Again and again Sixers forward Kelly Oubre Jr. found the mark in the fourth quarter of Tuesday’s victory over Oklahoma City. Then he did it once more after the game, when asked what it was like to have Joel Embiid back after the reigning NBA MVP had missed two months with a knee injury.
“It’s always like the first day of school again, right?” Oubre asked, as he cradled his three-year-old daughter Malibu during a postgame news conference. “You’re kind of coming back from spring break or winter break, and you’ve got your friend back. So he’s the cool guy in class that we’ve definitely been missing.”
That being the case, there will now be a test, and a difficult one at that. It will extend beyond Tuesday’s 109-105 victory over the Thunder, which saw Oubre rain in 17 of his 25 points in the fourth quarter (including 4-for-4 3-point sniping) and Embiid contribute 24 points, seven assists, six rebounds and three steals.
Embiid thought he was “pretty bad,” but everybody else seemed to see the potential of a team that has been in an almost constant state of flux this season. Tuesday’s game was the first he had played with Kyle Lowry, Cameron Payne and Buddy Hield, all of whom arrived via trades that were consummated while he was out.
If Embiid is hale and hearty, the mix makes a lot of sense. There is perimeter firepower to offset his work from 15 feet in. There is speed and athleticism to complement his bulk.
On Tuesday he ran pick-and-rolls with Lowry and Oubre; he had previously done the same, with devastating effect, with Tyrese Maxey, who is currently rehabbing an aching hip. Embiid can also run dribble handoffs with Hield, a perimeter deadeye, as he once did with JJ Redick and Seth Curry.
Then there’s Embiid’s defensive presence.
“Guys turn the corner and they can sense that he’s lurking,” coach Nick Nurse said before the game, “and they decide to not keep turning the corner sometimes.”
As Oubre put it, “You’re tall as a tree, as big as an ox. He just demands a lot of attention in that paint.”
And as Embiid put it, “I think I’m the best defender in the league.”
He served notice of that fact in the game’s final half-minute when he ranged out on the perimeter to strip OKC guard Josh Giddey and rumble the length of the floor. He drew a foul from Chet Holmgren as he went to the rim, then nailed two free throws to put Philadelphia ahead, 108-105. That was the last of 12 makes in as many attempts at the line for the big guy, most of them accompanied by the sort of Body English one might expect from someone who hadn’t played since Jan. 30, and thus was still regaining his touch.
The Sixers went 11-18 in his absence, and fell from third in the Eastern Conference to eighth. They are now 41-35, and as things stand, would be in the play-in tournament. That means they would be one of four teams vying for the seventh and eighth seeds in the playoff grid. Finish seventh, and they would likely get Milwaukee and old friend Doc Rivers in the first round. Finish eighth, and they would get Boston, the East’s runaway leader … and a team that has eliminated the Sixers three of the past six seasons.
Six regular-season games remain, the first Thursday night in Miami, which also figures to be part of the play-in frenzy. Not a great place to be, which brings us back to the larger test facing Team Embiid.
First question: How healthy is he? The team has always called his injury one to the meniscus in his left knee. Not a tear; just an unspecified injury. That speaks to the vagueness that has often accompanied announcements on player health in recent years, a practice that continued this week.
While ESPN’s redoubtable Adrian Wojnarowski tweeted Monday that Embiid was “expected to play this week,” the team listed him as out later that day. Then he was upgraded to questionable shortly before Tuesday’s game, and following an on-court workout inserted into the starting lineup.
He came down the tunnel from the locker room after his teammates had already taken the court for warm-ups, in a Willis Reed Lite moment. The fans roared, then roared some more when he was announced with the starters.
He would go on to play a little over 29 minutes, including the game’s last 4:15, when the Sixers outscored the Thunder 14-4 to pull it out. OKC managed exactly one field goal in that stretch. That’s testament to Embiid’s defensive prowess, but it should also be pointed out that the Thunder was without its top two scorers, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams (not to be confused with Jaylin Williams, who did play).
Someone mentioned to Nurse afterward that it looked like Embiid was in good shape, and the coach agreed that his center had “worked hard” while he was out, and indeed had “lost some weight.”
Embiid’s take?
“I’m pretty fat right now, but it’s OK,” he said. “I’ll get back to myself. … Anytime you’re not playing, it’s impossible to get in shape. It doesn’t matter what you do.”
Always with the contradictions, these guys.
What does seem clear is that this injury affected Embiid’s psyche to a greater extent than the others he has suffered in his career (and that is, of course, a long list).
“It was disappointing,” he said. “It was depressing. Took me a while to get over it and I still haven’t gotten over it. So I’ve just got to take it day by day, look at the positive. I’m back, so hopefully every single day trying to get better and get back to myself.”
He said his family helped him through it, and now he’s back at his night job. That leads to the second big question: How good can they be, given the small window they have to build chemistry? Nurse said that Lowry came into his office before the game and expressed concern about never having played with Embiid before.
“Just go out there and play through it,” Nurse recalled telling him, “and feel your way through the game.”
And indeed the veteran point guard did what he had to do. He took a single shot in a 27:30 stint, a 3-pointer he made, while recording four assists and one turnover.
Overall, though, Nurse thought the offense looked “super clunky” most of the game, until Oubre heated up in the fourth quarter.
Now it’s a matter of whether they can smooth things out, with the playoffs looming. As Nurse put it, change has been “kind of the theme of the season.” That being the case, he boils things down to their simplest terms. The example he cited was this: “If these five guys are on the floor, do they know how to get the ball inbounds?”
“You’re always evaluating like, where are we with some of these basic things, right?” Nurse said. “Just so you can function.”
“It’s a learning experience,” Embiid said. “We’ve got to win but we’re also learning on the fly.”
Certainly there were some good vibes in and around the arena Tuesday. After the final buzzer, Embiid accepted congratulations from Allen Iverson, who was seated courtside. Across the street in Citizens Bank Park, Bryce Harper was blasting three home runs. All seemed to be sweetness and light. But the hard part starts now. The biggest test awaits. And even with the cool guy back, it’s unclear whether these Sixers have all the answers.