The NBA has announced the All-Star starters for each conference and the coaches have revealed their reserves. Indiana Pacers forward Pascal Siakam is going to his 3rd NBA All-Star game, his 1st as a Pacer. The 30-year-old Cameroonian was named to the Eastern Conference reserve squad for the 2025 NBA All-Star game in San Francisco on Feb. 16.
In a not-so-shocking development, the Philadelphia 76ers won’t have a player voted in as a starter nor did coach Kenny Atkinson find any of the “Big Three (Paul George and Tyrese Maxey) worthy of a reserve spot.
Typically, the Sixers find their star big man Joel Embiid as an automatic starter, but his 2024-2025 campaign hasn’t gone too well due to bad health.
Entering the season, Embiid made it known that winning a championship was his priority. As an attempt to be as healthy as possible for a potential playoff run, Embiid planned to have an injury management plan in place.
The plan, plus a suspension, kept Embiid off the court for the first nine games of the season. When he returned, he appeared in four of the next five games.
After appearing in three games in a row, Embiid missed seven games in a row. At that point, he was dealing with swelling and soreness in the knee he received surgery on last year.
Although he returned for two games in early December, Embiid suffered a sinus fracture, which took him off the court for another game.
When the Sixers played the Boston Celtics on Christmas, Embiid dealt with another setback, suffering a sprained foot. Although he played in four of the next five games after Christmas, the foot injury took him off the court for six games in a row.
Embiid hoped to return to action during the Sixers’ three-game road trip. Unfortunately, he started experiencing knee swelling again. Embiid missed three more games and will make it 14 in a row when the Sixers take on the Denver Nuggets.
With just 13 games to show for, Embiid was not expected to make the All-Star game this year. For what it’s worth, Embiid still received the ninth-most fan votes for the Eastern Conference frontcourt.
The 30-year-old Embiid was limited to 39 games last season, mostly because of knee surgery after tearing the meniscus in his left knee on Jan. 30 2024 against Golden State.
Embiid, who helped the U.S. win gold in the Paris Olympics, signed a $193 million contract ahead of training camp and skipped the entire preseason.
A history of not playing All- Star games
The 65-game minimum rule says that players must be on the floor for 20 minutes in at least 65 games to be eligible for regular-season honors, including MVP and All-NBA teams. Simply put, if a player misses 18 games, he is not eligible for those awards.
There are protections against season-ending injuries (62 games), near misses in minutes (two games of at least 15 minutes) and bad-faith circumstances.
Relatedly, NBA executive Joe Dumars opined that teams’ general practice of resting players to prevent future injury and extend careers — commonly known as “load management” — is no longer supported by scientific data held by the league.
Embiid has played at least 65 games only twice through the first nine full seasons of his career.
He played 66 games during his 2023 MVP campaign.
In the 2023 All-Star Game, despite being the MVP runner-up of 2022, Embiid couldn’t earn All-NBA first-team honors because Jokic got more center position votes and he ended up being a reserve.
Fast forward to the 2024 All-Star Game, Bam Adebayo was announced as the replacement for Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid in the Eastern Conference starting lineup — the reigning MVP and two-time defending scoring champion — and missed the game because of a knee injury.
The last time Embiid was in the regular season lineup was the 76ers’ 123-94 victory over the Brooklyn Nets on Jan. 4, 2025. He scored 28 points in 29 minutes of play.
In the latest update regarding Embiid, the Sixers stated that his ankle has recovered but he’s still dealing with swelling in his knee. At this time, it remains unclear when he’ll be back in action.
Embiid’s well documented injury woes
When Joel Embiid is healthy, he is not only the best player for the Philadelphia 76ers but also one of the best players in the NBA.
Embiid trying to stay healthy has always been the issue. His career has been plagued by injuries that have often prevented him from maximizing his potential for a substantial length of time.
Joel Embiid missed his 404th career game recently. He’s been active for 446 of 850 career games in 10.5 NBA seasons, according to Spotrac.
Right now, Embiid is dealing with an injury that’s forcing him to wear a mask over his face. It’s not the first time he’s done so — but in order to protect himself for the time being, the big man has his face covered up.
Why is Embiid wearing a mask? Against the Pacers on Dec. 13 2024, Indiana guard Bennedict Mathurin caught Embiid with his elbow after jumping up in a rebounding attempt. Embiid left the game immediately after.
The 76ers announced later that Embiid had suffered a sinus fracture in his face. Embiid will continue to play with the mask until his facial injury is healed enough.
Joel Embiid also has Bell’s palsy, a neurologic condition in which the nerve that controls facial muscles is damaged, resulting in facial weakness or temporary paralysis usually on one side of the face. Common symptoms include a lopsided smile and facial droop, an eyelid that won’t fully close, drooling, eye dryness, headache, ear pain, ringing in the ear, loss of the sense of taste, and sensitivity to sound.
For a professional basketball player like Embiid, not being able to close an eye could negatively affect performance.
Eighty percent of people with Bell’s palsy fully recover and show no symptoms within three months without treatment so the condition is unlikely to affect Embiid’s career in the long run, according to recent research.
Embiid tore his meniscus in late January 2024 and had surgery to fix the issue. After playing a hard-fought playoff series in April and helping Team USA win gold at the Paris Olympics, Embiid missed the start of the 2024-25 regular season.
A “repair,” which Embiid reportedly had in his left knee during his rookie season, is when a surgeon goes in and sews the tear. That leads to a longer recovery time (Embiid missed the rest of the season), but the meniscus is able to fully heal which is better long-term.
After missing the first two years of his NBA career because of a navicular bone fracture and numerous games over years of load management, Embiid lamented that he probably could’ve done it sooner.
Embiid has carried around the injury prone label since his days at Kansas. He missed his first two NBA seasons, has missed a bunch of regular-season time and suffered numerous freak injuries during or just before the postseason. He missed out on at least one MVP award for not having perfect attendance and his playoff ailments evoke so many what ifs.
Is his NBA career sustainable?
Frankly, it’s disappointing that the narrative around Embiid hasn’t changed much. As Embiid himself will tell you, he had maturity issues when he first came into the NBA. Pretty understandable for a guy that moved to the United States from Cameroon, away from his friends and family, to play basketball and then became a 20-year-old millionaire.
But Embiid isn’t the same kid who didn’t take his physical fitness seriously.
He enlisted the help of renowned sports dietician Louis Burke to develop a program that made sense for Embiid. The results speak for themselves. He was voted MVP in the 2022-2023 season while looking like the best version of himself physically.