PHILADELPHIA — Joel Embiid needs to be content with being Kevin Durant’s mom. He might not win the trophy, but he can be the real MVP.
He can be the dominant postseason force the Sixers need him to be. He can be the difference between a berth in the Eastern Conference finals and another early exit. He can show the league, the country, the world that he is the game’s greatest differentiator.
First, though, he needs to be healthy.
The next time Embiid takes the court, he needs to belong there. In a perfect world, we’d have no reason to doubt whether that is the case. The Sixers are a company worth $2 billion, and they have the best fleet of decision-makers that money can buy. The medical staff, the front office, the head coach — all of them understand that the organization’s No. 1 priority between now and the start of the playoffs is to make sure their No. 1 asset arrives there in one piece. So when a head coach like Doc Rivers says that the No. 1 asset is healthy enough to play, you’d like to believe that his word is enough.
Sharpshooting Denver Nuggets too much for Joel Embiid-less Sixers in 104-95 routBut, let’s be honest, we’re talking about Embiid.
If you’ve followed his career, you know that the big guy’s interpretation of “mind over matter” does not always include an accurate accounting of the physical realities of the latter. In 2017, Embiid decided that he was healthy enough to play in a nationally televised game against the Rockets despite having missed the previous three contests with a bone bruise and partially torn meniscus in his knee. It turned out to be his last game of the season — after scoring 32 points, an MRI revealed that his knee now needed surgery.
Two years later, Embiid decided he was healthy enough to play in the NBA All-Star Game despite a sore left knee. It turned out to be his last game for nearly a month: He began the second half of the season in street clothes, and the Sixers went 4-4 without him.
There aren’t a lot of players who would finish out a game after dislocating their finger the way Embiid did against the Thunder in January of 2020. But that doesn’t change the fact that he ended up missing the next nine games.
This is the pattern with Embiid. And, yeah, there’s a certain charm to it. In an era where load management has helped to turn the regular season into a shrug, the Sixers have a marquee player who actually wants to play, and is willing to stretch the boundaries of medical wisdom in order to do it. A character trait that can be maddening? Sure. But hardly a character flaw.
At the same time, as infectious as Embiid’s spirit may be, his team is fast approaching a juncture where another infection could be lethal. The Sixers have been more than fine in the two-plus weeks since their big man suffered a bone bruise in a win over the Wizards. They’ve won six of the nine games that he’s missed and were in first place in the Eastern Conference until Tuesday night’s loss to the Nuggets. They are an excellent basketball team with or without Embiid — only a monumental collapse would prevent them from entering the postseason with one of the East’s top four seeds. But they are just as clearly a team that needs their star to have any chance at contending.
The Sixers’ last two games didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. On Tuesday, the Nuggets spent four quarters on cruise control, with Nikola Jokic quarterbacking a dizzying offense that the Sixers seemed incapable of slowing. The game was over by halftime, with Denver holding a 23-point lead. From there, it only got slightly less over, ultimately ending in a 104-95 defeat.
Sixers in no rush to bring newly acquired George Hill back from injuryWinning a postseason series means winning four of seven games against an elite collection of talent like the one the Sixers faced in Los Angeles and then in Denver. To do that, they need Embiid. It’s almost unspeakably simple.
Much more complicated is the task of reintroducing Embiid into the equation. Nine games into his absence, he has resumed on-court activities while working toward a return that is nearing imminent.
“He’s close,” Rivers said before Tuesday night’s loss to the Nuggets. “I can tell you that. He’s working every day, I get reports back daily, and he looks good. He’s doing well.”
But as well as Rivers knows his players, and as knowledgeable as the Sixers medical staff may be, Embiid is the only one who knows exactly how he is feeling. That’s a reality fraught with risk, given the incentive he is facing. At the time of his injury, Embiid was widely regarded as the front-runner for the NBA’s MVP trophy, and he has never been shy about his desire to some day win it. His track record suggests that he will not let the dream die without a fight.
If Embiid is healthy — really, truly, 100% healthy — then he should obviously play. But he needs to realize that the stage that matters most is the postseason, for both his team and his legacy. Even if Embiid returned Thursday and did not miss another game, he’d finish the regular season having participated in less than 80% of the Sixers schedule. Is there a chance that he finishes the regular season with better numbers than Jokic of Giannis Antetokounmpo? Sure. But it seems far-fetched to think that he can put enough distance between him and them to make up for having played 20 fewer games.
Even with these last couple of losses, the Sixers have done enough in their first 46 games to make the rest of the regular season a prelude. The only goal for this next month-and-a-half is to reach the playoffs in peak condition. That starts with Embiid, and it will end there if his knee continues to be a problem. He needs to realize that he can still establish himself as the game’s preeminent player, and that he’ll need to do it in the postseason.