Philadelphia sports have been pretty busy as of late, especially for the middle of August. However you want to slice it — Utley and Eagles or Eagles and Utley — there has been plenty to talk about during what is usually a slow time on the sports calendar. Slightly under the radar (or as much as any story can be today) was the surgery on Joel Embiid’s navicular bone that took place last week at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City.
There was some uncertainty surrounding Embiid’s surgery. Sixers general manager Sam Hinkie’s timeline of 7-10 days after it was initially announced fell about a month short of when the procedure actually took place. According to Hinkie, time wasn’t necessarily of the essence in this case.
“We grew comfortable during that period that there weren’t particular risks to waiting,” Hinkie said. “I think time is on our side here. Obviously, this is a surgery with a very long recovery period.”
Makes sense. Embiid is going to miss the entire 2015-16 season anyway as the Sixers will again proceed with extreme caution in his rehab. Losing a month’s recovery time isn’t quite as important with the 2016-17 season as the true target date for the 7-footer’s return. As evidenced by the dream team of five doctors that performed the procedure, the Sixers and Embiid wanted to get the surgery right first and foremost.
Hinkie made the media rounds last week to answer questions about his injured center, which included a conference call with reporters. Better late than never, here are five takeaways from what the Sixers general manager had to say.
1. There were two major reasons for the delay
“In hindsight, one of the things I said at the time and we put in the release was that we expected the procedure would take place in the next 7-10 days,” Hinkie said. “I think my estimate stunk there, but at the same time within a few days, as we kept doing research, I didn’t particularly care honestly. It was not about me, it’s about getting the answer right.”
Embiid wanted to do some additional due diligence, which included picking the brains of other NBA players who had firsthand experience with the surgeons being considered. Some were from the agency that represents him, Wasserman Media Group, and others came from elsewhere. Kevin Durant, who had the same surgery at the same hospital performed by the same doctor (Dr. Martin O’Malley, apparently taking a lot of time off from the campaign trail) in March, was one of those players.
Second, Hinkie said it wasn’t particularly easy to round up the group of five in-demand doctors, coordinate their schedules, and get them all in the same place at the same time. Remember that the last time Embiid underwent surgery right before the 2014 NBA Draft, he wasn’t a member of the Sixers yet. While this wasn’t his first rodeo, the team had never gone through this whole experience before.
2. Bone grafts don’t sound like fun
“It leaves you with a sore hip, by the way,” Hinkie said. “It doesn’t last for [longer than] a week or so, but you know, if people didn’t punch a hole in your hip, you’d prefer it.”
No surgeries are fun, but this one sounded especially like a chore. And well, I’ll just let Hinkie have the floor and describe what exactly a bone graft is:
So there you have it. If Embiid does make a full recovery, he’ll have his pelvis to thank. For now, all he has to show for his trouble is a pretty sore hip.
3. Embiid didn’t re-break his foot
Since word initially leaked about Embiid’s setback in June, “less healing than anticipated” was the company line about the fracture site (navicular bone). There was a report that the 21-year-old center re-broke his foot, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
According to Hinkie, who described himself as “kind of a nightmare in a doctor’s office” due to the sheer number of questions he fires off, Embiid would have been in “a shocking amount of pain” during his routine checkup if he indeed re-broke his right foot:
From there, the story has been public knowledge for a decent bit of time: The Sixers consulted a host of medical experts around the world in an attempt to better figure out what they were dealing with and how to proceed. Those experts nearly unanimously determined that Embiid would need another surgery. In this case, the information the Sixers were giving was vague because they weren’t sure what exactly had happened*.
*Credit to Hinkie for explaining all of this in detail after the fact.
4. Hinkie expects more from Embiid this time around
Brett Brown talked about Embiid’s work ethic right after the season, about how there were times he wasn’t happy with his injured rookie. Then again, Brown quickly followed up his original statement by pointing out that he understood why a young guy who can’t play basketball might make a few mistakes along the road to recovery.
In the same way, Hinkie talked about perspective (for example, he mentioned that Embiid was living in Cameroon just four years ago) and how he was pleased with Embiid’s approach last season. But…
“I found his diligence to be good,” Hinkie said. “At the same time, I’ve had conversations with him and everyone since then like, ‘Everybody has got to step up your game here.’ We have to have a whole new level of focus to what it is we’re trying to get done because the stakes are very high. Everyone always knew the stakes were high, but it’s clear to everyone, including all the people on this call, that however high they were, they’re higher. And so, everybody has got to do their part, every day.”
We don’t know what Embiid’s rehab will look like this time around, but from here, it’s clear that Hinkie wants everyone involved locked in from the get-go, especially Embiid. He hopes the rehab will be “remarkably disciplined” because it’s so difficult to pinpoint where something goes wrong.
5. Embiid’s talent still looms large
Here is a little of what I wrote right after the draft:
Embiid’s murky future makes the Sixers even more of a mystery because of the three bigs, he’s the most complete player. Okafor brings elite offense to the table while Noel offers elite defense, but Embiid has both.
The point still stands. Hinkie is biased, but he wasn’t lowering any expectations when it came to Embiid’s skill level. In the conference call, he said that the 7-footer was playing magnificently before the injury.
In another interview with Comcast SportsNet, Hinkie said, “For about 45 days, he didn’t play in any gym in which my phone didn’t blow up. If he played anywhere, people would just start texting me like, ‘You won’t believe what this guy is doing. You won’t believe how well this guy is playing, nobody can hold this guy.”
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