With the 2025-26 NBA season appearing to be another unpredictable campaign, the Philadelphia 76ers have every reason to feel hopeful about them making a grand return to relevance, if not outright contention. The team is staring at an Eastern Conference race that has no clear favorites, but arguably lesser top-end talent with a couple of legitimate title contenders already getting jettisoned from the title loop right from the get-go.
Yet despite the perennial optimism about the 76ers finally making a breakthrough, the franchise has yet to sniff any achievement it could boast of. That is a narrative that has been very tough to flip to their favor thanks in large part to injuries biting them the hardest, and last season was an emblematic example of that curse.
No matter how the rest of the offseason goes, Philadelphia will go wherever Joel Embiid takes them. He is still quite easily their best player, and the team is still constructed under the theory of him still being an unstoppable force from the center position.
But in that case, the team may have already encountered its biggest curveball right off the bat.
Grim Joel Embiid injury updates leaves 76ers fans guessing
As reported by Tony Jones from The Athletic, Embiid still has not done any on-court work at this very juncture, approximately three months following his most recent knee procedure — a surgical debridement.
This is definitely far from an encouraging turn of events for the team and the superstar. The procedure he undertook was one that the team and his camp penciled in as a minor one that should not sideline him for long, yet here we are again.
At this point, all that this confirms is that the 76ers (or even Embiid himself) resorted to a band-aid solution that will unlikely move the needle for him on his way to actual recovery, even if not necessarily leading to him getting back to 100 percent playing capacity.
If this keeps up, fans will witness an ugly instance bloom into a full-on trend, that is, Embiid taking up a lot of time just to be in playing shape due to the irreversible toll on his knees.
That is already seemingly the case for now, and if that spills over to training camp, and then to the regular season circuit, then the Philadelphia 76ers are in massive trouble, and fans would once again be in a world of misfortune, if not utter disappointment.