The mood around the Sixers these last two days has been nothing short of excitement, but this isn't the boundless, giddy happiness they had when they put together the 2018-19 team. A big reason for that is Joel Embiid, whose approach to the business has changed (in a good way) after some painful defeats and ego check moments the last few years.
So nobody is drawing up parade routes or focused on anything other than the work ahead at the moment. But with a chance to dream about the partnership with James Harden, Embiid was finally able to say what it seems like he wanted to all along regarding Ben Simmons. Whatever hesitance he had to speak his mind took an Amtrak to New York City, and Embiid said what sounds like his final thoughts on the matter on Friday night.
"I'm happy that I'm not going to be answering any more questions about that subject," Embiid said Friday. "It's good that, not just for me, but my teammates, the whole organization. The whole year it was pretty annoying with the whole situation, but I'm glad that everybody has moved on. I wish everybody the best in whatever they want to accomplish, but I'm focused on winning games here and trying to win a championship.
"You look at the history being on the court, what we did in the regular season, we were dominant. So it's unfortunate that winning was not the biggest factor. It's unfortunate that for him, having his own team and I guess being a star was more of his priorities. But I always thought that everything was great, the fit was great. But unfortunately Ben thought that it wasn't. But we all move on."
That barb about having his own team is obviously not true in practice, with Simmons now the third banana at best behind the two primary guys in Brooklyn, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. But this is a subject and a line of thinking from Simmons that has riled the big man up throughout this process. When a report from Sam Amick late September suggested that Embiid was "blocking the runways in the paint for Simmons," Embiid went on an extended rant describing how and when the Sixers had catered to Simmons' needs.
"We’ll say that, even going back to, I mean, the reason we signed Al [Horford]. We got rid of Jimmy [Butler] — which I still think it was a mistake — just to make sure [Simmons] needed the ball in his hands, and that’s the decision they made," Embiid said in September. "Like I said, it is surprising."
Add it all up, and you could point out that Simmons was definitely right about one thing — it was time to leave this partnership behind. Embiid was able to mask most of his inner thoughts and channel them toward being the center of a good team this season, but their views on how the team and organization have been structured are simply too far apart.
The subject of sacrifice is, unsurprisingly, still the No. 1 subject as Embiid turns toward his next partner in crime.
Into town strolls Harden, a ball-dominant star who has clashed at times with his running mates and who arrives in Philadelphia after forcing his way out of a second team in two years. There are justifiable reasons for looking toward the exit in Brooklyn — Harden joined a team to share responsibility amongst stars only for Kyrie Irving to become a part-time player. But the question of whether Harden wants to win or win strictly on his terms has yet to be answered, 12.5 seasons into a Hall of Fame career.
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For Embiid, the path forward looks straightforward. He and Harden have already spoken on the phone, and though they have yet to hash out the particulars and have a lot of work in front of them, he says they're excited to get to work together, with Embiid viewing Harden as perhaps the best player he has ever played with. The goal has to be a shared one, rather than one that focuses on the individual talents they each bring to the table.
"As you look at the teams that have won in the past, whether you look at the Golden State teams, even the Lakers and Milwaukee last year, they just move the ball," Embiid said. "They play with each other. And as I’ve been watching James, you put him in the pick-and-roll, and it’s probably up there as far as the best playmakers out of that pick-and-roll, so obviously you got to add that even more to our offense...we all got to give up ourselves, I’ve got to become more of a, whether it’s a pick-and-roll player or pick-and-pop just to help my teammates and help him."
"Just like [Harden], he has to become, he’s more of an off-the-dribble three-point shooter, but I get doubled a lot. To be able to go against those double teams, you’ve got to be able to fire up threes off-the-catch, which is something he’s going to have to do. But it’s a work in progress, even with my teammates, I always push them to just let it fly, because I know if we take those and we make them, that’s going to make other teams stop doubling me and it just opens up everything."
Harden's willingness to serve as an off-ball threat has been a point of scrutiny for some time now, a reported source of clashing between he and Chris Paul in Houston, and a rumored issue for Harden and his co-stars in Brooklyn. The gaudy assist numbers have not washed away concerns about the rigidity of his style of play, and Embiid represents a player unlike any he has ever played with, a post-up big who needs everyone to be bought into their role and in the spots they're supposed to be in when he is being double-teamed on the block.
But as Embiid points out, the burden of change is not on Harden alone. We saw Embiid embrace being a screener and roll man more when the Sixers turned the keys over to Jimmy Butler down the stretch in 2019, but the unknown is just how long the commitment would last, how committed to the team players with deservedly big egos are when they are forced out of their comfort zones. It's the sort of thing you can only prove over time, not with a press conference quote or a stretch of play that only represents a small chunk of your professional career.
(Speaking of Butler, Embiid saved another shot for Simmons while discussing the Butler-driven offense from that 2019 season, though he masked it as a general issue: "It wasn't really until the playoffs when we decided that, you know, Jimmy was better on the ball as the point guard, which, you know, we talked about it when we got everybody and a lot of people wasn't into it. And then you get to the playoffs, and now you start doing it and it was kind of too late to kind of figure that out." Not exactly a Sphinx-like riddle to solve.)
What is clear when looking at the potential Embiid/Harden partnership is the raw firepower on hand. Embiid has played with some good players up to this point in his life, but never one like Harden, who regularly commands double teams and who forced teams to think of unorthodox strategies to slow him down at his peak. The Sixers have now become a pick-your-poison team, able to win games with different styles depending on how opponents choose to play it.
"I think the way to look at it, every single time I touch a ball, there's a double or triple team which is gonna make my teammates and [Harden] even better," Embiid said. "So now you really got a choice. Are you going to double me or are you going to double him? You got to make that decision and based on every game it might change. Other teams might want to take me out of the game or other teams might want to take him out of the game. So we just adjust and then we just go from there...it's exciting. I never played with someone like that. So I'm just excited for the new challenge and try to go and get it done."
When will we see these two take the floor together? That's still an unknown, with Harden expected to miss this weekend's games at an absolute minimum. They're short on time to build chemistry, and they know it, with the seriousness of practice being discussed in a town that is no stranger to that subject.
That will leave less time for tweets, which will be perhaps our greatest loss. Embiid posted a meme on Thursday that I can unfortunately only describe to you by pointing to its origin with a Google images search, sticking the knife in Simmons to anyone who recognized the source. With one last chance to bury Simmons and explain himself on Friday night, Embiid wore an innocent smile, trying for a moment to laugh through the end of a public and prolonged saga.
"Honestly, I don’t even know what the tweet was about," Embiid said. "I just tweeted a random person. I just saw the picture on the internet and I thought he was well dressed. He had a nice suit on, good looking, you know, he had some swag. So I just thought it was a good picture."
Wherever this new journey ends, it should be easy enough for Embiid and Harden to avoid a conclusion as ugly as that.
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