You get the sense that this has shifted in a week, from the last time the 76ers and the Knicks met at Madison Square Garden. Way back then, in Games 1 and 2, Joel Embiid was simply an elite player toying with the Knicks and torturing the fans, scoring 63 points in those first two games, making it look easy, inside, outside, wherever.
Way back then, the Garden booed him and, in short order, invented a special vulgar chant for him whenever he would shoot free throws.
(I’ll make one more plea to the better angels of Knicks fans’ nature here; can we lose that chant and go back to the old stand-by, the relatively tame “Embiid sucks?” Call me old-fashioned but “Eff Embiid!” makes my skin crawl. Can we maybe do a little better?)
Of course, that last paragraph is probably all for naught now.
Because in the eight days connecting Game 2 and Game 5, which will take place Tuesday night, Embiid is no longer simply an excellent player who at any moment can strike fear into even the most stout-hearted teams like the Knicks and, by association, the people in the stands.
He’s no longer just an adversary.
Now he’s an enemy.
Now, he’s worked his way onto the list of some of the great New York sports villains of all time. He’s begun to channel Denis Potvin, who is still serenaded at the Garden 34 years after taking his last shift as an Islander. He’s equal parts David Ortiz (if you’re baseball proclivities are rooted in The Bronx) and Chase Utley (if they’re based in Queens).
He’s even starting to give Reggie Miller a run for the belt.
Like Miller, Embiid has the two crucial ingredients required for any worthy scoundrel: He’s awfully good at his craft. And he seems to go out of his way to draw enmity. Miller’s Garden anti-heroics are voluminous and so are his transgressions, highlighted by his favorite, the choke sign, which is as much a personal logo for him as Jumpman is for Michael Jordan.
Embiid built this detestable dossier in just 83 minutes over the past few days:
1. He dragged Mitchell Robinson down by his foot while prone on the ground, for which he was spared an ejection only because of a clear adherence to the NBA superstar tax.
2. He kneed Isaiah Hartenstein in a place where no man — athlete or otherwise — ever wants to be kneed — and didn’t even draw a flagrant for that one.
3. He delivered a forearm shiver to Jalen Brunson as Brunson moved without the ball, a move that would’ve made Jack Tatum or Ronnie Lott blush. That went completely uncalled.
4. He stepped on a fallen Josh Hart in a way that wasn’t terribly unlike the time Christian Laettner stomped on Aminu Timberlake’s chest in that Duke-Kentucky classic back in 1992. Laettner at least got a T (though he wasn’t ejected, as he should have been); Embiid didn’t draw a whistle on that one, either.
5. He scored 50 points in Game 3, one of the very best playoff performances in 76ers history.
And no, it is no accident that 5 is listed last. The Garden faithful appreciates excellence. You never heard anyone chant “Eff Michael!” no matter how many times Jordan broke the Knicks’ hearts. As many times as LeBron James or Tim Hardaway torched the Knicks in the playoffs, they were merely booed; they weren’t abhorred.
Reggie, he was loathed.
And Embiid is climbing that ladder, quick. He wasn’t shy about calling out Sixers fans Sunday, after so many of them sold their tickets to Knicks fans that you half expected to look up at Wells Fargo Center and see a pinwheel ceiling.
“Yeah,” he said, “it kind of pisses me off, especially because Philly is considered a sports town … it’s not OK.”
Maybe there’ll be a smattering of Sixers fans there Tuesday night. You won’t hear them. You will sure hear the other 19,000 or so reach out to Embiid from the moment he joins the layup line, and that’ll grow when he’s introduced, and when he starts making a few of those baby-soft jumpers of his the place will shake, and when he draws a few touch fouls …
Well, you get the idea.
“New York loves physical play, but the cheap shots are so bush league and we have something to say about that,” says Michael Reisbaum of Brooklyn, a devoted Knicks fan from the cradle. “I remember when Bill Laimbeer would come in he’d get railed from warm-up to final whistle, and Embiid is as dirty as he was. And a star, to boot.”
And look: Most Knicks fans know there is at least a possibility that Embiid is actually still the final piece of the puzzle that Leon Rose has been dreaming about. We can litigate whether that would be a wise course at some future point, but that’s certainly in play. And then you remember: Reggie Miller came this close to becoming a Knick in the summer of 1996.
The Knicks chose Allan Houston instead. Knicks fans would’ve talked themselves into Reggie if they’d had to. Someday, Knicks fans may have to talk themselves into Embiid. Just not now.
