PHILADELPHIA – With the collection of new faces for the Philadelphia 76ers, the questions in this first week of training camp have naturally gravitated toward roles.
How will Joel Embiid and LeBron James fit? How can one ball satisfy the usage of four All-NBA performers? How will it work on the defensive end?
That is not what Embiid or James are really worried about. And they showed in Saturday’s Blue X White Scrimmage at Xfinity Mobile Arena that the process of getting great basketball players on the court together, playing and relating to one another, is the first and biggest step to resolving those questions.
“We’re just trying to build,” James said. “Every day is an opportunity for us to get better and better. It’s just a 1% each day mentality for us. So this is another extension of our training camp, and I feel like we were able to do some things that we’ve been working on, both offensively and defensively. So just try to get better, and I think today we did that.”
“It’s been good, obviously new guys, but I played with and against some of them, most of them, for my career,” Embiid said. “I know how to play and I think it’s been, quite honestly, it’s been easy, just everybody getting together and playing.”
Each time the higher-order concepts have been brought up – sacrifice, fit, roles – players have generally brushed it aside this week. That will come in time. But the first imperative is to understand each other, to get a feel for how to play with one another. They’ve done that with a scrimmage-heavy first week, coach Nick Nurse preferring to get his guys competing and problem-solving at speed in workouts the last four days in Camden.
The effort has been hastened by availability, which anyone who follows the 76ers knows is never a given.
“We’ve been playing a ton,” President of Basketball Operations Mike Gansey said. “Coach has done a really good job because we have so many different faces and guys are trying to come together that I think just playing, getting the kinks out, guys learning each other, I think that’s the best way to kind of gel and build chemistry. And it’s been fun. Everyone’s kind of had their moments in practice and scrimmages, so it’s been fun seeing that.”
Embiid has been healthy from Day 1. He looks lighter on his feet on the court, able to do things in Saturday’s scrimmage that he only sparingly did last year, when he played 38 regular-season games and seven of 11 in the postseason. Nurse said Friday that Embiid has taken part in every drill this preseason.
James went one step further.
“He hasn’t missed the practice,” James said. “He’s been in everything that we’ve done, and pretty much they’ve had to sit him out at times, even when he wanted to keep going. … It’s been great.”
All eyes are understandably on James. The 22-time All-Star is the new face. And he’s LeBron James. But James had nothing but positives to say about the first week of acclimation on the court, even if the adjustment to living and commuting via helicopter to New York remains a work in progress.
“It’s been very smooth and the simple fact that everybody’s been super welcoming, I’ve been able to implement some things with my voice and just my command of how I play the game and my experience of playing the game,” James said. “I’m still getting more and more comfortable off the floor, Obviously with travel and without my family and things of that nature. So that’s going to be a little bit of a challenge. But everything’s been good so far. Great first week.”
One of Embiid’s answers Saturday typified how he and others are approaching things. James pointed out the chemistry the two had formed at the 2024 Summer Olympics, when they helped the United States win a gold medal. That is the starting point for them, and it’s eased some of the learning process, especially when James lauds Embiid for looking much healthier than he was then.
When that quote was put to Embiid, he shrugged it off. The history is less important than each player’s disposition that led to it.
“Obviously the Olympics was great, but whether we have played together or not, I don’t think it was going to matter because at the end of the day when you put, whether it’s you know two players, a bunch of players together that have a high basketball IQ, it’s going to be easy to figure it out,” Embiid said. “And that’s been the case. High basketball IQ, both want to pass, make the right play, I think he just helps the whole thing.”
Embiid looked great in the scrimmage. He did the usual things you expect, as a catch-and-shoot option off the ball and in the two-man screen game with Tyrese Maxey and others. But visibly lighter on his feet, he also pulled out some of the details that you didn’t see a ton last year. He hedged hard on high screens. He was combative at the rim defensively, with one block on a VJ Edgecombe dunk attempt. He took the ball hard to the hole and dunked, continuing the ongoing bit of it being “probably the last dunk of my career.”
James and Embiid are two of the most talented players of their era. Questions about their coexistence, to them, begin and end with desire. If they want to make it work playing together – and everything they’ve said suggests they passionately do – then they will figure it out. It’s not bragging when James answers a question about roles by saying, “I have a sense of how I play the game, and I know what I can do to help this team win.” Nor when Embiid offers, “It’s not changing. I mean, I can do everything on the basketball court.”
Time, practice and connection are what matter most to them. It gives them every opportunity to be great in tandem with the other stars the 76ers have assembled.
“I think when you put great players together, the standards you should have for yourself should be, whether it’s being more efficient, because obviously you might get less touches, but you might get also more space,” James said. “So what are you going to do with that space? So whether it’s for him (Maxey), for me, for everybody, starting lineup guys, coming off the bench, different roles. Roles don’t even matter. It’s just about making the right play for each other over and over and over, and find a way to be, I think for me, more efficient than you’ve ever been.”