Joel Embiid described his current situation as fluid Wednesday and defended himself against some of the attacks on his character.
While we’ll all have to wait a little longer for Joel Embiid to play his first game of the 2024-25 season, he did address the media for the first time since the team was in the Bahamas for training camp.
While he doesn’t have a definitive date for when he’ll be back on the court, he explained why it’s a fluid process, the mental toll this specific injury has caused him, and how his experience with the Olympics impacted him.
Embiid has said many times that this was the toughest injury for him to go through mentally. It certainly can’t help that his ability to play since his surgery in February is dependent on how his body reacts to action on a day-to-day basis.
“For some reason, this one was just different,” he said at the team’s practice facility Wednesday.
He mentioned a couple times that he doesn’t want to put a date on his debut for that reason. He doesn’t want to wake up that day with his knee not feeling right and have people upset that he’s not playing.
It’s still hard for him as a competitor to not be out there every game, especially with the team off to a slow start in his absence. He seems to have accepted that’s just not going to be his reality.
“I think everybody that knows me knows that I would love to be out there … every single game,” he said. “It’s just unfortunate that some of them are not as lucky as others to be part of every single game. I wish that wasn’t the case, but it’s not for a lack of trying.”
He added that the knee situation is probably something they’re “going to have to manage all season.”
Embiid said now his focus is making sure he’s as good as he can possibly be physically and mentally before taking the court. A big reason is he has rushed back onto the floor too early in the past — multiple times.
He was detailing how your body can tell you one thing one day, and something different the next before just simply saying, “I mean I’ve done it. I’ve broken my face twice, I came back early with the risk of losing my vision, had broken fingers, I still came back.”
He’s had to see people call him out for not wanting to play, despite feeling that that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“I do think it’s bullshit,” he said. “I’ve done way too much for this fucking city to be treated like this, way too much.”
A lot of that type of criticism will come to Embiid no matter what he does. If he had suited up for the home opener and the Sixers had beaten the Bucks, those same people would have said something to the effect of “tell me when they do it May.” Instead he chose to sit out until his knee felt right, and had to be called lazy and out of shape for it.
Of course the team’s messaging, or lack thereof, didn’t help him in terms of public perception, Embiid seems to have moved past that. He knows it’s a lose-lose scenario, so he’s going to make sure he can get the best version of himself in order to get the best version of this team.
“I’m in a good place now, you know, mentally, physically,” he said. “Now it’s all about getting reps, you know, getting back in game shape.”
He still didn’t give a date on when he’ll be out there as he continues to manage it, but he does believe it will be soon.