Sports Doctor Discusses His Concerns on Joel Embiid's Bizarre Eye Movements
Brian Sutterer, MD: “Joel Embiid has been clearly laboring through the playoffs, but one of the biggest mysteries is that ever since we saw him re-aggravate his knee something really weird and bizarre has been going on where it doesn’t seem like we’ve seen Embiid blink his left eye. Something funny was going on with his eyes where he was only closing his right eye. His left eye did not close at all. After Game 2, Embiid didn’t even want to look at the camera. He refused to look up and seemed to be trying to cover or hide something with his eye. It’s just really bizarre."
"With the corneal blink reflex, if one eye senses that something is coming, the signal gets sent back, crosses over, and causes both eyes to blink. Obviously, if there’s some sort of defect injury anywhere along that pathway going back out to the eye, the signal will get through to the brain stem, but it’s going to be interrupted and not cause the eye to blink.
To me, this all looks more like something is going on with Embiid’s left eye, causing it not to blink. One of my thoughts is ‘well, did he get poked in the right eye and he has some sort of corneal abrasion and he’s just kind of blinking because he’s uncomfortable, and trying to kind of flush out whatever is irritated in that right now?’ But my suspicion is actually more that his right eye is working just fine, but there could be something going on not getting signal through to that left eye to trigger that left eye blink reflex.
It’s important to know that you can just voluntarily close one eye. It’s not that hard to sit there and close one eye, but it’s really hard to voluntarily blink one eye really quick. It raises some concern in my mind, is there something with that whole pathway where he’s not getting the nerve signal back through to the opposite?
There’s a lot of weird stuff in medicine where you have anatomic variations, and people are just unique in terms of how their nervous systems are wired. Maybe that’s the case here with Embiid, but the fact he’s trying to cover it and protect it makes me worry that there could be some true injury there affecting that left eye.
I know Embiid has had some history with orbital fractures, and with orbital fractures you can have damage to nerves, but looking back, I’ve seen video of him blinking just fine before this series. I think the team should come out and say something because clearly there is something going on with Embiid. He’s bothered by that eye, he doesn’t want to show it, he’s wearing sunglasses, and people are talking about his funny blinking stuff.
I think what possibly could have happened is some trauma to that eye, some trauma to the face, and maybe temporarily injured or sort of paralyzed temporarily either that muscle that goes around the eye or one of the nerves feeding into that muscle, which is causing that reflex to not get triggered through and to not blink that left eye.
The team would be advised to say something. At least tell us what’s maybe going on to make sure Embiid is doing okay, because he is clearly laboring with his knee, and now if he’s got some sort of eye injury, I think the team needs to communicate what could potentially be happening and make sure there is nothing more serious going on.”
Watch sports medicine doctor Brian Sutterer break down Joel Embiid’s apparent eye injury he suffered during the New York Knicks vs. Philadelphia 76ers first round NBA Playoffs series, which resulted in bizarre videos going viral on social media that showed Embiid seemingly unable to blink his left eye.
The original injury appeared to have occurred in the first quarter of Game 1 after a collision with Sixers teammate Kelly Oubre while Embiid went up for a rebound, with videos later going viral of Embiid laying on the floor and his left eye mysteriously remaining open despite him blinking his right eye.
Embiid was later seen with sunglasses on while talking to the media following their Game 1 loss in New York, and Sixers head coach Nick Nurse downplayed the injury altogether. Two nights later in Game 2, more videos went up online of Embiid standing at the free throw line and still unable to blink his left eye. Following their Game 2 loss, Embiid had his head down with a hand over his left eye while sitting at his locker and was unwilling to look up at any reporters while addressing the media.
Check out the segment above as Sutterer discusses what he thinks might be going on with Embiid’s eye, as the Sixers as of Tuesday night have not shed any details about any potential eye injury involving their star center ahead of Game 3 on Thursday.
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