For his sake, let’s hope Joel Embiid’s surgery was not only successful but that in a year or so he shows no effects from it.
Embiid went under the knife on Friday to repair a stress fracture in the navicular bone of his right foot.
His agent says it went as well as could be expected, here are the tweets via Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports.
Your instinct here is right according to medical professionals — the more screws used, the worse the long-term prognosis. One would have been ideal, but it could have been worse at three or more.
Recovery is expected to take 4-6 months officially. My guess? Whoever drafts Embiid is going to do the same thing the Clippers did with Blake Griffin and what the Sixers did with Nerlens Noel last season — sit him. For the entire season.
The questions are who will draft him and how far Embiid ultimately falls down the board. The navicular bone is the same one that Yao Ming, Bill Walton and Zydrunas Ilgauskas battled, none of them terribly successfully. How far Embiid can come back and if this could be a chronic issue has to be on the minds of GMs in their draft war rooms.
That said, in a league without many dominant centers anymore, Embiid could become one and that makes him worth the gamble. He is incredibly athletic and mobile for someone his size and the question becomes will he be able to move the same way. He can protect the rim and rebounds, his offensive game is all about potential but he made leaps during his season at Kansas.
I’d be surprised if Embiid got past the five slot, but it depends on what teams take away from this surgical report.
To his credit, Embiid has remained optimistic.
