Joel Embiid: The best benched NBA player on the planet?

Type the name Joel Embiid into YouTube and you only get a handful of highlight videos to cast your eyes over. You get mere glimpses of a player who first touched a basketball at the age of 15 in his native Cameroon, combining a mixture of athleticism and size only seen a handful of times in a generation.

Nobody knew who this stick-thin former volleyball player was but for a select few – fortunately, one of those few happened to be former Milwaukee Bucks forward Luc Mbah a Moute, now of the Los Angeles Clippers. After setting up a basketball camp in the Central African country, he spotted the 15-year-old phenom on-court and immediately became his mentor, setting Embiid on a path to NBA stardom, or so it seemed.

Following the personal success and media acclaim, the now 22-year-old was picked third in the 2014 NBA Draft, becoming yet another young talent to join a Philadelphia 76ers roster entrenched in a historic decline. But now, two years since shaking hands with the NBA Commissioner, Embiid is yet to suit up for a game, line up for a jump ball or even score a solitary point.

This week it was reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer that the 76ers have sent Embiid back to Qatar to receive more treatment in order to be ready for the 2016/17 NBA season.

Per the Philadelphia Inquirer, Embiid left Philadelphia this week and will spend the next several weeks at Aspetar, an orthopedic and sports medicine hospital in Doha, Qatar. He had a lot of success there, and the team wanted to send him back for more treatment, according to a source.