Keith Pompey of the Philadelphia Inquirer ran an article this morning about Joel Embiid. In the article, Pompey includes a couple of tidbits of information about why Embiid was sent home from the West Coast road trip that are a little bit concerning.

First, Pompey mentions Embiid's weight gain.

Although the Sixers wouldn't disclose his weight, a source said he's close to 300 pounds after being 250 pounds at Kansas last season.

 

It's not the first time Joel Embiid's weight has been an issue since getting hurt last Spring. In a CSNPhilly report from September, Embiid talked about how he gained 50 pounds in 3 months, going from 230 pounds at the end of his season at Kansas to 280  pounds when he got hurt in June. He said that from June until when that was article released he had lost 10 pounds, putting him at 270.

If all that is true, it means that Embiid has not only failed to lose weight in the last 4 months, but that's he's added an additional 30 pounds on since then.

As I mentioned in a mailbag a few weeks ago, Embiid is not currently doing any high-impact activities, limited mostly to shooting and running on the anti-gravity treadmill. So Embiid carrying the extra weight on his fracture of the navicular bone wasn't (yet) a huge concern, although he clearly needs to get that weight off, and the longer his rehab goes on and the closer he gets to playing on the bone, the more worrisome it becomes.

Still, I think that once Embiid is able to participate in more basketball related activities, he shouldn't have too much trouble getting down to his playing weight.

The 2nd part of Pompey's story was, to me, the bigger part of the report.

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