It went from bad to worse last night when Joel Embiid’s precautionary testing revealed an orbital fracture and concussion, suffered Wednesday in a second-quarter collision with Markelle Fultz.

The Sixers’ big man is expected to miss two to four weeks of actions, according to ESPN, and would likely return for the start of the playoffs or midway through round one. He has yet to undergo surgery.

Until then, the Sixers will play eight more regular season games without him, a schedule that includes just two playoff teams and six non-playoff teams, with four on the road and four at home. It is not, thankfully, murderer’s row, and this roster is good enough to beat the likes of Atlanta and Dallas sans Joel in a continued push for home court advantage.

For what it’s worth, the Sixers are 3-8 without Embiid this season, but five of those losses came on the second night of a back-to-back, long before Joel was cleared to play in those games. In full context, not only are you missing your best player, but you’re traveling and tired, so I don’t know how much those back-to-back losses can be blamed on Embiid’s absence and how much can be blamed on weariness in general.

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…the same storyline from September and October.

It’s Joel Embiid’s health; only this time we’re talking about getting him ready for the playoffs as the Sixers jostle for seeding in a tightly packed Eastern Conference.

Brett Brown has gone on the record several times saying that he prioritizes “delivering” a healthy Embiid to the postseason versus claiming home court advantage, so I threw the question to Twitter this morning to see what y’all prefer:

Assuming you can't have both, pick one scenario:

— Kevin Kinkead (@Kevin_Kinkead) March 22, 2018

It was 70% to 30% in favor of a rested Embiid when I hit the “publish” button.

That surprises me. I thought home court would win in a landslide.

Of course, defining a “rested” Embiid and a “non-rested” Embiid is an arbitrary exercise. Joel says he feels good and I take that at face value. I mean, he missed some games a few months back after the triple-overtime epic with Oklahoma City, but he’s off the injury report, the wrist and back seem fine, and he’s playing back-to-backs for the first time in his career. He’s come a long way in a very short time.

That doesn’t mean there might not be a cumulative fatiguing of sorts, something different from the day-to-day grind of playing X minutes one night, then X minutes the next night. It’s a macro vs. micro type of situation, I think. Embiid is on pace to play 70+ games, a number that I highly, highly doubt anybody had predicted a few months back. He hasn’t come close to playing this many games at any point of his career.

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UPDATE: He’s playing. Last-minute change. Ignore everything you are about to read.

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Tonight’s game is sort of like AMC’s “The Walking Dead.”

Markelle Fultz and Justin Anderson are out.

Rudy Gay, Manu Ginobili, Kawhi Leonard, Danny Green, and Tony Parker will also miss the game.

And Joel Embiid’s bum hand keeps him sidelined, too. The Sixer big man has been limited in practice after spraining his right mitt during a fall in the Suns game on New Year’s Eve.

“When you see it, you see the bruising on his palm,” Brett Brown said pregame. If you go back and look at how he really fell, you’re surprised that that’s all it is. It’s a club hand, and it’s his shooting hand. Even yesterday we keep practice so that we can continue his cardio and get his fitness up. That’s my number one, by a mile, goal – is to get him in conditioning shape. Not physical, but conditioning and shape. So he’s practicing with us, but when you throw it into the post and he’s got to catch it, it’s like you’re touching a hot stove. You know? Like you just don’t want anything to do with it. You see the pain that he’s in when he touches the ball with his right hand. We’re going to monitor it. We won’t know until Friday in sort of that day to day (designation).”

Embiid spoke about the hand in the locker room pregame:

Joel Embiid on his right hand pic.twitter.com/dBzfn4rrDL

— Jon Johnson (@jonjohnsonwip) January 3, 2018

Meantime, Brown was asked if the team was getting Embiid ready for next week’s London game, with the insinuation that the club might be saving him for a showcase game.

“I almost hear what you’re asking I think,” Brown said. “I wouldn’t use that as, ‘let’s polish him up for London.’ If he’s good to go versus Detroit or whatever, then he’s good to go. I don’t think we’re going to walk on egg shells with the end game being in mind that we have to deliver him overseas. I don’t see that.”

Joel Embiid just knows how to do it. Not just on the court, but on social media as well.

After dropping 28 points in an overtime win against Karl-Anthony Towns and the Minnesota Timberwolves on Tuesday night, the beloved big man took to Instagram with a modest post. KAT pounced with a comment and Embiid clapped back beautifully:

Never change, Joel.