Joel Embiid Illness Leads to Emergency Surgery — And the Sixers’ Season Is Essentially Over

Joel Embiid woke up in Houston at around three in the morning on a Thursday with so much stomach pain that he was barely able to stand. He made contact with the team’s medical personnel. He was undergoing surgery by noon. The Philadelphia 76ers’ best player was in a hospital bed recuperating from an appendectomy by the time they took on the Houston Rockets that evening, with three games remaining in the regular season and a playoff seeding battle. Quietly but firmly, the season was over.

It’s the type of thing that sounds fictional. However, it carries a somber, familiar weight for anyone who has followed Embiid closely over the years. A fractured orbital bone, a concussion, a torn thumb ligament, Bell’s palsy, and numerous knee injuries are just a few of the ailments that have hindered or prevented him throughout his career. Appendicitis is new in some way. At this point, it almost seems less like misfortune and more like an unbreakable pattern.

Joel Embiid

Embiid has been sidelined for approximately a month due to an oblique strain; he returned on March 25. This is his most recent season affected by injuries. He was only able to play in 38 of the team’s 80 games this season due to problems with both knees and a shin stress reaction. He was truly brilliant in between those absences. He averaged 29.4 points on 19.5 shots in nearly 34 minutes per game between December 7 and February 7. During the last eleven games of that run, he scored 30 points or more eight times. For a while in January, the word “back” was used without irony. The 2023 MVP-winning Embiid, who averaged 33 points, appeared to be making a comeback. Then, as if on cue, the body declined once more.

The surgery took place about twenty-four hours after Embiid had participated fully in what coach Nick Nurse called an “unbelievable” Wednesday of team practice and film study in Houston. During a conversation that Wednesday, his All-Star teammate Tyrese Maxey reportedly sensed something. Embiid “didn’t sound great,” according to Maxey. He simply sounded ill. The stomach ache started a few hours later. He was listed as out with a nonspecific illness in the injury report by Thursday morning. They discovered it was appendicitis by the afternoon. While the game was going on, the team declared that the surgery was finished. After taking a pregame nap, VJ Edgecombe woke up to a missed call from his mother and questioned whether the information was real.

As you watch this happen, it’s difficult not to feel something—not quite sympathy, but something close to it. Embiid, a 32-year-old seven-time All-Star who weighs 280 pounds on a seven-foot frame, has fought through conditions that would end most players’ seasons without a second thought for his entire career. He battled back from a meniscus tear, an orbital fracture, a concussion, and ultimately Bell’s palsy affecting the left side of his face, all at different points during different playoff years. He once played through knee tendinitis and an upper respiratory infection in the same postseason. It was assumed that he would persevere each time. He did for the most part. There was no pushing through this time.

After missing the team’s morning film session, Embiid publicly chastised the organization last week for keeping him out of an April 1 victory at Washington due to an illness. He directed any further inquiries to Daryl Morey, president of basketball operations, saying he was “ticked off” to learn online that he would not be participating. There is genuine tension there, which is noteworthy. The illness that prevented him from playing that day and the appendicitis that developed a few days later may be related in some way, but neither the team nor Embiid’s representatives have made that clear.

Embiid missed 44 games this season alone as a result of illness, injury management, an oblique strain, and other problems. In contrast, the Sixers have played more games this season without Embiid (42) than they have with him (38). For a team that is based almost entirely on the presence of one player, that is an impressive statistic. Without him, the burden is placed on Maxey and the up-and-coming Edgecombe, who are both young and gifted but probably insufficient for a deep postseason run. An elite athlete’s recovery from an appendectomy usually takes two to four weeks, but conditioning and ramp-up time can significantly extend that window, making his return for any playoff action all but impossible.

The more general question is whether a team organized in this manner can ever truly succeed. Philadelphia has been quietly considering this question for a few years. When in good health and locked in, Embiid is among the best big men in history. That is an observable fact, not sentiment. No matter how good those 38 games appear on a stat sheet, a franchise cannot thrive on 38-game seasons. The Sixers are not the first team to struggle with this. Years ago, the Oklahoma City Thunder had to deal with the same impossible math when Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant were both talented but prone to injuries. The window was always slightly open but never completely open.

There’s a feeling in Philadelphia right now that something needs to change, whether it’s the way the roster is constructed, how Embiid’s body is handled, or perhaps the more unsettling concerns about the long-term viability of focusing everything on a player whose availability can vanish in the middle of the night in a hotel room in Houston. There are no simple answers to any of those questions. All that can be done for the time being is wish him well and look forward to the next chapter.