Saric emerging as a star
With every extra shot he took, after every long practice, Dario Saric had a vision.
With every extra international game he played, after every tough game, he had a purpose.
With every dive he will make to the floor, or with every extra pass he will make for a layup, or for every time he essentially engages in judo to claim an edge over a bulky opponent at the defensive end, he knows he is growing closer to his goal.
He wants to be the best possible basketball player. He’s close. No, he’s there. “His reputation from the people that matter,” Brett Brown was saying the other night, “is for sure going up.”
Joel Embiid has sport-changing potential as a gifted stretchfive with an ability to finish anywhere and a willingness to sprint 94 feet just to block a shot. Ben Simmons is enormously entertaining, a massive guard whose vision ranks among the greatest ever to play the sport. Even with their flaws,
and those young 76ers have some, they are so glowing, so fascinating that they are impossible not to enjoy.
But the longer this productive Sixers season goes, and the more likely it is to result in a multiround push into the postseason, the more something else is obvious, too: Saric, skill for skill, is at that level too. And rising.
“He is such a significant part of this team,” Brown said. “From a spirit standpoint as much as a positional-slash-statistic standpoint, his spirit is pure. He loves basketball. He’s a great teammate and he’s just trending up. He’s just really getting better.”
For all their sparkle, and there has been plenty, the secret to a Sixers season that could end with the Big 5-Oh in the W ledger, has been their passion. They care. That is evident in their behavior on the bench, where every three-point play is celebrated with high-fives and high-school giddiness. That is evident every time they are at the defensive end. That comes through without static whenever a player is made to leak playing time due to the numbers … and does not complain. And it is evident, every trip down the floor, not some of them, every one, that Saric makes. He is 6-10, 223, with a heavy lower body that makes him tough to push around. But what he has most of all is a determination to win. He has been seen after practices competing in otherwise mundane shooting or oneon-one competitions, the kind designed to promote only crispness, and he will be fighting to win as if an Olympic gold medal is the prize. Never, in a game, does he neglect to leap on a 50-50 ball. And his vision at that position, his ability to see a play develop a pass or two before anyone else is at the Larry Bird level.
In a 118-101 victory Wednesday over the Knicks, Saric contributed 26 points and 14 rebounds. The numbers glow even brighter, given that Embiid played just 8:32 and left the game with facial damage after a collision with Markelle Fultz. Saric didn’t need to be told what to do. He just read the entire situation and responded with the necessary scoring.
“Maybe I had a little more space,” he said. “Maybe I took a little more responsibility when Joel left. Obviously, I think all players share the responsibility. I know these guys. After four, five, six months, I know how they find their shots and try to play the game that way.”
Saric’s basketball brilliance can be understated. But it can be visible, too. His resolve to secure premium defensive position comes with a ruggedness befitting an NFL guard, a grabbing, pushing, snarling refusal to surrender one step. Yet at the offensive end, he has blossomed into a full-service forward, his outside shot included.
“In this league any more, you can’t be a four if you can’t shoot the three-point shot,” Brown said. “That’s not where our game is.”
Last season, his first in the NBA, Saric was 31.1 percent three-point shooter. This season, after obsessive training that has yielded a useful, elbow-in purity, he is shooting 40.1 percent from the arc.
“I am feeling good,” Saric said. “I have been working for the last year, during the summer, on my shot and on my threepoint shots, hoping for just the moment that it would all be set up for me. It happened this season. And I hope it will stay that way.”
One play in the victory over New York simultaneously crystallized Saric’s value and the Sixers’ season. Stung by the loss of Embiid, the Sixers were trying to maintain a one-point lead that at one point was 16. That’s when Saric made a dive for a loose ball near midcourt and, in one acrobatic move, re-directed it 50 feet toward a sprinting Ben Simmons for a breakaway dunk.
“Fantastic, truly inspirational stuff,” Brown said. “And that’s what we want to be. For the most part, that’s who we are. And that was a courageous play, a motivating play. I thought he was our MVP; he was the bellringer. That play is as good as it gets if you just wanted a snapshot of how you want your team to be perceived. It speaks volumes on many levels.”
The Sixers are perceived as a young, rising team, with Embiid and Simmons dominating the marquee. In reality, they are a ready team, healthy and willing, with three star players, not two. Just as Dario Saric had it envisioned.