Joel Embiid will not play again in the 2024-25 season, the Sixers announced Friday.
Joel Embiid’s season will mercifully come to an end.
The Sixers’ star center will be shut down for the rest of the 2024-25 season because of continued swelling and pain in his surgically repaired left knee, the team announced Friday. The former MVP played in just 19 games this season and never came close to regaining his superstar form.
— Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) February 28, 2025
There will be much hand-wringing over what went wrong. Should Embiid have not come back for that first-round playoff series against the New York Knicks having had surgery just eight weeks prior? Should he have taken the summer off to rehab and strengthen his knee instead of helping Team USA win a gold medal in Paris? Should he have taken a similar path to Kawhi Leonard and sat out the first couple months of the season after swelling occurred ahead of training camp?
All worthwhile questions but unfortunately none of the answers will help the Sixers now or in the foreseeable future. Embiid signed a two-year extension (with a player option for a third year in 2028-29) this summer. His contract is likely immovable this summer, even if the Sixers wanted to explore a rebuild around Tyrese Maxey. As of now, the team’s best bet will be to run it back with this current group and hope for (significantly) better health from Embiid and Paul George.
There have been plenty of things to criticize Embiid for over the years, but this was a trying season for the Cameroonian big man. He did all he could — including losing a decent amount of weight — to try to ensure he’d be healthy come playoff time. Even in the games he could play this season, you could tell he was compromised.
Quotes like this after the Sixers’ most recent loss to the Boston Celtics were the most telling signs of Embiid dealing with severe physical limitations and mental struggles.
“The way I was playing a year ago is not the way I’m playing right now and it sucks,” Embiid said. “But I believe I probably need to fix the problem and I’ll be back at that level. But it’s hard to have the trust when you’re not yourself.”
The ability to “fix the problem” seems a bit more complicated. There is no magical surgery Embiid can undergo that will fix his balky knee. There are a few outside-the-box treatment ideas, as Kyle Neubeck of PHLY laid out earlier this week, but nothing that is a surefire remedy. We spoke with a sports medicine doctor earlier this season, with the prevailing thought being that Embiid did not spend enough time rehabbing and strengthening his knee post-surgery.
The team has been steadfast in saying that the half-dozen medical experts they consulted prior to Embiid signing his extension all shared optimism about the big man’s knee. The thinking was it could improve and that the pain and swelling could subside and potentially even stop. Those same experts are not recommending surgery at this time, a league source tells Liberty Ballers.
Whatever the case, there is no quick fix. Embiid is likely in for an arduous offseason if he hopes to reclaim his MVP form — or something close to it — for 2025-26.
“But my dominant self, I’ll get there,” Embiid said. “It’s just tough because you know you can do so much more. There’s no excuses; it’s just the way it is. Just got to keep finding ways to figure it out and get better.”
At least now there is closure for Embiid and the Sixers with an eye towards next season.