Barkley: 'Concerned' about Embiid, 'disappointed' in Sixers
July 18, 2015, 9:00 pm
Last Saturday, the Sixers revealed Joel Embiid needs a second surgery on his right foot and he'll miss the 2015-16 season.
Embiid, the team's 2014 first-round pick, missed last season with a fractured navicular bone in the foot. He underwent his first surgery before the NBA draft, but Sam Hinkie and the Sixers still selected him with the third overall pick, sticking to their best player available strategy.
The 7-footer didn't re-injure the bone, but a CT scan in June showed it was healing slower than anticipated. After a couple weeks of doctor visits, the Sixers and Embiid deemed surgery as the best course of action.
In an interview this week with Comcast SportsNet's John Clark, former Sixer and TNT basketball analyst Charles Barkley chimed in on the Embiid situation.
"I'm very concerned and I'm very disappointed in the Sixers," Barkley said. "I don't know all the ins and outs — I don't understand how you do that surgery and you're not checking in periodically. You wait a whole year before you realize the surgery wasn't successful.
"Maybe I'm just wrong, but it seems to me like every couple of months, they should have been doing something to check on his foot to see how it's progressing. I don't understand how you wait an entire year and then realize his foot is not healing properly. I have to blame the Sixers for that fiasco."
Going forward, should the Sixers worry about Embiid's career? A fractured navicular bone forced Yao Ming to retire, but it's not necessarily a career-ending injury.
For example, Zydrunas Ilgauskas fractured the bone in 2000 and missed the rest of the season. He returned the following season and went on to play 10 more seasons in the NBA.
Michael Jordan and Kevin McHale also were able to return from fractured navicular bones. Still, two surgeries is enough to worry about the 21-year-old's future.
"You have to be concerned," Barkley said. "But I still like (Jahlil) Okafor. I thought he was one of the best players in the draft. With the Embiid thing, there's nothing they can do about that. They just have to wait and see. With the Lakers taking (D'Angelo) Russell, [the Sixers] got very fortunate to get another big guy to go with Nerlens (Noel). It worked out for the Sixers."
When the Sixers drafted Okafor in last month's draft, the question was: How would Brett Brown spread the minutes among Noel, Embiid and Okafor?
Now, Embiid is going to miss another season and Brown will have Okafor and Noel to work with — don't get carried away thinking Embiid's injury means more minutes for Okafor.
No comments:
Post a Comment