Well, any news is good news after what we all witnessed Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n
After the Sixers were thoroughly beaten by the Celtics in Game 1 in Boston, it appears there is a glimmer of hope that Joel Embiid can return before the series ends.<\/p>\n
The Sixers Monday announced that Embiid has started his strength and conditioning program.<\/p>\n
Embiid is back in Philly and not with the team in Boston.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to know what to make of this as far as when Embiid could return to action.<\/p>\n
Embiid underwent his emergency appendectomy on Thursday, April 9, so we\u2019re 11 days post-surgery. Again, this feels like positive news that he\u2019s even reached a stage where he can begin a strength and conditioning program \u2014 something he wouldn\u2019t be doing unless there was a chance he could come back \u2014 but there are likely many more hurdles to clear and much will depend on how Embiid\u2019s body responds.<\/p>\n
Remember, you\u2019re asking Embiid to play in NBA playoffs games against a great team when he\u2019s been unable to do much physically for over a week. That\u2019s an impossible ask. But if we\u2019ve learned anything about Embiid in recent years, it\u2019s that he\u2019s going to push to play \u2014 sometimes to his own detriment.<\/p>\n
Both Adem Bona, who got the starting nod, and Andre Drummond struggled mightily in Game 1. Both got in early foul trouble as well, only adding to the Sixers\u2019 litany of issues. It\u2019s painfully obvious that Embiid would help a great deal, but it\u2019s hard to know what to expect when\/if he comes back.<\/p>\n
The Sixers will be without Embiid for Game 2 in Boston Tuesday night. Could he be available when the series goes to Philly for Game 3 on Friday night? It appears we\u2019re back to playing the will he\/won\u2019t he game with Embiid yet again. To be honest, it\u2019s comfortable territory at this point.<\/p>\n
And it beats having to watch the version of the team we watched Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Well, any news is good news after what we all witnessed Sunday afternoon. After the Sixers were thoroughly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":714752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3769],"tags":[679,7,6,678,207,3817,50414,87144],"class_list":{"0":"post-714751","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-76ers","8":"tag-76ers","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-philadelphia-76ers","13":"tag-philadelphia76ers","14":"tag-sixers-injury-report","15":"tag-sixers-playoffs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116438615637972314","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=714751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/714752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}