Sixers proving to be a tough nut to crack

WASHINGTON >> The Sixers were still 15 games under .500 when Joel Embiid found himself surrounded by writers in New York and chose to plow, ego first, into the next news cycle.

The topic: The playoffs. His stance: “We have a chance.”

With that, it was out there, never able to be dragged back. And by the time it made a swift spin through the sports gossip pages, it was almost as if the Sixers’ rookie had just channeled the late Moses Malone. At that point, he might as well have added that the Sixers were not only going to reach the postseason, but were going to win every round in a sweep.

The Sixers won that game in

Brooklyn, and they won a few days later against the Knicks, leaping from a double-figure hole in the final 2:29. Then they defeated the talented Charlotte Hornets, never trailing, leading at one point by 13. And then, there was Nerlens Noel, willing to escort Embiid’s thought onto another plane.

“It’s in the back of my mind,” Noel said of the playoffs. “We are gaining some ground and making up for some time from earlier in the season. But I think as the season continues to go on and we progress in the right way of stringing some wins along and playing good basketball, I think it’s a possibility if you look down 40 games from now.”

He was ready for the playoffs. And more. “And,” he said, “I think we can beat damn near any team, playing like this.”

So there it was, the hook to the temple that followed Embiid’s body shot: The Sixers are starting to believe not only that they can show up in the postseason, but that they will not easily be made to go down.

Taken literally, and it should be, Noel’s claim was solid. If the Sixers play as they did against Charlotte, there aren’t many teams they cannot beat. That’s how remarkable their defense was, not for 12 minutes, or 24, or 47, but for every possession, all night. At some point, any team of gifted pros can uncork a game like that. The legendary teams do it 70 times a season and 16 more in the playoffs. The rest too seldom play that way. But, yes, if the Sixers play like they did against Charlotte, they can win playoff games.

By Saturday, the Sixers were six and a half games out of a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, having won their last three and five of their last six. They still had 45 games to play as they hit the Verizon Center to play the Wizards. Chances are their 2-10 start eventually will cost them a playoff spot. But they will have time and opportunity to close any standings gap. And if they do, it will mean that they’d continued to play as they have in recent weeks. If so, they would be a postseason problem for any team, No. 1-seeds included.

“It’s fun,” Embiid said. “At Kansas, I was winning games and it was really fun. And in high school. And now we are winning games again. It’s exciting. My job here is to change the culture. And the way the people view the Sixers? Hopefully that changes.”

Embiid has done that. It’s why any discussion about the Sixers’ ability to compete well against the better teams is no longer senseless. Few players, and fewer centers, play basketball as well in four directions. Not only can Embiid change the game from one baseline to the other, but he is a difference-maker from the floor to high above the rim. He is a rim-protecting, outside-shooting stretch five. That makes the Sixers different.

“You have a big personality in Embiid,” Brett Brown said. “You have a kamikaze marine in T.J. McConnell. You’ve got the pieces flying around, Robert Covington, Gerald Henderson. Ersan Ilyasova is a very underrated defensive player. Then you’ve got Dario Saric who is complete Philly to me, inside and out, in relation to his toughness and his edge. And the pieces are there to play with that spirit that reflects the city’s personality.

“We haven’t wavered once in what our goal is: To build this slowly. You can point to some subtle examples, albeit only over a handful of games, but it is pointing in the direction that we want to take this program.”

The Sixers have two strong centers, three if Jahlil Okafor is included, reasonable point-guard depth, a desire to defend and a joy of playing that comes from a rookie not afraid to join the cheerleading squad for an on-court, celebratory post-win dance.

“These players believe we are getting closer, that they might actually have a teammate for longer than a few months,” Brown said, “and that the things we’re doing over this period of time are real enough, in their eyes, that they are part of something that we hope is professional. We hope they feel they getting better and that they are cared for and they are in a realistic, true, professional environment.”

That’s how postseason talk starts. And for the Sixers, that’s how it has grown.