Philadelphia 76ers superstar centre, Joel Embiid, was forced off due to an injury during Friday night’s 127-101 win over the Washington Wizards.
The NBA club’s coach – Doc Rivers, in a post-match conference, said that Embiid would have an MRI following the injury suffered on his left knee.
ESPN reports that the 26-year-old who weights 127 kg hyperextended the knee after coming down off a dunk in the third quarter.
The 2.13m tall center was in the midst of the latest dominant performance of his MVP-calibre season, scoring 23 points on 8-for-11 shooting to go along with 7 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 blocks in 20 minutes when he caught a pass from Tobias Harris and flew in for a dunk to give Philadelphia an 80-60 lead with 6 minutes, 20 seconds remaining in the third quarter.
As Embiid went to the ground after the dunk, his full body weight landed on the left leg — sending him falling to the ground in tremendous pain.
After staying down for a few minutes, Embiid eventually got to his feet and walked off under his own power — though with a fairly pronounced limp — as he went straight back to the visitors’ locker room inside Washington’s Capital One Arena.
Embiid was making his return to the court on Friday after missing two games because of contact tracing stemming from a barber he visited alongside a teammate, Ben Simmons, before heading to Atlanta.
The 26-year-old, according to ESPN, had a similarly scary situation last month when he hyperextended his right knee in an awkward fall against the Portland Trail Blazers but made a surprise return to the court minutes later.
