Sixers’ Ben Simmons cleared for full basketball activity, Embiid is not yet

By Josh Liddick, Sports Talk Philly editor 

It's almost time for the start of the NBA season, fam.

And the 2016 No. 1 overall draft pick, Ben Simmons has officially been cleared to play in the upcoming season, after suffering a Jones fracture in his foot prior to the start of last season.

Simmons spent the entirety of last season on the mend, and the hype was put off for at least another year.


The league has been anticipating Simmons' arrival for quite some time, and for many teams, they are still unsure of what to expect from Simmons when it comes down to game situations.

This is all expected, of course, as Simmons hasn't played competitively in two years since leaving LSU after his freshman year.

It seems as though for the past six months, the Sixers have went in limbo of knowing whether or not Simmons would be fully ready to compete, and whether or not the injury was completely healed.

I'm even surprised that this announcement was made today, especially since Simmons had already publicly announced his return on Twitter a couple of months ago.

The good news always seems to come with bad news however, as Joel Embiid is still not cleared for full basketball activity quite yet.

The center partially tore his meniscus back in February, and has been doing a lot better it seems since he went down for the count.

It might take a little bit longer until we see Embiid in a more aggressive, competitive 5-on-5 kind of setting, but it still seems very hopeful that Embiid will be playing on opening night with the Sixers in Washington DC, even though there will most likely be some kind of minutes restriction tacked on to that.

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