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.
