The 76ers may be heading into Friday night in Cleveland with a center rotation that leaves them little room to breathe.
Adem Bona is trending toward sitting after taking an elbow to the head in Philadelphia’s win over the Detroit Pistons. He left that game early, and head coach Nick Nurse later told the media that Bona was dealing with a neck injury. When the Sixers released their injury report Thursday night, the picture got clearer: Bona is listed as doubtful with a cervical spine sprain.
That puts Philadelphia in a tricky spot with Joel Embiid.
The Sixers have spent the early part of the season trying to manage Embiid’s workload, but their center depth is already thin. Any absence from Bona makes that balancing act even harder, because Philadelphia has been trying to keep Embiid on a minutes restriction through the first few weeks.
So far, that plan has had mixed results. Embiid has played right around 33 minutes in three of his first five games.
He logged 36 minutes against the Milwaukee Bucks on October 24 and then went for 38 minutes against the Indiana Pacers. Against the New York Knicks in the first set of NBA Cup games, the Sixers kept him at 33 minutes before giving him his second night off of the season.
Then, in the win over the Chicago Bulls earlier this week, he played just 24 minutes, which the team said was part of the plan.
Against Detroit, the Bona injury changed the equation. Embiid ended up back on the floor in the second half and finished with 33 minutes.
Friday could force the issue again. Unless the game gets out of hand for one side, the Sixers may not have much choice but to let Embiid go beyond the restriction.
The first meeting with Cleveland already showed how much Philadelphia leaned on him. The Sixers erased a 29-point deficit to beat the Cavs, and Embiid played 34 minutes in that game. If Bona is unavailable this time, Philadelphia’s options behind Embiid shrink to the combination of Jabari Walker, LeBron James, and Dean Wade.
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Embiid later picked up a technical foul for pushing Tolu Smith, and the league eventually retroactively assessed the earlier kick as a Flagrant 1. He still finished with 26 points and 15 rebounds as the 76ers moved to 8-1, but the box score only tells part of the story from a game that left Detroit with plenty to gripe about after the fact. [Read more 🡒]
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Still, the real test is only beginning, and the schedule is about to keep asking questions. Matchups with the Knicks, Pistons and Cavaliers are part of a run that should reveal more about how sustainable this start really is, which is why the bigger debate around the Sixers is still unresolved. They have earned attention, but it is far too early to treat this as anything close to a finished story about where they might end up in June. [Read more 🡒]