As first reported by ESPN’s Marc Stein, the Sixers are starting to move in a direction that many felt was inevitable with injured star center Joel Embiid. The Rookie of the Year frontrunner (well, before he got hurt) will have surgery in the next few days.
Before the team took on the Oklahoma City Thunder, Brett Brown and the team confirmed the upcoming procedure. From the Inquirer's Keith Pompey:
The Sixers would not disclose the date, hospital, or type of meniscus surgery Embiid will have. Brown would not say if the rookie would return by the start of next season.
“That’s stuff that we will be able to talk more about and learn more about,” he said Wednesday before the game against the Oklahoma City Thunder at Chesapeake Energy Arena.
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Embiid suffered the bone bruise/torn meniscus while dunking in a January game against the Portland Trailblazers. He would come back a week later against the Houston Rockets (and play well), which would turn out to be his last game of the season.
Even though he was able to practice at times and admittedly looked pretty good, Embiid struggled with swelling and discomfort on the days following those practices. On March 1st, it was finally announced that Embiid would miss the rest of the season after an MRI had revealed the meniscus tear had become more pronounced.
"The assessment of Monday's follow-up MRI of Joel Embiid's left knee appears to reveal that the area affected by the bone bruise has improved significantly, while the previously identified meniscus tear appears more pronounced in this most recent scan," Sixers Chief Medical Director Dr. Jonathan Glashow said in a team release.
Most recently, Embiid and Dr. David Martin, the Sixers' director of performance research and development, recently spent time in California meeting with specialists.
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