Joel Embiid’s return gives Sixers hope, but they’ve heard this song before
PHILADELPHIA — Not much changed at the end.
The Philadelphia 76ers walked off their home floor again as a crowd of New York fans chanted “Let’s Go Knicks” once again following another road victory for Tom Thibodeau and company in the City of Brotherly Love. This time, Karl-Anthony Towns got the love as he left the Wells Fargo Center court with his father in tow, quickly followed by Josh Hart and Miles McBride.
Joel Embiid and his Sixers were long gone.
Their season, already off to such a terrible start, filled with injuries and doubts and a terrible moment of confrontation, continued the spiral on Tuesday in a 111-99 loss to the Knicks, dropping Philly to 2-8. But this is where Philadelphia hopes things hit rock bottom.
Well, maybe that will come Wednesday, when the undefeated Cleveland Cavaliers play here.
For now, the Sixers will just have to console themselves with Embiid’s return Tuesday after missing the first six games of the season while continuing to rehabilitate his left knee, followed by a three-game suspension imposed by the NBA after Embiid a Philadelphia shove. Researcher-columnist during a postgame incident on November 2. The columnist had written several inflammatory op-eds about Embiid’s conditioning, but also referenced Embiid’s late brother Arthur and Embiid’s son, also named Arthur, in an Oct. 23 column. That caused 30-year-old Embiid.
On Tuesday, Embiid was far from his dominant self. He was rusty, finishing just 2 of 11 from the floor and scoring 13 points in 26 minutes. His old, and perhaps now former enemy, Towns, dominated all night, finishing with 21 points and 13 rebounds. Towns finished the game for New York, while Embiid sat out the final few minutes to avoid scoring more than the 25 to 30 minutes the Sixers had allocated for him before the game.
“You can do whatever you want in practice and scrimmage, but the game is a different story,” Embiid said afterward. “I’ll be fine.”
His words, the concerns of a franchise.
The story of the greatest players in NBA history. In 100 compelling profiles, top basketball writers justify their selections and reveal the history of the NBA in the process.
The story of the greatest plays in NBA history.
Embiid hasn’t fared well most springs when championships are decided after suffering injuries late in the regular season or in the playoffs. He missed two months last year with a meniscus injury in his left knee, then suffered a bout of Bell’s palsy during Philadelphia’s loss to the Knicks. So the Sixers and their superstar agreed to hold him out of some regular-season games this season to give him the best chance to reach April and May healthy. The organization’s misstatements cost the Sixers $100,000, but it’s doubtful they cared much. Embiid says playing is his business, but of course it isn’t, not really.
Yes, Embiid played for Team USA in the Olympics, including a big match against Nikola Jokić and Serbia in the semifinals, and showed up when the United States needed him most. But that period lasted more than two months before the start of training camp, and the time off showed it.
Against New York Tuesday, he missed his first five shots from the floor and didn’t score a field goal until he hit a 3-pointer with nine minutes left in the third. Embiid, as always, got to the line and made 8 of 8 free throws in the first half. But Embiid lagged noticeably throughout the second half. He put on his shorts after his first stint of the second half. And even though he asked the crowd to rise late in the third quarter, he couldn’t lift Philly in the fourth as New York pulled away.
“When he plays well, he’s kind of in control of the game on the offensive end,” Sixers coach Nick Nurse said afterward. “He either creates good shots for himself or he comes up with a lot of defensive schemes against him, which makes it much easier for our guys to make shots. That’s part of rhythm, part of conditioning, all that kind of stuff. He’s a great shooter. That will come back too, I think.”
The Sixers must now raise their hopes of finding continuity with yet another core group.
Paul George, the most important free-agent acquisition of the offseason, is just returning from a preseason bone bruise that cost him the first five games of the season. On Tuesday, though, he looked great and looked every bit the silky-smooth scorer and facilitator the Sixers hope he can be, finishing with a game-high 29 points. But guard Tyrese Maxey, who took such a big step last season playing alongside Embiid, missed his third straight game with a strained hamstring. It doesn’t give Nurse much time to judge who plays best with whom.
Philly, for example, brought in Guerschon Yabusele, who starred on the French national team at the Olympics and helped Les Bleus to a silver medal. He was sensational. The Sixers hoped he could play for them in small-ball units in the middle. And with Embiid gone, they got a good look at him. Through the first nine games, he shot better than 43 percent on 3s on decent volume. But now Nurse Yabusele and Embiid will have to play together, with Yabusele playing more of a power forward. The recordings are different. The rhythm is different. Whoever guards Yabusele on the other side is different.
Nurse got exactly what he wanted to see late in the first quarter, when Embiid returned to the bench after a few minutes, drew two Knicks to him at the top of the key and fed an open Yabusele on the wing for a 3. But that was the only shot that Yabusele hit all night in seven attempts.
Still, it’s crystal clear how formidable the Sixers can be if Embiid returns to his old self, flanked by a healthy George and Maxey; solid role players like Kelly Oubre Jr., Yabusele, Caleb Martin; rookie Jared McCain, who is completely fearless; and vet stocks like Reggie Jackson, Kyle Lowry and Andre Drummond. Philadelphia’s offensive potential is astounding when everyone is healthy, so the Sixers are doubly fortunate that their awful start hasn’t doomed their playoff chances in the less-than-fully functional Eastern Conference; the Sixers came into play on Tuesday just one game out of the Play-In round.
George knows the pressure Embiid is under. He was a franchise player for the Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder, and then a co-franchisee with the LA Clippers alongside Kawhi Leonard. That weight of being a man feels like wearing a burlap sweater and concrete Nikes.
“I don’t think it’s pressure for him,” George said. “He is the piece. He is the process. I think he’s just finding his way, as he should. We are here to keep things going until he comes back to himself. But I don’t think there is any pressure on him to do anything extra. He will find his rhythm as the games progress as we learn how to play on him and play around him. I’ve seen it in practice, so I know he’s not far off.”
I asked Embiid if the urgency of the 2-8 start, and the countdown of his prime years, is pushing him to come back sooner instead of working more slowly through the regular season as had been the long-term plan. He recalled his rookie season, after two years of rehabilitation from multiple foot surgeries. Embiid roared out of the gate to finish third in the Rookie of the Year voting — even though the Sixers kept him out of all but one game of the second half of the season.
“We were still very competitive,” he said of what would be a 28-54 season. “And even that year, if they had let me finish the year, I thought we actually had a chance to make the playoffs. So urgency, for sure. But you also have to understand that we have not been healthy. Everyone comes back. Like I said, based on how things have gone the last few years, with us (together) on the floor, I think we have a pretty good chance.
“Things are falling apart; the center cannot hold it,” William Butler Yeats wrote about something completely different a century ago. But it’s up to Embiid to make sure people don’t see a connection here.
Sign up for The Bounce, Zach Harper’s essential NBA newsletter and The Athletics staff, delivered to your inbox for free.
(Photo: David Dow/NBAE via Getty Images)
