Joel Embiid was the NBA’s best player two years ago and a cautionary tale last season — but now healthy, he’s coming for his throne

Two months ago, Joel Embiid was questioning whether he’d ever be great again. 

He went from being the MVP of the league in 2023 to needing multiple surgeries on his left knee. He went from being the quintessence of dominance on both ends of the court to looking like a shell of himself.  

“I was like, I don’t know if I could ever get back to that point,” Embiid told the California Post in an exclusive interview. “But I’m back.”

Over the past 20 games, Embiid has looked like a superstar again, averaging 29.7 points and 8.3 rebounds. He had a 37-point performance against Sacramento last Thursday, followed by finishing with 40 points, 11 rebounds, four assists and two blocked shots two days later against New Orleans. 

For Embiid, it has been an incredibly tough journey. 

He played in only 39 games in 2024-25, followed by just 19 games last season. He had two meniscus surgeries in less than 18 months. There were whispers over whether the 31-year-old should retire, a sobering prospect for a player of his caliber who’s still in his prime. 

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Embiid heard the criticism. 

“It’s hard,” Embiid said. “It’s like when people say, he’s lazy, this and that. First of all, you can’t be lazy if you start playing basketball at 16 and then make it to the league in three years. And injuries and injuries, keep getting back up and being an Olympian and all the other stuff that I have accomplished. It’s been tough. But I’m always going to fight.”

Embiid’s longtime trainer Drew Hanlen, said people have no idea what Embiid has gone through behind the scenes.

“We always joke that after his career is done, if Joel ever decides to tell his story, people are going to appreciate him 10-fold,” Hanlen said. Just because of the amount of sacrifice that he’s truly made to try to help the 76ers win games and win championships.”

Hanlen said Embiid’s recovery has involved a lot of trial and error. He credited his current success to the 76ers’ medical staff finding the perfect combination of load management, lifting, treatment, stretching and nutrition that’s enabling him to thrive.  

“It’s not like there’s some magic new surgery that wasn’t announced,” Hanlen said. “That’s not true. He only had the ones that were announced. There was nothing magical. It was just a long process to build-up, and they finally found the right combination of load management, treatment and recovery plan.”

For Embiid, the issue wasn’t just pain. He was trapped in a body that literally wasn’t allowing him to do what his brain wanted. 

Hanlen recalls watching film with Embiid last season and telling him he should’ve reacted differently to a defender. According to Hanlen, Embiid replied: “If it was just pain, I could play through pain. I just physically can’t do some of the things I want to do.”

Embiid acknowledges that after he suffered a torn left meniscus in January 2024 that required surgery the following month. He shouldn’t have returned in early April for the team’s first-round playoff series against New York and then played for Team USA, winning a gold medal at the 2024 Olympic Games. 

It was too much. 

The following season, Embiid was hampered by constant pain, swelling and was severely limited in his movements. It became clear that he needed to undergo a second surgery in April 2025. 

A new plan was hatched. 

Embiid needed to rebuild his body. That meant he had to take a step back from basketball. He didn’t workout with Hanlen for 15 months following the Olympics, a stark contrast from their regular off-day sessions. Instead, they were reduced to watching film together over the phone. 

When Embiid returned to the court this season, he viewed it as a trial period. He had to shake off cobwebs. He didn’t know how his body would react. 

“He started the season playing very rough and a lot of people looked at him like, oh, he’s washed,” Hanlen acknowledged. 

For Embiid, who has poured every ounce of himself into becoming an MVP-caliber player again, it was demoralizing. Fans were turning on him. He had become a punchline for pundits. The noise was deafening for a deeply competitive superstar who wanted nothing more than to do right by his team.

But he gritted his teeth in spite of all of the negativity, including his own intrusive thoughts. 

“Just focusing on myself, physically and mentally,” Embiid said. “Obviously, I’ve talked about therapy in the past, just learning from it. I’m at the point where I’m only focused on myself, my family, I don’t need any validation from anybody else. Just trust in God. Believing that whatever’s supposed to happen is going to happen anyway. So if it’s good. good. If it’s bad, get back up and keep on walking.”

When Embiid was able to start working on his game again, everything came flooding back. His speed, his agility, his soft touch. Over the last two months, he has returned to being a generational talent, a 7-footer with a rare combination of brute force and the silkiness of a guard. 

Now, even Embiid’s biggest detractors are coming around. 

“I’d like to issue an apology to Daryl Morey and Joel Embiid because I didn’t expect this,” former NBA player and current ESPN analyst Kendrick Perkins said last week. “If you’d ask me this two months ago, I thought Joel Embiid was on the verge of retirement. And now, all of a sudden, he’s come back to looking like an All-NBA caliber player”

The 76ers, who are in fifth place in the Eastern Conference with a record of 29-21, are going to need Embiid to be as good as possible to keep them competitive after Paul George was suspended for 25 games on January 31 for violating the league’s anti-drug policy.

“I’ll keep building on this year and keep on getting better,” Embiid said. “But probably starting next year, I think I’m going to be fully back to myself.”

Milwaukee Bucks coach Doc Rivers, who coached Embiid from 2020-2023, didn’t hold back when asked about the center’s recent turnaround. “Joel is the most talented player that I’ve ever coached,” he said. 

Those were strong words coming from someone who’s currently coaching Giannis Antetokounmpo. 

Rivers went on to lament the fact that Embiid has never made it through a postseason healthy. Rivers said if that changed, “they’re going to be a dangerous team.”

Nobody is more upset by the superstar’s constant string of injuries than Embiid, who was with Hanlen at a hotel in Boston when he won the MVP Award during the second round of the 2023 playoffs. 

“He literally said he’d trade the MVP for one healthy postseason,” Hanlen recalled. “Because he feels like if he can get that, then he’d have a chance to bring a championship to Philadelphia.”

But for now, Embiid is taking things one step at a time. 

He rebuilt his body. He rebuilt his confidence. Now, he wants to once again reach his potential. It’s not to prove the critics wrong. It’s to show the only person whose opinion matters what Embiid is truly capable of doing. 

“He wants Arthur to be able to see his dad at his best,” Hanlen said of Embiid’s five-year-old son. “He doesn’t want [the narrative] to be your dad was good. He wants to have his son say, ‘My dad is good.’”

So, Embiid is continuing to fight. 

“Whatever I did two years ago,” he said, “I think I can do it again.”

Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: nypost.com