McCaffery: Embiid plans to have a ball in postseason
PHILADELPHIA » The first 65 games of the Sixers’ season are over, into history, mostly forgotten, never again to matter.
That leaves eight more, a hastily arranged postseason, and an offer from Joel Embiid to lead the way.
“I know what I’m capable of,” Embiid said Tuesday. “I know what my teammates think of me. I know I’m capable of carrying the team.”
He’s always been capable of carrying a team. It’s why he was the No. 3 overall pick in the 2014 draft, why he has been a three-time All-Star, why he has rated place in the NBA’s superstar class. But he hasn’t always done it. Rather, he has helped win two playoff series in his first six NBA seasons. The other times, he was either injured, tired, overweight, surrounded by inferior talent or just outplayed.
To this point, all of that was understandable, a cost of developing a dominant big man. It was a process, pardon the profanity. It has not so much been that Embiid has failed to deliver a championship or even a Final Four in a career that is close to half over as much as it was a reasonable wait for that moment.
When the Sixers resume play Aug. 1, against the Pacers in Orlando, it will be that moment. It will be that moment because Embiid will have had nearly five months of load management time to reach peak condition. It will be that moment because other Sixers, including Ben Simmons, will have had time to recover from injury. It will be that moment because Embiid is 26, no longer a project. It will be that moment because since training camp, the Sixers have yelled that it was that moment, saying all along that they are championship-ready.
Embiid seemed to grasp all of that Tuesday, when he met the press for the first time in months. He grasped it and owned it and promised to make it right this time.
For that, though, he has one demand: The ball.
“It’s all about me being assertive,” he said. “If I feel like I’m not getting the ball, I just have to talk to them and do what I have to do. But at the end of the day, I should never be in position to complain about not getting the ball just because of who I am. I believe I can carry the team. I just have to take matters into my own hands.”
Not that Embiid has ever run a confidence deficit, but that demand to be the focal point of the offense was never so brightly outlined. There were times earlier this season when he made some muffled noises about being lost in the offense. And rarely has he passed on the opportunity to try to dunk on an opposing center, always seeming to take great delight in the guy’s humiliation. But he was at his self-appreciating best Tuesday, all but announcing that he doesn’t just plan to win in Orlando, but that it is his time to dominate.
“We are built for the playoffs,” Embiid said, echoing an organizational spin while half-excusing the 26 regular-season losses. “We have to keep improving. And I have to keep being on ‘that guy.’ I was on the path for that right before the season got shut down. I have to get back to what I was doing last year, which was dominating everybody.
“I was doing that again. Unfortunately, the season got shut down. But I know what I have to do.”
With the way the Sixers have been formed, with multiple perimeter options, Embiid’s value will continue to be higher closer to the basket than from 3-point range. With Simmons likely moving more to a high-post role, he could pair with Embiid to form what Brett Brown has likened to a John Stockton-Karl Malone pick-and-roll force.
“I mean, let’s just start with the respect and applause I give him for putting in time,” Brown said. “There is nobody on our team that has put in more time than Joel Embiid. And forget what he has actually done in the gym and just go to man-hours and consecutive days and the amount of days that he has put in over the last few months. I am proud of him, I respect him, and he needed to do it.”
That’s the Sixers’ story, and it may be true. It’s been their story in the past, and it wasn’t true then. If it matters, Embiid did not appear overweight in the Zoom meeting with the press Tuesday, though he was just sitting. There has yet to be any video dropped of him playing basketball since the NBA shutdown.
But he says he’s ready, and if he isn’t, it will show.
So on to Orlando it is, for a still-underachieving force with more to prove than ever.
“It’s a team game,” Embiid said. “I’m going to do my best to keep helping them, create some things for them. We all got do the same thing, just help each other. At the end of the day, it’s all about a winning a championship.
“For me, it’s just about being myself. I need to be more assertive. There was a lot of times this year when I was not into the offense. I was just basically going through the motions. “But with the playoffs coming, I have to be more assortative and just demand the ball and do what I do.”
Eight games, then the playoffs.
Embiid is ready to take it from there.