Embiid ready to bring opponents to tears
PHILADELPHIA » All those years later, all those nights off, all those rebuildingprocess fibs, all those late-night jogs behind, Joel Embiid knew his time had arrived.
He was
27, in relatively perfect shape for a 7-0, 280-pound man, his only soreness coming from normal athletic activity. He was surrounded by gifted teammates. He was fitted with as good a coach as there is in the basketball industry.
“I can dominate,” he would say, over and over.
Through about half a season, different as it was under modern health overcaution, there was no better player in the NBA. Who else, at his size, could be as effective from the arc, as fluid in the open floor, as fundamentally pristine around the basket, as able to protect a rim?
Who else this year?
Who else ever?
By March 3 of his seventh NBA season, Embiid was borderline unfair in his domination. Doc Rivers gently reminding him that some media sorts were beginning to notice that his maintenance days had oddly coincided with games against teams with premium centers, the achy Embiid accepted an assignment against the Jazz’ Rudy Gobert.
Ever protective of his brand, Embiid would go out and plant a 40-piece on the two-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year. If possible, it was a quiet 40-piece, too. Routine, even, Expected.
By the way, Joel, if you don’t mind, how about mixing in 19 rebounds?
“He’s a great player,” Embiid would say of Gobert. “He does a lot of things for his team. But
when I go up against those guys, it brings something else out in my game.”
He was on his way to being the MVP.
The Sixers were on their way to controlling the NBA East.
A championship seemed real.
What possibly could go wrong?
Then came March 12, a 121-101 victory in Washington, a one-handed Embiid slam, a crash to the wooden floor and, from TV analyst Alaa Abdelnaby, this: “Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uhoh.”
Embiid’s left knee was bruised. Badly. He would leave the game. He’d be unavailable for a while.
Embiid was thinking about that late Saturday night, after returning after a 10-game absence, his knee sturdy enough for him to contribute 24 points and eight rebounds to a 122-113 victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves.
The memories were not all pleasant.
“When I got hurt and I laid on the floor in Washington, honestly, I thought I was done,” Embiid said. “I thought my season was done with the pain, and how badly it was hurting. I knew it was something worse than we saw.
“I was crying. I was asking myself, ‘Why me? Why does it always happen to me?’ You know, everything seems to be going well with the team and myself and something always seems to happen.”
That’s the story with Embiid. That’s the story with the Sixers. And that’s why the final 22 games of a shortened regular season, beginning Sunday night with a game against visiting Memphis in which Embiid was a healthy scratch, will be the usual for the Sixers: A two-month breath-hold, fingerscrossed, eyes-closed vigil of hope that this year, after all that had gone sideways, would end differently.
By Sunday morning, the Sixers were 34-15, in a dead heat with the Nets at the top of the conference. All predictions considered, all superstars accounted for, all expectations catalogued, that represented mild overachievement. Rivers’ team was expected to be good. Brooklyn, though, was more talented. But this has been a strange season, with players turned away at employees’ gates for insane virustracking reasons, with little practice time, the usual injuries and the dilution of some home court advantages with so few fans permitted to watch.
It’s why it’s difficult to judge who the Sixers are. They rarely have had their preferred first and second units together. Yet, Rivers has improvised, even winning games with Embiid unavailable, four of six on a recent road trip.
“But we haven’t always played against the other teams’ full complement of players, either,” Seth Curry warned. “That’s just the way the league is right now.”
That will change in the playoffs.
Superstars who take regular-season nights off will sweat for 40-plus minutes. Injuries that seemed of the “uh-oh” variety will have healed.
Most, anyway.
Embiid, though, is a different case. He seemed to comprehend that when he admitted that his injuries “always happen.”
The knee bruise almost certainly cost Embiid that MVP trophy he craves. But it didn’t cost the 76ers a season.
“I’m just glad that it wasn’t anything bad,” he said. “I was able to get back to the court and help this team go on a championship run.”
All these years, all these disappointments, all these surgeries, all these catastrophes, all these flubbed opportunities later, that’s a possibility.
This is Joel Embiid’s time.
He plans to dominate. Or to cry trying.