Sixers' Daryl Morey discusses Joel Embiid, Paul George, offseason plan

USA Today

08-05-2025

Sixers' Daryl Morey discusses Joel Embiid, Paul George, offseason plan
The 2024-25 season was a disaster for Joel Embiid and the Philadelphia 76ers. Expected to be contenders after the big addition of Paul George and a slew of others, Embiid was limited to only 19 games as he was hampered by a bothersome knee injury.
President of Basketball Operations Daryl Morey put together a star trio of Embiid, George, and Tyrese Maxey as they were expected to contend for a title in 2024-25. Instead, they were hampered and slowed by injuries and the Sixers were unable to recover. The three of them played only 18 games together--finishing only 15 of those games. They had to leave games one way or another in three separate instances.
Morey hopped on "The Mike Missanelli Show" on 97.5 The Fanatic and gave an update on Embiid's recovery, his assessment of George, and his plans for the offseason, and other topics surrounding his team:
An update on Embiid's recovery from surgery
"Look it looks optimistic. He's with the doctor that did Kawhi (Leonard). He was up in New York, working with him this week. He's working every day at the facility. I was with him yesterday working with his folks. So he's working hard doing whatever he can to get back out on the floor. This is, you know, I mentioned this before. His issues are not, you know, I break my arm, it heals, and you come back. This is more of a complex case that these things can trend in a good direction over time, and we believe they will."
On if Embiid has already shown his best
"I don't think that's written. I don't think we know that. I think MVP Joel Embiid is still potentially there. We won't know, obviously, till we go through the season, but he's in an age where lots of players still play into their prime. He's in an age where lots of players, even with issues, have come back and played at a high level. So no, I do not think that."
On George's season
"That, obviously, wasn't his best year. He would come out and say that himself. I think he maybe did that. We believe he'll bounce back. He was an elite defender. Offensively, he was brought in to be part of a unit with elite play on the wing defensively, space the floor on offense, with Joel and Tyrese, and we believe that can still work. Obviously, we haven't really had much of a look at that. Even when they were healthy guys, certain guys would leave the game, or Joel was not 100% where he needed to be. So we have not seen that at this point."
On having to rely on 2 stars who have injury history
"I would say, look, obviously, injuries are hard to project, hard to know how many you'll have. But I would mention, you know, for example, if folks were to ask when, when, say, a Kawhi Leonard pulls out of USAB last year, how many people would say that he would be playing 45 minutes plus in multiple, very significant playoff games? I would say, if you go back to you know, guys like, say, a Brook Lopez, who played 30 games when he was 33 years old, and asked him prior to that, had played less games than Joel Embiid had played per season. And then comes out with a 78-game season, a 79-game season and 80-game season over the last three so look, they're hard to predict. What you want to have in this league is a chance to win the title. You want to have elite players when they're healthy. You want to have a good supporting cast, and we'll have that next year."
On the biggest mistake he made in the 2024 offseason
"I think last season was pretty clear, and I put this on me, obviously, we came in with the third-best thoughts to win the title last year and in Vegas. My thinking was there as well, was, how do I get this group healthy and into the playoffs? How do I have playoff level players? And generally, those are players with playoff experience. Ones that sort of round out, can shoot things like that. What I did not do well was make sure we have the youth and athleticism to get through the regular season and put us in that position, and that's something we will do next year."
On his plans for the offseason
"The first thing is, next year, our rotation is going to be guys 25 and younger. Like, the majority of our rotation will be there. So, obviously, that is a mistake that we're correcting. In terms of knowing before 100% in that if we were younger and hadn't had this time to develop, which obviously a bad season, one thing you get out of it is we're going to have developed players. We had the odds on Rookie of the Year when he (Jared McCain) went out with sort of a fluke injury. (Justin) Edwards has come along. (Adem) Bona has come along. We possibly will have a high pick, but if we had gone extremely young last year with a team third best in title odds, and then got to the playoffs and didn't have experienced role players, and we're playing a bunch of rookies and lost in the first round, second round, whatever, third round, hopefully finals, people have said, 'Oh, the mistake was we had too many young players', but now we're going to have most of these guys in their second, third, fourth season, 25 and younger. So that will help us."