“It started when the team was out in L.A. out of nowhere,” he said. “I just thought it was ... whatever. Soreness. Over time, it just kept getting worse and worse and worse. And then it got to the point where I couldn’t walk and it was really painful.”
The bottom line, though, is the Sixers are 0-3 after falling to a team that used seven players 24 years old or younger. And, when asked whether the plantar fasciitis was still bothering him, Embiid’s answer didn’t seem to perfectly align with “I’m fine.”
“Still trying to work my way back,” he said. “Coming into training camp, I hadn’t done anything in like two months, so it really slowed me down. Still trying to work my way back and hopefully everything goes back to normal.” Embiid has gone either 36 or 37 minutes in all three Sixers games so far, which does support the notion that he’s not currently hampered at anywhere near the level he recalled. Rivers changed Embiid’s usual substitution pattern against the Spurs, feeling that 12-minute stints weren’t best for a big man admittedly playing catch-up with conditioning.“It’s obviously not what we went into the season wanting to do,” Rivers said.
Embiid will indeed not magically be in flawless shape Monday night when the Sixers play the Pacers. Avoiding another home loss to a youthful team is the Sixers' immediate priority, though Embiid didn’t express deep concern.“We’ve just got to be better connected,” he said. “We’re not guarding the ball well, and that’s on all of us. Some of the stuff that we’re doing, we need to work on it more. Like I said, it’s a fairly new team.