Doctors chime in on Joel Embiid’s recent surgery: "Very guarded not just with next season, but with his career"
Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid underwent arthroscopic surgery on his left knee in hopes to finally address an injury that limited him throughout last season.
Considering Embiid’s medical history, however, outside doctors remain concerned about his long-term durability.
“Very guarded not just with next season, but with his career,” Dr. Alexander Weber, the orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist with Keck Medicine of USC, told Sportskeeda. “He has a challenging problem with his knee.”
Granted, none of the outside doctors that spoke to Sportskeeda have treated Embiid directly and do not have access to his medical files. The Sixers recently announced that they will reevaluate Embiid in about six weeks. Nonetheless, Sportskeeda spoke to a handful of doctors about recent injuries to Embiid and Paul George because they could offer both expertise and candor.
The roundtable included:
Dr. Alan Beyer, executive director of Hoag Orthopedic Institute
Dr. Shaheen Jadidi, primary care sports medicine physician at Endeavor Health.
Dr. Alexander Weber, MD, orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist with Keck Medicine of USC.
Editor’s note: The following one-on-one conversations have been edited and condensed. Their interviews with Sportskeeda were also conducted separately.
What was your reaction to Joel Embiid having arthroscopic surgery on his left knee considering what the procedure entails and his injury history?
Beyer: “Joel Embiid has been an oft-injured guy in the NBA. He clearly had a meniscal procedure. The likelihood is that Embiid probably has a degenerative disease in his knee and they cleaned it up and smoothed it out a little bit. I don’t think this is a purely meniscal tear. The likelihood is there is also a cleanup involved. There’s probably no cartilage transplantion because you’re then out of action for six months to a year.
"I think he’ll likely be good to go by the beginning of next season. But again you’re dealing with a knee that has had a number of procedures. Every time you go back to the well, you take back a little of the reserve. What’s the long-term prognosis? Not having the luxury of seeing exactly what they did, it would be wrong for me to comment. But I think you have a guy that still has significant issues with his knee and other parts of his body because he is a guy that injures himself a great deal.”
Jadidi: “From what I’m reading, the catalyst of this goes back to an injury he had in 2024. He was diagnosed with a meniscus tear and a displaced fragment. That usually leads to surgery. You can either cut out the torn fragment or repair it and sew it back together. That preserves the cartilage and it is better for the knee’s long-term health. They did a repair, but articles said he had the surgery in February and then he was playing in April.
"That’s an extremely quick return-to-play timeline. Usually, you’re doing non-weight-bearing for six weeks and are on crutches. You want to protect those stitches. The return for the athletes we treat are usually four to six months instead of two months. If he had a repair and rushed back that much quickly two months to play, it makes a lot of sense how his trajectory ended up going. It looked like he had problems from the get-go.”
Weber: “Joel has a really challenging problem. He’s had some meniscus surgeries in the past and likely has some cartilage damage in the knee. I think it’s evolved into a tough challenge, especially as someone who as tall and weighs as much as him.” [Embiid is listed at 7-foot-0, 280 pounds].
For someone that gets arthroscopic surgery, what’s the usual rehab and timeline?
Beyer: “This is not a reconstruction or rebuilding a ligament. So there’s a very little amount of time you need to shut him down. He’s probably already starting his rehabilitation. Even if they did some cartilage work and smoothed things down, they still are going to want to get him moving right away and get back his range of motion and strengthen him.
"He's going to heavily rehabilitate in the spring. He’s not going to wait until the summer. I think he should be ready to be a full go by training camp and summertime.”
Jadidi: “For a simple meniscus clean-up procedure, it’s about six to eight weeks. For a repair, that’s much more involved. The goal is to preserve everything with the cartilage. That’s usually four to six months. You’re supposed to be totally off of it to let the stitches heal.”
Weber: “That’s a good question. Typically when you do a meniscus trim, the timeline is at six to eight weeks. For a typical arthroscopic or meniscus cleanup, the other end of the spectrum is if you look at someone like Lonzo Ball. He also had meniscus and cartilage surgery. It took him almost 18 months to recover fully. That’s because the surgery was more advanced and complex.
"He had meniscus and cartilage at transplant, meaning those tissues need to become incorporated into your own body. You have to heal and make those tissues your own. I don’t know anything about Joel Embiid’s most recent surgery. But my guess is that it wasn’t a simple meniscus or cartilage cleanup. His knee is beyond that. Any of those surgeries at minimum are usually a nine-to-12-month recovery.”
What is your outlook for how Embiid will be next season with both his play and his health?
Beyer: “My outlook is more based on his terrible history of multiple injuries in the past. What prejudices me against Joel Embiid is that he’s never been the most reliable player to come back quickly from injury. That makes me a little less optimistic on how much you can count on him for next year. But time will only tell.
"Once you’ve developed a degenerative disease in your knee, it’s a function of managing their minutes from then on. That’s all going to depend on the extent of the damage that the orthopedic surgeon saw at the time of surgery. Joel is 31. In NBA years, that’s not young. Joel has spent a lot of time missing games. So even though he’s 31, he doesn’t have as many years of odometer on him because he missed so many games because of injuries. That might actually put him in good stead. He's less beat up than somebody who is at 31 years would be.”
Jadidi: “That’s the next bag of worms. There might be a lot more going on than just his meniscus. He might have more arthritis in the knee. That’s a whole different animal. But his position is a positive thing. At center, you’re not expected to hold things down and have a lot of movement as Paul George is expected as a forward. With someone who has pain with arthritis, there’s a lot of things that can be done to control pain. But the only definitive treatment for arthritis is a knee replacement.
"You can’t play NBA basketball with a knee replacement. I think they can get him through the next season and adapt to a slower style of play. But he may be in pain all the time, and they may have to mask it with injections and PRP. But once you lose any cartilage, you can’t get it back. With arthritis, you always have a low amount of inflammation. He might experience periods of a lot of swelling and a lot of pain and limited range of motion. He might need to get his knee drained and fluid injected quite frequently. I don’t know if that’s really sustainable for the next season.”
Weber: “Very guarded not just with next season, but with his career. He has a challenging problem with his knee. You hope he can recover and have a meaningful return to basketball similar to the great outcome that Lonzo had.
"Hopefully Joel has a similar result to the procedure that Lonzo had. Regardless of what the injury is or how long the recovery is, typically there is a conversation with the training staff and coaching staff on how to work that athlete back into full participation with non contact drills, full contact drills and then getting into game shape with playing a certain number of minutes.”
What was your reaction to Paul George having a procedure on his left adductor muscle and knee after having various issues with his knee and groin throughout last season?
Beyer: “Paul George is another guy who has missed a lot of games over the years. I think it came as a little bit of a surprise. You wonder how long this had been bothering him, and what made them to finally decide to pull the trigger.”
Jadidi: “Hindsight is 20/20. But that may have been a big miss by the medical team and even Paul George after he hyperextended his knee in the preseason. Now that we saw things played out throughout the season, that may have created some instability and lingering issues and made him more vulnerable to other injuries, such as his groin strain. Playing through pain with injections can mask problems. It can lead to complications and more injuries. I think that’s essentially what happened with him.”
Weber: “When athletes have adductor procedures, it’s typically related to core muscle injuries or a sports hernia. That is more of a hip and groin injury. Because he needed that procedure, it’s possible they coupled that with a knee procedure to clean out the knee or do something with his meniscus or cartilage. They can overlap the recovery so he doesn’t have to rehab twice.”
What is the usual rehab after having a procedure on a left adductor muscle?
Beyer: “Not having seen how bad it was and what they did, it’s really hard to guess that. But with any soft tissue injuries, you’re looking at two or three months before they can really push him hard. You have to let the area that was operated on settle down. You let the inflammation go down. You don’t want to do anything to rip apart newly formed tissue that is forming to solve the problem. You have to go slow with soft tissues like that.”
Jadidi: “It’s usually four to six weeks to go through a rehab. The initial week or two focuses on massages, inflammation control, ice and heat. Then they start stretching. Pain-free range-of-motion is the goal before you start strengthening. Then you go through the strengthening phase. That’s typically the last phase where you’re doing stuff like squats and leg presses in hopes to prevent the injury from happening again. But if you’re just treating the groin strain and not addressing the primary issue with the knee, then you can get problems.”
Weber: “With those recoveries, the good news is a core muscle and adductor muscle procedure are usually predictable with an eight to 12-week recovery. If there was a cleanout with the knee, it’ll probably be a similar timeline.”
What’s your outlook on his play and health next season?
Beyer: “I hate to say it. But there have only been short periods of time in his career where he’s been a fairly productive player over the long haul. Over the short haul, sometimes he has done well. But over the long haul, he has not done well. But I would expect him to be able to get back to his normal level of production.”
Jadidi: “The thing about Paul George is he’s a much more dynamic player. He’s expected to make a lot more cutting movements. With mechanical issues, it can really affect a player like Paul George a lot more than Embiid with being a dynamic player. I have a little bit more cautious outlook for Paul George. But I wouldn’t lose hope. The key here is to make sure that both get proper recovery and don’t get rushed back to the court.”
Weber: “If it’s a simple adductor and cleanout of the knee, his outlook is quite good. The issue with Joel is there have been a number of surgeries now in the same location. Whenever there are trims of meniscus or cleanup of cartilage, the chance of arthritis over time starts to increase.
"If you’re starting to have repetitive surgeries on the same joint, there’s a concern for the development of osteoarthritis. I would be very guarded with Joel’s long-term health in the NBA. I hope he proves me wrong. That would be good for him and the game of basketball. But it’s starting to become more of a risky situation.”
Mark Medina is an NBA insider for Sportskeeda. Follow him on X, Blue Sky, Instagram, Facebook and Threads.