Is it time for Joel Embiid and Paul George to get shut down for the season?

The Sixers aren’t the Sixers without unclear injury news, often surrounding their biggest players. There was more of that prior to the All-Star break.

Philadelphia entered the All-Star break on a five-game losing streak. It was perhaps the most damning losing streak of the season as Joel Embiid, Paul George and Tyrese Maxey were available for most of those games. The team’s record with all three available this season is now just 7-6.

But if you were on cloud nine over the Eagles winning the Super Bowl or just wanted to get away from this abysmal Sixers season, you might have missed some rather cryptic injury news concerning Embiid and George last week.

Let’s begin with Embiid, whose knee has been a problem dating back to when he injured it over 12 months ago. His effort to return to play in the playoffs last season was admirable. I also don’t think he deserved some of the criticism he got for playing in the Olympics but that’s a separate discussion that isn’t worth revisiting. But, between coming back after the injury last season, the Olympics making the summer abnormal, and now trying to play whenever he can this season, the former MVP has never been close to 100% in 2024-25.

As the Sixers continued about their losing ways in December and January, a common retort to calls for Embiid to be shut down seemed to be that extended rest wasn’t going to do Embiid any good and would not guarantee a clean bill of health to start next season. Daryl Morey all but confirmed this in his trade deadline press conference at the beginning of February saying that Embiid’s injury recovery revolves around managing symptoms and when swelling and pain flare up, he needs to sit. Morey did say that the team believes there’ll come a time when Embiid’s knee swelling and pain could be significantly reduced or go away entirely and that they’re still hoping to get to that point.

But then, just a few days after the trade deadline, Lisa Salters provided some more information on Embiid’s status as the reporter for ESPN revealed some new information on Embiid’s knee. The clip below was from a nationally televised broadcast against Milwaukee last Sunday.

For what it’s worth, Embiid did note last week that he doesn’t definitively need surgery and went on to play in the front end of last week’s back-to-back against Toronto and then sat out Wednesday night in Brooklyn, common practice for the big man this season. But the question should be asked, if there is even a 1% chance that a second surgery betters Embiid’s effectiveness next season, isn’t it worth doing at this point? Hasn’t everyone accepted by now that a deep playoff run is not happening this season and therefore it’s better for Embiid to have the surgery — if needed — and begin a lengthy rehab process as soon as possible?

Later last week, we got some ambiguous reporting on George’s health status from Shams Charania. The ESPN insider noted after the loss in Brooklyn that George’s efforts to be available are rather rigorous.

What these injections are for is not specifically stated by Charania but isn’t it clear that the juice is not worth the squeeze at this point when it comes to a soon-to-be 35-year-old who already is not aging well regardless of how injured he may be? As we inch closer to the resumption of the regular season, is it really in the best interest of the Sixers to put Embiid and George through hell and back just to maybe make the play-in tournament?

It seems as if there’s a lot more downside than upside at this point with both players. The later in the season either player were to further injure themselves, the greater likelihood it could have on harming the start of next season. In George’s case especially, if the Sixers are going to try to move his contract in the offseason, they’re going to need him to be as healthy as possible.

Simply put, the Sixers are gaining nothing by trotting both of these injury-prone veterans out there in a lost season. It seems as if they’ll at least try to do just that heading into Thursday’s game against Boston, but the odds of any serious positive change to Embiid and George’s seasons at this point feels very low.