The concern has not dissipated in Philadelphia, four days after Joel Embiid’s injury against Golden State. According to The Athletic and journalist Shams Charania, the Cameroonian pivot naturalized American suffers from the left meniscus of which a lateral fragment has moved. Absent during the victory against Utah on Thursday (127-124), the reigning MVP of the regular season discusses with his franchise around two hypotheses: prolonged rest or an operation, automatically synonymous with long unavailability, probably several months.
Warriors winger Jonathan Kuminga fell on Embiid’s already fragile left knee. The native of Yaoundé (Cameroon) suffered, according to The Athletic, from pain in this area since the beginning of January and had already missed three matches for this reason.
His injury should extinguish his last chances of winning a second MVP title for which he was still favorite with 35.3 points (best mark in the NBA), 11.3 rebounds and 5.7 assists on average.
The MVP trophy flies away
Under a rule introduced this year, a player who does not play a total of 65 matches during the regular season is no longer eligible to obtain an individual end-of-season reward. With his absence in Utah, Embiid only had four “jokers”, which he should quickly exhaust. The countdown is now on for Philadelphia for the final phase which will start on April 16 with the “play-in” (play-offs for teams ranked between 7th and 10th place in each conference).
The Sixers (30 wins – 17 losses) are fifth in the East and will count in particular on Tyrese Maxey, called to the All-Star Game, to avoid seeing their lead over the rest of the pack melt away too quickly. Embiid had also been pre-selected by Team USA to compete in the Paris Olympic Games starting July 26.
2024-02-03 19:03:53
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