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Tim BontempsESPN
PHILADELPHIA — 76ers star Joel Embiid was sidelined for Wednesday night’s 129-126 overtime win against the Indiana Pacers because of left foot soreness.
Embiid injured his foot when he landed awkwardly on Pelicans big man Jaxson Hayes in the fourth quarter of Philadelphia’s 120-111 over New Orleans at Wells Fargo Center on Monday night.
The All-Star center was examined Wednesday morning by team doctors, who didn’t see any long-term issues, and the 76ers initially listed Embiid as questionable before ruling him out later Wednesday afternoon.
He’s considered day-to-day moving forward.
“He didn’t talk about a lot of soreness right afterward,” 76ers coach Doc Rivers said Wednesday before the game. “Then, later that night, he said his foot was bothering him and was sore, and then more the next day.”
In Embiid’s absence, Rivers said all three of his center options — Montrezl Harrell, Paul Reed and P.J. Tucker — would get opportunities to step into Embiid’s extremely large shoes.
“We’ve had some work on it,” Rivers said of playing without Embiid. “We know we can go with different types of lineups. We can go big with [Montrezl Harrell] and Paul, or we can go with P.J. We’ll probably do a little bit of all of that.”
Embiid is coming off a scintillating month of December, which saw him claim his fifth Eastern Conference player of the month award — surpassing Allen Iverson for the most in franchise history — after averaging an astronomical 35.4 points per game while shooting 54.5% overall and 41.7% from 3-point range.
Source: www.espn.com