PHILADELPHIA — From the instant he stepped on the TD Garden court for Game 2 to the instant he walked off after Game 7, Joel Embiid spent that second-round series against the Boston Celtics giving himself and everyone who cares about the 76ers a chronic case of emotional whiplash.
He came back from his knee injury. The Sixers lost. He cried tears of joy when he received his NBA Most Valuable Player trophy. The Sixers lost again. He was terrific in Game 4. The Sixers won. He was even better in Game 5, especially on what, at the time, looked to be the play that would define his season and perhaps his career: that chase-down block on Jaylen Brown. The Sixers won again. He vanished in the closing minutes of Game 6 and through the entirety of Game 7. And here we are, with questions about the Sixers, about him, about their future together.
Daryl Morey believes those uncertainties are overblown. Or, at least, they can be boiled down to just one overriding question about Embiid: How much better is he going to get next year? And the year after that? And the year after that? The two of them confabbed during an end-of-the-season sit-down earlier this week, and Morey came away from it persuaded that Embiid’s career was still trending upward. Even if his postseason performance is rarely of the same quality as his regular-season performance. Even if injury and illness have become annual rites of spring for him.
“I wouldn’t bet against him improving again,” Morey said Wednesday at the Sixers’ headquarters in Camden, in the aftermath of their decision to fire Doc Rivers. “He’s done it every year since I’ve been here. He’s done every year before I got here. I didn’t track it as close. He went from not playing to playing. His health is improving, and his game’s improving. Again, a lot of the conversation with Joel was, ‘Hey, I can do more. I can work on this. I’m watching the playoffs. I’m looking at this guy. I can add that to my game.’ I wouldn’t bet against him.”
Considering all the time that Embiid has had to watch the playoffs — the Sixers have never advanced past the second round since his arrival nine years ago — one would think that he’d have added so much to his game that he’d have a limitless array of post moves, face-ups, and fadeaways. In fairness, he comes closer than most big men, though there are a couple of areas where he certainly has room for growth. Like in identifying and passing out of a double team. And in playing with his back to the basket.
It can be remarkable, and intimidating to a defender, to see Embiid dribbling down the court at full speed, 7-foot-2, 300 pounds, a runaway train, and he can be impossible to guard in those situations if given space. But the Celtics figured out that they could have Robert Williams and/or Al Horford pick up Embiid 30 feet from the basket and force him either to work harder to score or to give the ball up. Only so many teams have two post players smart enough, skilled enough, and mobile enough to guard Embiid in that manner. But then, in May, it only takes one such team to send the Sixers home again.
“That was a big conversation with Joel — again, led by Joel to his credit: ‘How can I make sure I can still get to my spots? How can I make sure when they take this away, I have a counter?’ ” Morey said. “It’s something that we — and I’ll just put it on myself — have to do a better job during the season, because the regular season can often be a Wednesday against a bad team and Joel’s so good he can just dominate a game without them doing a lot of keying. …
“We want to try to make sure we get him those similar kinds of high-intensity defensive looks during the regular season and have that be something he’s more comfortable in as we get into the playoffs. That’s a big priority, to continue to get him rep after rep so he can work on it in the offseason and during the season so he’s ready-ready for the focused defenses he faces in the playoffs.”
Two parallel threads run through what Morey said about Embiid there. The first is Morey’s presumption that increased practice and reps will improve Embiid’s skills. They very well might. Sometimes it’s worth a reminder that Embiid has still spent more of his life not playing basketball than he has playing it; he’s 29 and didn’t take up the sport until he was 15. As great as he has been at his best, it is indeed possible for him to be greater.
The other thread, though, is the implication of those hyphenated adjectives: high-intensity and ready-ready. Those words don’t describe or deal with Embiid’s or his opponents’ physical abilities. They describe the mental, psychological components of competition — the components that, in light of all these early playoff exits, in light of Games 6 and 7 of the Celtics series, are most in doubt with Embiid. As strong as Embiid and Rivers’ relationship was, as shocked as Embiid was over the firing, that respect and affection didn’t stop his play and production from declining again in the postseason.
It’s not that he doesn’t want to win. It’s that the separation between one team’s superstar and another often comes down to the smallest of differences. Maybe, in the fourth quarter of a gotta-have-it game, one of them tells his teammates, Get me the damn ball, and maybe the other doesn’t. Maybe one just has It, and maybe the other doesn’t.
The Sixers are betting that Embiid does have that intangible quality — the kind of win-or-go-down-in-flames side of a personality that sorts out the champions from the wannabes — and that if he doesn’t, he can acquire it. They have no other choice. He is too talented, too vital to the franchise, to trade or to write off as incapable of achieving anything beyond an MVP award and another painful playoff ending. They will bet on him because they must. The rest is up to him.
