Joel Embiid may have delivered the most encouraging moment of Philadelphia’s opening scrimmage without saying much at all. After another offseason spent managing his health, seeing the 76ers center move with that kind of freedom was enough to catch everyone’s attention. Even LeBron James has noticed the work his teammate has put in behind the scenes.
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The Cameroonian MVP looked noticeably lighter on his feet, finishing a left-handed dunk in transition and rising to challenge shots at the rim. The contrast with last season was striking. Joel Embiid struggled to generate much lift, even on routine plays such as tip-offs, and his first dunk of the 2025-26 campaign did not come until January. Now, just one scrimmage into the new season, he is already showing flashes of the athleticism Philadelphia desperately needs from its franchise center. Then came the part only the seven-time All-Star could turn into a joke.
“Pretty good,” Embiid said to the media after the Blue x White Scrimmage. “Not bad. I don’t know, that’s probably, I said I would never dunk again. In the moment, he did block me the first time, so I was kind of pissed off about it. So I was hoping that he would jump again, so that’s why I went for it. But, yeah, that’s probably the last dunk of my career.”
Asked about the dunk, the former MVP suggested fans probably should not get used to seeing him finish above the rim. The joke carries some history with it. Joel Embiid had to wait until January 3, 2026, to throw down his first dunk of the 2025-26 season, doing so late in Philadelphia’s win over the New York Knicks. More than two months had passed before he finally got one, a bizarre stretch for a dominant big man who had routinely finished above the rim throughout his career.
Even the 32-year-old hardly treated it like a major accomplishment. He called the dunk “whatever” and “an easy one,” while his teammates and coach Nick Nurse were much more amused by the sight of their star finally getting airborne again. The concerns had started much earlier.
During Philadelphia’s season opener against the Boston Celtics in October 2025, Joel Embiid’s lack of vertical lift was one of the clearest signs that he was still dealing with serious physical limitations. He struggled to elevate for rebounds and shots and looked nothing like the explosive player Sixers fans were accustomed to seeing. That is what makes his latest showing so significant.
Joel Embiid does not need to become a nightly dunk machine for Philadelphia to succeed. The Sixers simply need him healthy, mobile, and capable of playing with the physical freedom that has made him one of the NBA’s most dominant players. Even LeBron James was asked how healthy his Cameroonian teammate truly feels.
It was an easy answer for Bron, who shared the court with Embiid during the USA’s gold medal run at the 2024 Olympics. Using that as a baseline, there is a lot of improvement.
“The reps have just basically kind of picked up from 2024 during the Olympics,” James said to the press after the scrimmage. “We had some chemistry. We played a lot of minutes. He started a lot of games for us that summer. But the difference between ’24 and now is that he’s just so much more healthier. He hasn’t missed practice. He’s been in damn near everything that we’ve done.
“Pretty much they’ve had to sit him out at times, even when he wanted to keep going. So obviously you see even tonight how much he played tonight. So you know it’s been good. Actually, it’s been great.”
Before LeBron James committed to the 76ers, he had a private conversation with Joel Embiid in Los Angeles that lasted nearly two hours. Bron asked him directly if he was finally heading into an offseason without another injury setback. The Cameroonian’s answer caught his attention.
Joel Embiid said it was the first summer of his career without undergoing surgery. He also told LeBron James he was fully healthy and focused on getting back to his best. In fact, Mike Gansey previously stated Embiid had added 15 pounds of muscle and was now around 295 pounds at 13% body fat.
Despite this, perhaps Joel Embiid really has thrown his final dunk down. For Philadelphia, the bigger victory would be seeing their former MVP continue to move aggressively without any concerns.