Embiid ready to make an impact

PHILADELPHIA— Brett Brown sticks a depth chart on a sizable TV before every game that’s patterned more like a traffic light than a simple in/ out list scrawled on most NBA team chalkboards. Red. Can’t go. Yellow. Can play, with minute restrictions. Green. Healthy, let ’em rip. Joel Embiid has been stuck at the red light for two years in Tankadelphia at the corner of The Process and Progress just waiting . . . waiting . . . waiting for the light to flip to yellow and for his career to shift into drive.

Embiid remains the light at the end of Daisy’s dock for a Philadelphia 76ers franchise that has bottomed out like few others in North American professional sports history. He’s ready to go green.

All seven-foot-two, 275 pounds and — of most importance — two sturdy feet of Embiid have taken giant steps forward in the pre-season toward proving he’s more real deal than man of mystery.

Embiid, out of Kansas, has played all six pre-season games and has surpassed modest expectations, so Brown has hinted he is willing to consider lifting some restrictions he had placed on the big man. Embiid could play more than 20 minutes a game. He could play both games in back-to-back nights. He could actually post up more than he posts on social media.

“It’s been three years and the fact that I’m healthy now and ready to get back on the court, I just can’t wait,” Embiid said.

Embiid hasn’t played since the 76ers made him the No. 3 pick of the 2014 draft because of recurring injuries to his right foot. He hasn’t missed much — the 76ers went 10-72 last season and Brown is 47-199 entering his fourth season.

Embiid’s return should have set the benchmark in optimism for an organization that had shed salary and NBA talent at a rapid rate in exchange for lottery picks and cap room.

But, they are the 76ers for a reason, and no season is easy.

The Sixers might have been better off adding TV doctors Doug Ross and Gregory House to Brown’s staff more than John Bryant. The Sixers have been struck by tough injuries year after year since Joshua Harris bought the team in 2011.

The Sixers finally won big — in the draft lottery — and took no-brainer Ben Simmons as the No. 1 overall pick. Simmons lived up to a doomed Sixers tradition when he suffered a broken bone in his right foot and could miss at least three months.

Under Harris’s ownership, projected cornerstones Andrew Bynum, Nerlens Noel and Embiid have all missed full seasons with injuries.