Joel Embiid suffered a sinus fracture when he was hit in the face while trying to grab a defensive rebound late in the first half of the Philadelphia 76ers’ loss to the Indiana Pacers on Friday night.
Embiid was battling Indiana’s Bennedict Mathurin when he took an errant forearm and elbow to the nose. Embiid fell to the ground as the play continued, and stayed down near the Philadelphia bench, holding his face.
Embiid left the arena for evaluation, and the 76ers later announced that he had a sinus fracture. The team said he would be evaluated again over the weekend.
Embiid scored 12 points, grabbed four rebounds, and had five assists in 17 and a half minutes during Philadelphia’s 121-107 loss to the Pacers.
This was only Embiid’s sixth game out of the 23 games the 76ers have played so far this season. He has been dealing with swelling in his left knee and also served a three-game suspension for an incident with a reporter.
Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, and Paul George—who were expected to form Philadelphia’s “Big Three” after George joined the team in the offseason—have played only three games together. The Sixers’ record for the season is 7-16.
“You just have to move on and practice when we practice again and have a next man up mentality,” said Maxey, who led Philadelphia with 22 points. “What sucks about this is that we were moving in the right direction. Guys were figuring out roles, what coach wants from them, and playing the right way.
We know how to play with Joel – and now, we may have to revert our minds back to playing without him. That’s OK. It’s different. That’s how life is.”
Embiid has had several face injuries in the past, including a fractured orbital bone from a collision with Toronto’s Pascal Siakam during the 2022 playoffs and another injury in 2018 when he collided with teammate Markelle Fultz. Last year, Embiid had Bell’s Palsy during a first-round playoff loss to New York.
After Sunday’s victory in Chicago, Embiid told ESPN that the issues with his left knee this season were “depressing” because the swelling wasn’t caused by an injury. That was the 76ers’ last game before Friday’s loss.
“He’s been in a really good place all week and he practiced all week,” coach Nick Nurse said when asked about Embiid’s state of mind. “We did a lot of stuff to get up to speed with him. But I can imagine that he can feel like the black cloud is over him a little bit. He just keeps running into something, really, unfortunately.”
