There it was at the Garden on Saturday night — an encapsulation of the Joel Embiid experience, The Process, everything from the last decade with the Sixers. It hinges on the health of the unhealthy.
They were running amok on the Knicks in the first quarter, rallying behind a mobile and seemingly rejuvenated Embiid. Philly was up by 12 early, and no matter how much its bench stunk up the joint, there was a sense inside MSG, whether those fans admitted it, that the visiting team could easily leave victorious with Embiid bounding around.
Except by halftime, Embiid was hobbled. He’s frequently hobbled. The 30-year-old has been in the league for 10 years and played 433 games, an average of 43 per season. That’s a failing attendance. On Saturday, he completed an extraordinarily athletic maneuver — a self-alley-oop off the backboard — landed awkwardly and collapsed.
It was like the weekend warrior dad exerting beyond his physical means.
At that point, Embiid had 18 points on 6-for-11 shooting. He returned after halftime, blood soaking through the white tights around his surgically repaired left knee. And Embiid managed just two more field goals in the second half. He went 0-for-5 in the fourth quarter. He wasn’t the same.
The most telling stat was the Knicks grabbed 16 rebounds in the fourth quarter (including 8 offensive), and Joel Embiid had zero. His average speed in the playoff game was 3.1 mph, according to Second Spectrum. A snail’s pace. He was faster and covered more distance in the regular season.
Now granted, Embiid is also, without much debate, the greatest scoring force in the NBA. He’s so good the Knicks would have sacrificed all those draft picks in a trade if the Sixers had made the center available.
And that’s also the point. As we’ve noted on many occasions, the series hinges on the production and availability of Embiid. It’s been the story of the Sixers for years and continues for Game 2 on Monday at MSG. Call it the paradox of Embiid. He’s too big for the defense to stop and too big to avoid knee pain.
Dealing with his unreliable Embiid hand, Sixers coach Nick Nurse had a pretty sound game plan. Almost nobody could stop Jalen Brunson for the last month, and Nurse employed a zone-ish scheme that contained the point guard. Brunson hadn’t missed 18 shots in a game all season. Then he did it in the playoffs because Philly refused to allow him his usual spots.
Josh Hart said he was disrespectfully left wide open and, boy, he wasn’t kidding. Watching the film, there were a few times he had enough time and space on the 3-point line to set up a three-course picnic. It backfired on the Sixers eventually, with Hart burying three treys in the fourth quarter (although the final one was heavily contested and shot from off balance). But even as Hart acknowledged, it’s a smart strategy against a player who shot 31 percent on 3s during the regular season.
“I think their plan was definitely more focused on getting the ball out of Jalen’s hands,” said Miles McBride, who knocked down five 3-pointers. “That’s the poison they picked, and [we] got to make them pay.”
Maybe Nurse will change. Maybe he’ll continue to bet that Hart will miss his open looks. It’s the fun chess match that starts between coaches after the initial game plan is revealed.
But frankly, it won’t matter if Embiid is out or moving at half-speed. Game 1 reiterated that.