The Philadelphia 76ers are heading into State Farm Arena in Atlanta on Monday being shorthanded once again. They will be missing quite a few players who are out due to the health and safety protocols and they are missing Ben Simmons and Furkan Korkmaz due to injury.
Simmons’ injury popped up in Thursday’s loss to the Brooklyn Nets and that’s why he was a late scratch from Saturday’s game with the Denver Nuggets. Coach Doc Rivers initially called it “knee stiffness”, but it popped on the injury report on Monday as “knee swelling” which caused some confusion. There was also a thought that maybe it is a continuation of the injury he suffered in the bubble back in August.
Rivers cleared all of that up Monday before their matchup with Atlanta.
“To me, it means the same thing so I didn’t differentiate,” said Rivers. “I probably should have said knee swelling over stiffness. To me, it’s the same thing and that’s basically what I meant, but I don’t think it’s anything to do with last year, or at least I don’t know that let me put it that way, but it bothered him. He was talking about it after the Brooklyn game and this early in the season, we’re just trying to go with the more safe than sorry approach right now.”
With the Sixers so shorthanded right now, it is important to make sure they get Simmons back sooner rather than later. They have a quick turnaround as they face the Miami Heat on Tuesday back at home.
“We thought it may be one game. It’s already been two,” Rivers added. “We’re hoping he’ll play tomorrow night, but I can’t guarantee any of that.”
As for Seth Curry, he tested positive for COVID-19 during the Nets game and that set off a chain reaction of contact tracing and he, of course, is out right now as well as he goes through his recovery process.
“He’s doing great,” said Rivers. “I talked to him this afternoon, and he says, ‘coach I feel great’. He said he had one bad day I guess and that’s really the report we get from a lot of our guys, they’ve had just one bad day. A couple of guys, it lingers, but he says, I’m just holed up in the basement of my house. Playing video games and watching basketball and football, so all’s good there, which is good news.”
For the sake of the Sixers, they would much rather have those guys return to the floor as quickly as possible.
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