Embiid Is Different and The Year Is Officially Back On

The Sixers' season -- and maybe a lot more -- was saved for at least one more game by a (slightly complicated) Joel Embiid legacy game.

For a moment there, it really felt like Game 7 in Boston.

If you remember, that Game 7 last year was actually pretty close for the first half -- the Celtics only led by three at halftime, just like the Knicks did on Thursday night. But it didn't feel like a one-possession game. Things were going all the way south with the Sixers -- Joel Embiid was flailing, James Harden was hopeless, Georges Niang grabbed Jaylen Brown's leg from the bench for some fucking reason. The Celtics took the lead at the end of the quarter, but it seemed like they were taking more than that, particularly as Jayson Tatum was heating up and the Sixers' role players seemed to have used up all their good shots early. Only Embiid and Harden turning things around could save us in the second half, but the chances of it happening didn't look too good -- and within a couple minutes of the third quarter, as the Celtics quickly opened up a double-digit lead, it was pretty clear the game, the series, the season and maybe the entire Process were all over.

Game 3 against the Knicks seemed to be following a similar narrative. The Knicks were gaining control of the momentum -- and from most of the in-arena reports on Twitter, the home-crowd majority as well -- as the first half went on, while the Sixers looked sloppy as hell. They were staying afloat, thanks largely to a massive boost in energy and shooting providing by one Cameron Payne, but our two stars were floundering: Tyrese Maxey's jumper was bone-dry, and Embiid was getting his numbers, but was trying to do it all through the refs' whistles, leading to multiple offensive fouls and turnovers and generally static offense. Worse, Embiid had totally lost it in the first quarter and committed a brain-fried frustration foul on Mitchell Robinson that involved basically tackling his legs out from under him -- a foul that countless onlookers noted, not unfairly, would have likely gotten him tossed from a non-playoff game. Things were going so bad that even with just a three-point deficit, it felt like the Sixers were gonna need their best third quarter of the season to keep this one from completely falling apart, to save any chance of it still being The Year.

And wouldn't you know? They went and delivered it -- led by an all-time (if still slightly tainted) Embiid second-half performance, no less. And now it is once again so much The Year that it kinda hurts a little. 

Want to give Spike some credit here first and foremost. Because even after the Sixers went down 0-2 in New York, even after they endured one of the worst final-minute collapses in recent NBA history, even after there were injuries and excuses and poor shooting percentages and a lot of the same Usual Shit with Joel Embiid, Spike still put it in writing before the game on Thursday: Embiid in the postseason this year was different. He was different against Miami, and he was different through two games against New York. And I agreed: Yes Embiid's shooting numbers were nasty, but he was finding a way -- he was getting to the line, he was getting to his spots, he was getting his points (63 in two games) and even more importantly he was getting good looks for his teammates -- 12 assists to just four turnovers, a world removed from the 12 assists to 20 turnovers he had across six Boston games last year. He was playing smart, he was playing within himself, and despite shooting under 40%, he was still playing efficiently overall, ending up a +14 and a +3 in the first two games of the series. 

What's more, he was rising to the occasion late. Well, mostly -- his lower body basically wore down to a nub in Game One and there was not a lot he could do in that one to keep things from slipping away. But his huge buckets carried the day late in the play-in against Miami, and his shovel pass to an open Tyrese Maxey with just over a minute left in Game Two against New York set up what should have in any sane world been the game-winning triple. And after the game, he seemed calm, collected, assured of what the Sixers had to do and confident that they were gonna go do it. Part of the reason it hurt so much that we were down 2-0 in this series is because so much of what we had seen from the big man so far was what we'd always wanted to see from him, what we'd always asked of him. He only had one leg and one eye, but it still felt like the most whole Embiid we'd ever gotten against a real opponent in the playoffs. Spike called it, and he was absolutely right to do so. 

10 Ways the Sixers Can Get Back Into (And Win) This Series

Until the first half of Game Three, anyway. Then the Joel Embiid emerged that we'd spent all summer trying to forget about, and all this regular season trying to pretend had never even existed. This was quite simply Bad Embiid -- still bluntly effective offensively, but with none of the smarts, togetherness or general growth that he'd seemed to display through the first three games of this postseason. He looked sour. He looked desperate. He looked like he might be a bad break or two away from letting go of the rope entirely, like he seemed to against Boston last year. I could already feel the excuses popping together in my head like a fight-or-flight survival mechanism: His body gave out so his spirit did too, the frustrations of the season became too much for him to overcome physically or mentally, he could just tell in his bones that it wasn't The Year. But really, I wondered how we could come back from another year of this, another year of Embiid absolutely pruning in a do-or-die game, another year of him shrinking from Winning Time with an all-time Loser Shit showing. 

And then the third quarter happened. I felt instantly comforted trom Embiid's first possession of the half: He got the switch on Jalen Brunson beyond the arc, kicked the ball back out to Kyle Lowry, backed Brunson down to the top of the key, got the ball back from Lowry at the free-throw line, turned his shoulder into Brunson to back him off, and fired for an easy two points. It was absolutely perfect -- a methodical, dispassionate set-up for a high-percentage shot, good process leading to a good result. It was exactly what the Sixers needed, and it seemed to settle them down on both sides of the ball, as Maxey also started to find his way into the team's offense. 

Then, the threes. I have been begging -- begging -- Joel, basically since his rookie season, to simply fire away from deep when left open. No pump-and-drives, no trying to bait for shooting fouls, no hesitation at all, just catch and fucking fire. He'd been doing it more since coming back from injury at the end of the regular season, but you could tell he didn't totally love doing it; a lot of those attempts still came after half-fakes, or jab-steps to intimate a drive first. Never mind that he's one of the deadliest shooters on the planet and absolutely automatic from 3-5 feet closer to the rim, never mind that shooting saves him from putting further wear and tear on his body that he can't really afford too much of in his compromised state, never mind that three pointers are worth 50% more than two-pointers; Joel still seemed to find it immodest for a dominant big man such as himself to bomb away from deep. It always seemed like the second he could simply use the threat of the three to set up other parts of his game, he would flip that switch off and never come back to it. 

But not in Game Three. Not in the third quarter. He hit one from the top of the arc off a Lowry feed halfway through the quarter, and then it was game fucking on from beyond for Joel. He hit two more on back-to-back possessions -- one with Isaiah Hartenstein pretty well up in his face -- and then a fourth with the shot clock expiring just before quarter's end. And it wasn't like the threes made him myopic either, during this stretch he also knifed through the lane for a finger roll layup on one possession and kicked out to Oubre for an open three of his own on another. By the buzzer, Embiid had quarterbacked a 43-point third quarter for the Sixers, and ensured that at the very least, this game would not be going the way of the Celtics series closer. 

The craziest part, though, was the Knicks were still very much in it in the fourth. As hot as the Sixers got, the Knicks answered at nearly every turn -- partly through bad Philly defense, partly through some pretty insane shotmaking of their own -- and while we entered the final frame up 13, it felt like it should've been closer to twice that for how much fire we caught in the third. So that meant the Sixers, and Embiid in particular, had to keep playing strong for one more quarter. And he did that too. Not with the electricity of his third quarter, of course -- though he did hit a fifth and final three with about six to go -- but mostly through taking advantage of a tightly called fourth and getting to the line, hitting 12-13 FTs in the quarter, while making a couple big defensive plays, even poking a rebound away from Hartenstein which I worried he might get arrested for. And for all his incredible shooting on the night, my favorite Joel moment was probably this set up of Nicolas Batum with five minutes to go in the game (all videos grabbed by our Dan Olinger): 

Nothing extraordinary here, and Batum bricks the open triple, but holy hell did I love this play from Jo. He'd already scored eight points since checking back in for the fourth, and things were still tense for the Sixers with the Knicks only down 11, but watch how patient he is as he gets the switch onto Anunoby, calls for the ball, commands the double, waits for Lowry to drag Brunson out to the three-point line to take away the extra defender, and then fires to a wide-open Batum in the corner. It's good basketball, it's team basketball, it's winning basketball. For a scorching Joel to still have the coolness to wait for this play to materialize and then make it... good lord, we love to see it. 

All in all, a career-playoff-high 50 points on 13-19 shooting for Embiid, with five threes and 19 free throws, and four assists with just three turnovers. He picked up his third foul early in the second quarter, and he ended the game with those three fouls -- leading to some passivity that likely hurt the Sixers' half-court defense for stretches, but it kept him in the game both literally and figuratively, and for whatever defensive lapses Joel contributed to, he still ended up a team-high +16 for the night. Forget his bad shooting numbers for the series being a thing: After Thursday, he's now up to much-more-reasonable 47/38/84% shooting splits for the series, and for the fourth time in four games this postseason, he ends the game with more assists than turnovers; he'd never done that more than twice in a row in the playoffs before. 

So does that mean he's redeemed for his crummy first half showing? Well, mostly, but not entirely. Sure, we can look past some bad body language and a couple sleazy attempts at foul-grifting when he ends up with 50 on the night, but the foul on Robinson is a stain that doesn't wash out so easy. It was an irresponsible play, it was a dirty play, and it will add to a reputation for such losery Bush Leaguiness that Embiid is really starting to earn over the course of his playoff career -- and for the second straight first round, after he kicked Nic Claxton in the groin during the Nets series last year. As with that cheap shot, hugging Robinson's legs like he was Alonzo Mourning very easily could've gotten Joel Van Gundy a Flagrant 2 and an ejection before he even got the chance to turn things around, and we couldn't even really have complained all that much about it. The only thing making that possibility a little more palatable is that I'd say that after the Triple Screwjob we endured at the refs' hands during the final minute of Game Two, Joel and the rest of us were probably owed the clemency we received here. 

That's something Joel has still got to work on -- not letting his frustration over the refs and his own body lead him to lash out early and put both his opponents and his own playing status in real jeopardy. But everything else that's haunted him in playoffs past, he seems to finally be getting a handle on. The Sixers are still down 2-1 in the series, and we'll see about how the rest of it goes from here starting with Game Four on Sunday, but when you have this second-half Embiid showing up for the Sixers -- finally -- while MIP Maxey also continues to get his (25 points and seven assists for the game, most in the second half), it's hard not to feel like everything is going to be OK for this team in the long-term, even if not in the rest of this series. And if you're a Knicks fan watching Embiid go supernova while a potential chance to put the entire Sixers franchise in a stranglehold goes to waste, you're probably not feeling so wonderful about the rest of this series yourself. 

Five Thoughts on Sixers-Knicks Through Two Games

This game was also a valuable reminder that things with the Sixers don't always go the way we expect, the way we fear. Us Sixers fans fucking loooooove to talk about how much We Knew -- We Knew the moment Joel Embiid went down in Golden State that he was gonna be out for months, We Knew once we lost Game Six to Boston that there was no way we were winning Game Seven, We Knew once they blew Game Five to Atlanta that we were cooked for the rest of the series. And I'm sure a lot of us fans probably also Knew from Embiid's first-half demeanor in Game Three, and how weird the vibe was at halftime, that we were gonna blow this second half in spectacular fashion and be down for the count by the first timeout of the third quarter. (I certainly worried that would be the case, at the very least.) 

But here's the thing about Knowing what your team is going to do: It presupposes that the way they've acted in the past is the way they'll always act, that there's never any room for growth or change or just, I dunno, a new plot twist. And I get that Sixers fans have better reason than most to assume at this point that any new script we get will have a similar ending to the many tragedies we've already watched this team star in. But at a certain point, if we want to break that cycle, if we wanna see some new material, we have to allow for the possibility that maybe we actually don't know what we Know. After all, 99% of Sixers Twitter Knew that Joel Embiid was done for the playoffs after he collapsed on the court in the second quarter of Game One -- oh, you could see it in his eyes, you could tell from the way he went down, you just know that it's over. Now just two games later, he's not only still on the court, he's playing the best postseason game of his career. We didn't know. We don't know. About anything, really. 

All we really know is that the Sixers' season very well could have ended on Thursday night. Any other year and maybe it would have. Maybe it would've been even worse than Game Seven in Boston. But this year is not any year, it is The Year. Embiid is different. Everything is different. And if you haven't believed it up until now, I'd say it's probably time for you to start. 

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Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the 'If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders' section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard. 

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