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THE FOURTH QUARTER had yet to begin, but Joel Embiid’s season was already over.
Embiid spent the final 16 minutes of Sunday’s Eastern Conference semifinal Game 4 — the Philadelphia 76ers suffered a 30-point series-ending beatdown by the New York Knicks — watching from the bench inside Xfinity Mobile Arena.
Embiid, the 76ers and their fans have grown used to disappointing endings: Kawhi Leonard’s four-bounce game winner in 2019. A Game 7 home loss to the Atlanta Hawks in 2021. A Game 6 home loss against the Boston Celtics in 2023. But amid the calamity that has followed this franchise since Embiid made his NBA debut in October 2016, few stretches can match the wild swings of Philadelphia’s past two weeks:
On April 26, Embiid returned less than three weeks after an emergency appendectomy, only for the 76ers to get routed by the Celtics to fall behind 3-1 in the first round.
On May 2, Philadelphia ripped off its third consecutive win — capping what was perhaps the best playoff stretch of Embiid’s career — to become the fourth lower-seeded team in NBA history to rally from down 3-1 to win a series.
On Sunday, with Embiid looking more like the version of himself that struggled through the first four games against Boston, Philadelphia was swept by New York, including two emphatic losses on the 76ers’ home court. (Embiid missed Game 2 because of right hip and ankle injuries.)
“At times it’s OK to say that the other team was just better,” Embiid mentioned after the loss. “Tonight, they made every shot, they made every single play, we didn’t make shots.”
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It was the second time the 2023 NBA Most Valuable Player found himself swept out of the playoffs, the recent gut punch to a superstar and a franchise that have experienced plenty over the past decade.
It’s also the recent reminder of how fragile the 76ers will always be with Embiid as their foundation. And, as Philadelphia enters the offseason via its sixth second-round exit in nine playoffs during the Embiid era, it’s unclear how a franchise with few options to improve the roster is supposed to move forward this summer.
“Ownership, front office, players, coaches,” Embiid mentioned, “Everybody has just got to get better.”
THE NEWS WOULD have been impossible to believe — if it had involved anyone else.
The 76ers had endured a season full of injuries to virtually everyone on the roster besides rookie VJ Edgecombe, including a late-season stretch when Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and Paul George were all sidelined. But Philadelphia entered the final week of the regular season with a chance to secure a top-six spot in the Eastern Conference playoffs. It looked like a team rounding into form at the right time.
That was, of course, before another setback for Embiid.
When the news that Embiid had to undergo an emergency appendectomy came down three days before the end of the regular season, a flood of communication came in from around the league. All of it had the exact same tenor: “You cannot make this up,” one scout mentioned that night.
The amount of postseason maladies Embiid has either played through or been sidelined by is remarkable. Including his surgery this season, the superstar center has dealt with:
A fractured orbital bone in 2018 and in 2022
Knee tendinitis in 2019
A right knee sprain in 2023
A late-season return from left knee surgery, plus a bout of Bell’s palsy, in 2024.
The one postseason in which Embiid didn’t have an injury was in the NBA’s Orlando, Florida, bubble in 2020. (That season, co-star Ben Simmons missed the playoffs because of a knee injury.)
“When you’ve been through it so much, you think you kind of have the balance of, ‘OK, this is another thing I got to move on from,'” Embiid mentioned after his 2026 postseason debut against Boston in Game 4. “But, you know, it hurts. And then it feels like it’s every single time [I’m in the playoffs]. …
“But you can’t give up. You got to keep pushing and not feel bad for yourself and, you know, just take it on and try to do the best job possible.”
It’s also what made the next three wins — including Games 5 and 7 in Boston — so remarkable. Embiid was a dominant two-way force, playing some of the best and most consistent playoff basketball of his career. That culminated with a 34-point, 12-rebound, 6-assist performance in the first Game 7 win of his career.
“It feels good to win,” Embiid mentioned postgame. “Obviously, we got a bigger goal in mind. But finally beating these guys feels pretty good.”
The 76ers were healthy. They had just beaten Boston in a playoff series — in historic fashion — for the first time in 44 seasons. For Embiid, who had already lost three playoff series to Boston and had dropped all three Game 7s he’d played, it was arguably his best playoff moment to date.
It also turned out to be the last game the 76ers won this season.
THE 2024-25 SEASON could not have gone worse for the 76ers, who began it talking about competing for a championship but spent the final two months competing for optimal draft lottery odds in an effort to keep their top-six protected pick.
Not only did they secure their pick with a 24-58 record, the franchise leapt to No. 3 in the draft to snag Edgecombe, another potential star to help Embiid and the 76ers reach their potential.
It took exactly one game — the season opener in Boston — to show just how lucky Philadelphia got. Edgecombe and Maxey combined for 74 points to lead the 76ers to a dramatic one-point win.
“He was amazing,” Embiid told reporters that night of Edgecombe’s 34-point performance, the third-highest total in a rookie debut in NBA history.
“We know that he has it, so we just have to keep it going.”
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In Game 2 against Boston in the first round, Edgecombe put on another show. He became the first rookie since Tim Duncan — and the youngest ever, surpassing Magic Johnson — to record at least 30 points and 10 rebounds in a playoff game. Edgecombe then had 23 points, 6 rebounds and 4 assists in 44 minutes in Game 7 in Boston, playing with a maturity and poise far beyond someone who won’t turn 21 until July 30.
“I’ve been saying it all year long: He’s far surpassed being a rookie,” George mentioned while sitting alongside Edgecombe at the podium after Game 2.
But there have been growing pains along the way. Edgecombe’s efficiency waxed and waned in these playoffs, much like it did throughout the regular season. Still, his production — 16.0 points per game, 5.2 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 1.4 steals while shooting 35% from 3-point range — was a thrilling building block and a significant reason the 76ers managed to reach the playoffs despite all of the injuries and lineup changes.
“That was a hell of an impressive rookie season,” 76ers coach Nick Nurse mentioned. “I mean, he’s a hell of a player and it’s not about shooting, scoring, jumping, any of that stuff. He really knows how to play. He really has a leadership quality to him.”
And then there’s Maxey, the effervescent star who has fully ascended to the place Embiid predicted years ago: the face of the franchise. He assumed that mantle this season, making his second All-Star team, in addition to all but certainly earning his first All-NBA selection when those are declared later this month.
Maxey set career highs in points (28.3 per game), assists (6.6) and steals (1.9) this season while leading the league in minutes, becoming a more vocal presence and taking a step forward defensively.
“I had [Maxey] when he was a rookie and so to see the progression every single year that he’s made on the court, off the court … I’m extremely proud of him,” Embiid mentioned. “And I think VJ, he’s on the same path and he’s going to be a monster.”
After failed attempts with Simmons, Markelle Fultz and James Harden, Philadelphia has finally landed the true co-star necessary to achieve the franchise’s championship ambitions. But as the focus shifts to next season, the question is whether Embiid’s body will allow him to take advantage of Maxey’s star turn.
THE UPDATE CAME suddenly, in the form of an early afternoon injury report.
Embiid, who had been probable to play Wednesday’s Game 2 in New York despite right hip and ankle injuries, had been declared out. He would return to play in Games 3 and 4 in Philadelphia, but with him struggling to move effectively, Jalen Brunson and the Knicks made quick work of the 76ers.
“All I can say is I commend him,” Nurse mentioned of Embiid after Game 4. “He worked his ass off to get out there and play. I think it was really difficult for him, especially [in Game 3]. I think he felt a little better today than he did in Game 3. But again, I’d just say he gave us everything he could.”
After never looking right during the 19 games he played in 2024-25 before being shut down with another left knee surgery, Embiid slowly began resembling his All-NBA form this season. He showed across 38 games (26.9 points and 7.7 rebounds per game) and in the series win against Boston that he’s still a significant difference-maker — when available.
But availability remains a gigantic question, and not just for Embiid. Since George was signed to a four-year, $212 million max contract two years ago (the same offseason Embiid was given a three-year, $193 million extension through 2028-29), Embiid, George and Maxey have hardly been on the court together.
George has played 78 regular-season games with the 76ers, including just 37 this year, in part because of a 25-game suspension for violating the league’s antidrug policy.
Across the past two regular seasons, the star trio has played 36 games and 742 minutes together — just 22% of Philadelphia’s games and less than 10% of its total minutes. Considering they combine to earn roughly 94% of the team’s salary, that level of availability is virtually impossible to overcome.
EMBIID’S POSTSEASON CAREER has followed a steady theme: untimely, often unlucky injuries helping to derail a tantalizing playoff run. Embiid has hardly ever been healthy for an entire playoffs, unable to fully summon the game that has made him one of the sport’s dominant forces over the past decade.
As he prepares to enter his 13th year in the NBA since being drafted in 2014, it’s unlikely his body is going to suddenly allow for 65-plus regular-season games and full complement of playoff games. The 76ers, meanwhile, don’t currently have the assets or financial flexibility to mitigate that risk.
Embiid and George are set to make over $200 million combined over the next two seasons. The decisions by president of basketball operations Daryl Morey to extend Embiid and sign George two summers ago, while understandable at the time, have left the franchise without options to reshape the roster around Maxey and Edgecombe.
And given how compacted the money is around the league, and the difficulties that come with trading any player on an expensive contract, it’s difficult to see a scenario in which the 76ers move on from either veteran star.
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Change can only come in the margins. Philadelphia holds the 22nd pick in June’s draft, which it received from the Oklahoma City Thunder in exchange for Jared McCain at the trade deadline. The deal got the 76ers out of the luxury tax this season but put Morey in hot water for moving on from a popular young player. (Rival executives generally thought Philadelphia did well to get back a first-round pick and three second-rounders, but McCain going 9-for-11 from 3-point range through the first three games of Oklahoma City’s second-round series hasn’t helped.)
With six players under contract for next season, plus the No. 22 pick in this year’s draft, Philadelphia sits roughly $14.5 million below the luxury tax line, per ESPN’s Bobby Marks — and that’s before re-signing two of their top six players, Kelly Oubre Jr. and Quentin Grimes, who are unrestricted free agents this summer, and presumably inking forward Dominick Barlow to a new longer-term deal, too.
Retaining them would all but certainly put Philadelphia into the luxury tax, a threshold the franchise has escaped four years in a row. It would also mean running out basically the same roster that wasn’t close to challenging the Knicks for a place in the conference finals.
As a result, it’s safe to assume the 76ers will enter next season staring at the same question: Will Embiid and the 76ers ever find a path — and the injury luck — to contend for an NBA title?
Embiid struck a positive tone Sunday when discussing the future, declaring that he thinks his knee troubles are behind him and that he’s looking forward to a summer of work ahead of another season of promise in Philadelphia.
“I hate losing, but I thought I was done,” Embiid mentioned after Game 4. “That’s the best way to put it. And then I found something and we found something as a group to figure out what we have to do to make sure I’m better positioned next year to play a lot of games.”
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