Philadelphia 76ers coach Nick Nurse expressed optimism about Joel Embiid’s return to the court docket, saying his latest sinus fracture is “not as unhealthy” as the 2 earlier facial fractures suffered by the 2023 NBA Most Valuable Player in his profession.
Embiid was injured within the first half of Friday night time’s 121-107 loss to the Indiana Pacers when he was hit within the face by Bennedict Mathurin whereas trying a defensive rebound.
The 76ers mentioned Embiid will probably be re-evaluated in every week.
Embiid is not going to play Monday night time in opposition to the Charlotte Hornets.
“The solely factor I can evaluate it to is I wasn’t right here, however he definitely had these others that had been rather a lot worse,” Nurse mentioned earlier than the Hornets sport. “It’s not as unhealthy as these two, from what they inform me. So I assume it is good as a result of these had been fairly powerful – these two – they usually say it isn’t that unhealthy.”
In 2018, Embiid fractured his left orbital bone and suffered a concussion when he collided with teammate Markelle Fultz, sidelining him for the ultimate eight video games of the common season and the primary two video games of the 2018 NBA Playoffs .
In April 2022, Embiid took an elbow from Pascal Siakam in Philadelphia’s Game 6 sequence win, inflicting a fractured proper orbital and forcing the seven-time All-Star to overlook the primary two video games of the Eastern Conference Semifinals in reason behind the damage. .
Embiid has performed simply six video games this season resulting from knee soreness and is averaging simply 20.3 factors per sport for the 76ers (7-16), properly under his profession common.
“Listen, it is laborious sufficient for him to prepare to go away,” the nurse added. “The knee after surgical procedure and all these issues are sufficient to deal with. That’s not going to assist his conditioning capability. He’s going to should get well from some of these things – respiratory is not going to be straightforward for some time, so clearly that makes the actually powerful stuff… He’s going to should cope with it. Hopefully he can get all these little issues out of the best way so he can deal with recovering his knee and getting again on the market for a number of video games.”
Associated Press reporting.
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