WILL JO OR WON’T JO?
• All-Star center Embiid’s return to lineup still unknown • Sixers-Heat Game 2 coverage online at trentonian.com
PHILADELPHIA » Already having missed the first two games of the NBA’s first playoff round, Joel Embiid is moving closer to missing the third … and more.
Before Game 2 Monday against the Miami Heat, Brett Brown shared no word of progress from his training staff on Embiid’s healing left orbital. And since the Sixers’ coach hinted at only a non-contact practice scheduled for Tuesday, that would leave the AllStar center running low on available conditioning time for Game 3 Thursday night at 7 in Miami.
“Same old, same old,” Brown said. “Just moving on. He does his workout. He really hasn’t done anything like feeling a body. We’re slowly trying to move into the script, the five-onzero stage. But to have any announcement on Game 3, that’s not going to happen because we don’t know. We’re just moving along.”
Embiid declined to answer questions before the game. But he has not played since a March 28 on-court collision with Markelle Fultz that left him with a concussion and a fractured left-eye bone. He has recovered from the concussion, and he will need to wear a mask whenever he does return to full-contact basketball. But that has yet to be added to his recovery agenda.
“I don’t think anybody is ‘practicing’ anymore,” said Brown, reflecting the lessercontact, off-day, postseason NBA trend. “Really, you’re just thankful to be healthy. There’s ‘low-minute’ workouts, you keep up for lowminute guys.”
Brown plans to assemble the Sixers in Camden Tuesday for shooting and shell drills, “generating a sweat in a productive way.” Embiid is likely to participate in some of that. “We’re moving to that,” Brown said. “He’s shot a lot. But as far as practices or ‘feeling’ somebody, that hasn’t happened. And I don’t know that it will happen (Tuesday.)”
If not, that would compromise Embiid’s necessary prep time for Game 3.
“I don’t know,” Brown said. “I understand the question. I don’t know. I’m just moving along and coaching with what I know what I have. And right now, I don’t have Joel.”
Embiid worked with the Sixers before the game, making plenty of long, if un-defended, shots. The Sixers started Amir Johnson at center in Game 1, and turned to Ersan Ilyasova at the five spot Monday.
“I can’t wait to get Joel back,” Brown said. “He is to me the difference-maker. Joel Embiid changes the dynamics in many ways for this team.”
The question, though, is how quickly Embiid can make that difference, given that he will have been out of action for nearly a month whenever he does return. Game 4 is Saturday in Miami.
“There will be a re-introduction of him back to the team,” Brown said. “How do I play him? That’s fair. I am not sure really what that’s going to look like. We’ll judge that more once we can see what we are actually able to do with him and how soon we can do it. But right now I can’t give you a perfect answer of what that looks like.”
Clearly, the Sixers are in no rush to find that out.
“That’s a partnership with Joel and the medical people,” Brown said. “It’s a collaborative thing with the bottom line being what is best for his health. It has nothing to do with what we did in a game and that we might have to rush him. It’s not that. The bottom line is what is best for Joel Embiid’s health.”
The Sixers’ uniforms included a black stripe on the sleeve, including a No. 15 patch, in honor of franchise great Hal Greer. The Sixers announced the death of their all-time leading scorer Monday.
“We know about just the way everybody has played and represented the Sixers,” Simmons said. “They played hard all the time. And Philly is known as a hard city. And we definitely try to take that on the floor and represent Philadelphia that way.”
Greer’s No 15 is retired by the Sixers. There is a small statue in his honor, among those honoring other franchise greats, at the practice center.