Joel Embiid is one of the best superstars in the league, and there’s no doubt that he has been dominant over the course of his career. He averaged 28.5 PPG and 10.6 RPG over the course of the 2020-21 season. It is obvious that he is a force to be reckoned with if he’s healthy.
His statistics are down across the board thus far in the 2021-22 season though, and he’s only averaging 19.3 PPG and 7.3 RPG currently. Perhaps the cause of that could be a meniscus injury. Ramona Shelburne has recently shared that Joel Embiid “couldn’t walk for two days” after the 76ers faced the Pelicans and that he’s playing through injury to keep the 76ers afloat while they are without Ben Simmons.
He told me after the game in New Orleans, he couldn’t walk for two days. He still went out and played in Oklahoma City, and he played against the Knicks and the Nets.
He is playing because Ben Simmons is not playing. They need one of them on the court. He wants show leadership at this moment… you don’t want to fall behind to where you cannot come back.
He’s settling for a midrange game that he doesn’t have right now. The idea with Embiid is he lost out on the MVP last year because he didn’t play quite enough games. He doesn’t want to do that again this year.
There is a sense that maybe he should sit a game or two and get that knee right. It is a meniscus injury, and it flared up after knocking knees with Valanciunas.
Hopefully, Joel Embiid can recover soon. He is one of the most entertaining players in the league, and if he has to sit to nurse a serious injury, then it is probably the best course of action for his career.
Joel Embiid has previously talked about playing injured during the playoffs and stated that he still had to do his job while adding that he wanted to win a championship. The best chance the 76ers have of winning a championship is with Joel Embiid, and it seems as though he should take some regular-season games to get himself right. Perhaps we’ll see him back to his dominant self soon enough, and the 76ers will certainly need him at his best to be competitive.
