Joel Embiid joining 76ers on road trip, optimism he returns during regular season

It's not likely he will play during it, but the fact Joel Embiid is going with the 76ers on a two-game road trip is a good sign for his return.

Nick Nurse said Embiid would travel with the team to Cleveland and Toronto, but there is still no official timeline for Embiid's return.

"I'd love to give you one," Nurse said of a timeline, via Noah Levick of NBC Sports Philadelphia. "I'd love to not have to continue this — and that means he's back playing, right? Again, I think that it's coming."

Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN took that a step further, saying there was optimism Embiid would return before the end of the regular season.

Philadelphia has nine games remaining and, in an ideal world, would get Embiid back for four or five games before the end of the season to get his legs under him.

Philadelphia sits eighth in the East, half-a-game back of Miami at seven and 1.5 back of Indiana in sixth. Both the 76ers and Heat have much easier schedules the rest of the way than the Pacers and everyone would like to avoid the play-in (as well as facing Boston in the first round). Getting Embiid back could help boost the 76ers in the standings, but what matters more is having him healthy and with some conditioning so he is playing back near his MVP level — any playoff run the 76ers might make has that as a foundation.