They can’t all get healthy at the same time without there being some doubt.
Fresh off their worst loss of the season the Sixers look to bounce back hosting the Washington Wizards, and they’ve released an injury
report for that contest. Joel Embiid, Kelly Oubre Jr., and Trendon Watford are all listed as questionable for it.
Starting with Embiid, the reasons listed are the classic left knee injury management and also a right ankle sprain. That ankle sprain has popped up on the injury report, but he’s only missed one game for it so far and while that game wasn’t a back-to-back, it was still a day game in OKC with less than 48 hours rest. Embiid hadn’t played with less than two games of rest in between until mid-December. Through their more recent stretch of games he’s played four games over seven days.
The bigger story though might be the returns of both Oubre and Watford. Oubre has been out since November 14 when he sprained his LCL in his left knee in a loss to the Detroit Pistons. Watford strained his adductor back on Nov 25 loss against the Orlando Magic. Funnily enough, both of those games were NBA Cup games, so that tournament really hasn’t been kind to the Sixers in its three years of existence.
It’s been quite stop and start for Watford’s early days as a Sixer. He missed almost all of training camp and the preseason, as well as the first three games with a hamstring injury before going down 14 games later.
Oubre got off to a torrid start before being sidelined for nearly two months, averaging 16.8 points per game shooting 49% from the field. It will be interesting to see if he assumes his place in the starting lineup when he returns, or if he is slotted into a bench scoring role given the emergence of Dominick Barlow as a glue guy in Oubre’s absence.
All questions about the starting lineup would of course be put on pause if Embiid can’t go against the Wizards. The Sixers should have more than enough to get a win without him, but as they just showed against the hospital Nuggets, anything is possible in the NBA.
