“I’m back!,” the big man barked, pointing up and down emphatically to The Center’s sellout crowd after unleashing an impressive pump-faking, hand-switching drive to the basket that yielded an off-balance and-1 lay-up.
At that point, eight minutes and change were left in Sunday’s important pairing between the 76ers and Indiana Pacers.
If there were any doubts lingering then, they should have been all but erased by the end of the afternoon, when it was clear that despite having missed nearly a month of action, Joel Embiid was arguably the biggest (figurative and literal) needle-mover on the court.
His 33 points and 12 rebounds were the highest totals among all participants, and his plus-16 rating in less than 28 minutes of run was telling.
The magnitude of Embiid’s performance certainly went deeper than his final numbers, and we’ll get to those details in a moment, but that shouldn’t make his surface level output any less impressionable.
Regardless, it would have been hard envisioning the Sixers shutting down Indiana the way they did, 106-89, without the services of the two-time All-Star.
Thanks in large part to Embiid, the Sixers are now indeed in better shape than they were before the day began. With the victory, the squad moved into third place, and - most noteworthy of all - clinched a tiebreaker with Indiana by winning the four-game season series between the teams.
“His impact is significant all over the place, as we all understand,” said Brett Brown.
During no stage of Sunday’s competitive bout did Embiid leave a greater mark than the second half, specifically in the fourth quarter. He converted all six of his field goal tries, including that ridiculous slam dunk that helped put the Sixers squarely in control, 93-84.
The Cameroon native also hit six of seven free throw tries in the frame.
“As the game kept going, I just kept getting better, getting to the line a lot, too,” Embiid said. “The game started slowing down for me.”
The assessment was very much an accurate account of how Embiid’s day went.
You’ll have to forgive him if he needed about a half to knock off some rust. His last regular season game had been February 13th at Madison Square Garden on the eve of the All-Star Game break.
Upon returning from the All-Star Game itself in Charlotte, Embiid felt he needed to tend to soreness in his left knee. The issue caused him to be sidelined the Sixers’ next eight games.
Even as Embiid navigated through early foul trouble Sunday, and patiently chipped away until finding an offensive rhythm, his physical presence alone still proved immensely valuable. This was particularly true on the interior, where he altered drives and shots at the rim.
In Sunday’s second half, Embiid anchored a defensive effort that limited Indiana to 11 points in the third quarter, and 19 in the fourth. The Pacers were a meager 7 for 20 in the paint after intermission, and their top three big men - Myles Turner, Thaddeus Young, and Domantas Sabonis - combined to shoot 6 for 24.
With Embiid back in the line-up, those stats were no coincidence, according to Brown.
[Indiana generated only 18 of its 40 total points in the paint while Embiid was on the floor.]
“My focus was really defensively,” Embiid said, “just being all over the place and helping my teammates. I’m glad we got the win.”
Embiid might not have been the only factor Sunday that tipped the scales in the Sixers’ favor, but he was absolutely an immensely influential one. Back he was, no doubt about it.
