Joel Embiid to Have Season-Ending Surgery Tuesday
Joel Embiid was a (damaged) star prospect when he was drafted third overall by the Sixers in 2014. Now, he’ll have to wait at least another year before playing in an NBA game.
Yahoo! Sports reported Saturday that Embiid will have his second foot surgery in as many years this Tuesday and is expected to miss the upcoming NBA season, which the Sixers announced back in July.
The surgery will again be on Embiid’s right foot and will involve a bone graft procedure, Yahoo! reported. Embiid’s upcoming surgery is being likened to Kevin Durant‘s procedure on May 11th.
Embiid had attended the wedding of a Sixers coach over the weekend, and was seen without a walking boot, the Inquirer‘s Keith Pompey reported. Yahoo! added that a CT scan on Embiid’s foot showed it hadn’t healed as much as doctors anticipated, prompting the second surgery. Pompey reports that the foot was actually said to be in worse condition than at his previous evaluation.
Adding insult to injury for the Sixers is the fact that Embiid’s right foot is not covered under the league’s insurance policy, as ESPN’s Darren Rovell reported yesterday. Rovell says that the Sixers have insurance on Embiid’s contract — which pays him $9 million in guaranteed money to effectively have surgery and sit on the bench — but because his foot injury was a pre-existing condition, they won’t be able to recoup $5.4 million (roughly 60 percent) they would have otherwise.
However, Rovell reported, Embiid does have a personal insurance policy that he can collect from because of his injury under certain conditions.
With Embiid set to miss his second consecutive NBA season, the last time he will have played competitively is as a college student at the University of Kansas.
The Sixers have other young centers — Nerlens Noel and recently drafted Jahlil Okafor — in the fold. Yahoo! says Embiid is expected to be ready for training camp in 2016, provided, of course, that everything goes well with his recovery this time.
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