Embiid taking his glittering game to a whole new level
PHILADELPHIA » With 7:44 left in a one-point game Wednesday, the Wells Fargo Center horn beeped, Joel Embiid strolled onto the floor and Dwight Howard retreated to the bench. Almost instantly, the expected would happen.
Embiid would hit a quick threefoot shot. Then take a rebound. Then connect on a 16-footer. There would be another rebound, six made free throws, a steal and a block. Then another rebound.
The Sixers, as they typically do at home, would win, this time by nine.
Good night.
Embiid would finish with a quiet – yes, a quiet – 42 points and 10 board, would be a plus-15 and push the Sixers into first place in the Eastern Conference.
Good. Night.
“He is, for sure, MVP caliber,” Tobias Harris said afterward “Night after night, he controls the game. He controls the paint defensively. He is a force for us.”
Embiid has been a force before, three times an AllStar, a 24 ppg. career scorer, a dangerous outside shooter, a defender, a floor runner. But not like this. Not like this season, where he has played not just at an all-league pace, but as if to provide video footage for his eventual induction ceremony for the Hall of Fame. He’s shooting from distance, swishing foul shots, rising above helpless opponents to convert tip-ins, converting second shots the Moses Malone way.
At 26, seven seasons removed from the University of Kansas, neither too slim nor overweight, motivated both by a new coach and some earlier career disappointments, Embiid has been, as Harris implied, the best player in basketball. He is in the top 10 in scoring and rebounding and, were the stat to be cataloged, at the top in important-shots-made.
None of that is a particular surprise. Embiid was the No. 3 overall pick in a draft. He is into the Sixers for $147,000,000. He’s the most dominating center in the sport. He is where he is supposed to be at this point in his career, what he is paid to be, what he has promised to be, what he can be. But his consistency has been striking, as has been the ease with which he has scored and how seamlessly he has been the difference late in games.
“I don’t know if ‘surprised’ is the right word,” Doc Rivers said. “But he is more talented than I ever knew.”
Embiid is the most talented player, skill for skill, ever to wear a Sixers uniform. That could not have escaped the attention of Rivers, who has been around the NBA long enough to have played against, coached against and coached some of the greatest players in history. Yet the coach’s reaction was more than hyperbole. It was an appreciation of Embiid having spent the earliest portion of this season rising to an even higher level.
“I knew he was extremely talented,” Rivers said. “But he has so many more gifts off the dribble. He can pick
his spot. His passing has been one of his weak points, but his post passing has been phenomenal this year. “He’s tough to guard.” The dynamics of a shortened season have helped. Due to overbearing coronavirus restrictions, the overall talent level in the NBA has been diluted on a nightly basis. The result is that the great players have had a better opportunity to be at their best. For the Sixers, Harris is enjoying his best season, and Embiid is unfurling a legendary one.
In the first game of the series, the Celtics had no answer for Embiid but to foul him repeatedly, with Marcus Smart growling afterward about the whistles.
“The game is physical,” Embiid shrugged. “Teams tend to try to be extra physical against me, and I guess I’m just smarter than everybody else. I take advantage of how they are guarding me. You can call it basketball IQ. If you put your hand up there, I am going to take advantage of it and get to the line. Because I know I am a great free throw shooter.”
Has it been mentioned that modesty is among Embiid’s endearing basketball charms?
“His presence out there is huge,” Harris said. “For sure, he is putting on an MVP year.”
Through the first 15 games, Embiid did mount that MVP candidacy. But any
of the great ones can have such a mini-spurt. As always, Embiid’s challenge will be his continued availability. For some minor ouch or another, he did miss three of those 15 games, or exactly 20 percent of the schedule. That continued an uncomfortable career-long trend. But in the 2020-21 season, when any player can be forced to remain at home for lengthy periods, playing 80 percent of the games should be sufficient to win any award. The question for the Sixers is whether they can be at their best without Embiid every fifth game. For his team to win, Embiid must play. And for him to be rewarded with the highest of NBA awards, his team must win.
His basketball IQ strong, as he’d announced, Embiid accepts that reality.
“That’s all I care about, because at the end of the day when you win, everybody else wins,” he said before the season. “That’s the best thing I’ve learned since I got to the league. It’s not about me. It’s about making guys better. And if we all get better, then we will win and everybody will get awards.”
The player Brett Brown always called the Sixers’ “crown jewel” is playing that way. His team is winning. The awards are on their way.