to return to the ground, and when he did, all of his weight — at or around 300 pounds at the time — came down directly on his left knee, causing him to fall to the ground in pain immediately.
Embiid once again subbed out as quickly as possible, and though he would return to the game, he would not look the same for the rest of the series, or frankly, since.
The following year saw a ramp-up that bled into the season, which was followed by 19 games of basketball that were anything but consecutive and far below his standard for performance. Despite the organization's insistence that the road back to form for Embiid was dependent on his adjusting to the pain in his knee, the former MVP insisted that something was off and wanted to pursue surgical options.
Ultimately, Embiid underwent a knee scope this offseason, a type of arthroscopic surgery that is often used to clean debris from the area. The solution is far from a guarantee; it's not as though it's replacing any of the missing cartilage in his knee, but if Embiid had any loose bodies present, then there just might be something to his instinctual solution.
It's certainly possible that these "traumatic" instances that have come after Embiid's initial surgery have led to these loose bodies. Unfortunately, there is very little opportunity to peek behind the curtain of Embiid's health and confirm this. Throughout his career, Embiid has been quick to acknowledge his many injuries while also gatekeeping the finer details of his various conditions.
Symptoms of loose bodies in the knee include pain and stiffness, difficulty with range of motion or limited mobility, and a sensation of the knee locking or catching. That certainly does not sound entirely unlike what we've witnessed from Joel since his return.
This does not mean the return of MVP Embiid is around the corner, and these types of procedures may become a recurring theme for Embiid as opposed to a one-time fix, but there certainly is an argument to be made that the Sixers' star at least had a legitimate case for this procedure.
After all, it wouldn't be the first time that Embiid was right and the Sixers organization was wrong about an injury of his.
If Joel Embiid was right about his need for surgery, the Sixers could be looking at some semblance of a return for the most dominant player in this generation of the NBA, which is of no small importance as the team looks to rebound from a tumultuous season last year.
