Embiid hopes to be unmasked before next playoff round

BOSTON » Without wearing his protective mask, Joel Embiid participated in a morning shoot-around Monday. Soon, the Sixers’ center could shed it for good.

His left orbital bone fractured in a March 28 on-court collision with Markelle Fultz and later surgically repaired, Embiid has been wearing the mask since his return for Game 3 of the Sixers’ opening-round playoff series in Miami.

While it has been hinted that he would wear the protective goggles during games for the remainder of the playoffs, Embiid has come to hope it will not be necessary within the next two weeks. Should the 76ers’ Eastern Conference semifinal series with the Boston Celtics take seven games, it would not end until May 13. So it is possible Embiid could be mask-free well in time for a possible Eastern Conference final series against either Toronto or Cleveland.

“The last thing I remember the doctor saying after the surgery was that it was going to take six weeks to be fully healed,” Embiid said after the non-contact practice. “I expect to take it off. This is the fourth week. So we are going to see in two weeks after scans and stuff to see if it is fully healed. And if it is, I’m taking it off.”

Though Embiid was productive in the Miami series, he complained about the mask feeling “weird.” And in his first two games with the protection, he shot a total of 7-for-22, including 2-for-11 in Game 4. He did shoot 8-for-14 for 19 points in the decisive Game 5.

Clearly, however, the mask has him uncomfortable. His reasons for wanting it removed?

“I’d have better vision,” he said. “And I would make more shots.”

Given that shot-making occasionally determines a basketball score, that would be a worthwhile goal. As for Monday, hours before the Sixers would play the Celtics in Game 1, Embiid was happy to have had a maskfree walk-through.

“I should probably always wear it,” he said, with almost a guilty smile, after the workout at a downtown athletic club. “That way I could get used to it. But it is annoying, so I don’t feel I should, really. With the goggles and everything, I can’t really see. So besides game time, I don’t really see the point of wearing this.”

*** Already playing without $29 million forward Gordon Hayward (leg) and $19 million guard Kyrie Irving (knee), the Celtics are dealing with a hamstring injury to starting swingman Jaylen Brown. As the Sixers prepared for Game 1, Brown was considered “questionable,” and with that, a question hit veteran J.J. Redick: At what point must the Sixers guard against assuming success, just because so many Celtics have training-room issues?

“Well, they have proven all season that it doesn’t really matter who is in the lineup, they are going to play high-level basketball,” Redick said. “They just have a bunch of competitive guys who play hard and play the right way. They are wellcoached. I think they have great skill players. So they have a lot of interchangeable parts.

“For us, we obviously respect these guys. It doesn’t matter who is in or out of their lineup.”

*** Before Monday, the Sixers and Celtics last played Jan. 18.

“Forever and a day ago,” Brett Brown said. “The teams are different. The actual people playing in the game is different.”

For the Sixers, that meant the trade-deadline maneuvers to acquire Ersan Ilyasova and Marco Belinelli, two significant contributors. For the Celtics, that has meant the loss of Irving.

“I like that we have been growing,” Brown said. “We have been continually getting better in our own way. And our record supports that belief a little bit. We are getting better. We are trending in an upward way.”

*** Not that any Sixers-Celtics series can unfold without a scent of nostalgia, but by way of context, Joel Embiid was 6 when Charles Barkley retired. So memories of Wilt Chamberlain or Andrew Toney, for instance, may be cloudy.

Just the same, the Sixers have been made aware of the history, with Brown having mixed motivational comments from Julius Erving, Allen Iverson and Barkley into some game tapes before the postseason began.

“I know they have been going back and forth for a long time,” Embiid said of the Sixers and Celtics. “This game has a lot of meaning. Today, before the shootaround, we watched a little video about the rivalry. It explained the rivalry and how intense it is.”

So refreshed in history, Embiid has a favorite Sixers-Celtics moment.

“Dr. J and Larry Bird,” he said, “holding each other’s necks.”