PHILADELPHIA — On the order of problems to have as a basketball team, the one the 76ers faced Wednesday night is one they would’ve signed for at the beginning of the season.
Nothing went right in a 138-89 loss to the New York Knicks, a season-low point total ending the first half of the season with an absolute dud. If there was a silver lining to divine from the blue-and-orange masses that took over the Xfinity Mobile Arena, it was from who wasn’t there.
The 76ers struggled without Joel Embiid, which served to underscore both how often the one-time NBA MVP has been in the lineup lately and how influential the center has been when active.
Embiid has been so present and so elite when present that the 76ers have allowed to wane the ability to win without him. It’s both a discouraging sign given the long haul of an NBA season and encouragement of just how good Embiid has been.
Embiid missed Wednesday’s game with right knee soreness, his second straight game out. It’s the first time he’s missed consecutive games since Dec. 19-20.
From Dec. 23 to Saturday in Phoenix, Embiid played in 20 of 25 games. He averaged 34.1 minutes and 30 points per game, enough to inspire not just the return of Embiid’s swagger but legitimate conversations about his potential as an All-Star addition.
But the flipside is that the 76ers went 1-4 in the five games without him, blown out in Oklahoma City and Charlotte. Add these last two games in Portland and Wednesday that quickly turned into garbage time, and that’s six losses in seven games without Embiid.
For the season, the 76ers are 19-12 with Embiid. Without him, they’re 11-12. They had been 10-6 through Dec. 20 without him, though.
“It’s weird, man, because you’ve got to play multiple different ways,” All-Star guard Tyrese Maxey said. “A lot of times, he sits out on back-to-backs, so it’s hard. You go from playing one way with him or without him early in the season, he comes back, you’ve got to play a different way when he’s there, which is OK. It’s the reality of it, and we’ll be alright.
“I think he’ll be here more than he isn’t here when we get back. But you’ve got to maintain. Those games that he’s not there — and Paul (George) probably won’t be there until the end — so we’ve got to just maintain.”
This isn’t on Embiid. The recent change owes as much to the disruption brought by the suspension of Paul George for 25 games for a violation of the NBA’s drug policy. The 76ers weathered that first game without either George or Embiid post-suspension in Golden State on Feb. 3, but the depth has looked lacking in the two losses that send them into the break.
Wednesday’s loss to the Knicks was a start-to-finish capitulation that opened with a 16-4 Knicks run and scarcely got better.
“Everything,” coach Nick Nurse said of what went wrong. “That’s really disappointing. Obviously we had zero readiness and energy, physically or mentally, just kind of got to the half and the game pretty much had been settled by then.”
In isolation, there are mitigating factors for each result. Charlotte included travel craziness during a winter storm. Portland involved missing Embiid plus illness absences for Dominick Barlow and Quentin Grimes, the latter of whom missed the Knicks game.
That the front office summarily failed to reinforce the team at the trade deadline — actively making it worse by trading away Jared McCain for picks while reinforcing neither the George-shaped hole on the wing nor upgrading the reserve center spot behind Embiid — wasn’t worth 50 points against the Knicks or even 17 against Portland. But it sure isn’t helping.
Adem Bona and Andre Drummond, the latter of whom was dropped for the second half Wednesday in favor of the first and last minutes of Charles Bassey’s 10-day contract, are looking a worse and worse fit for any extended stretch without Embiid. It’s exacerbated without George’s savvy to smooth the transition.
The biggest change is the dependence on Embiid offensively, Nurse said. His offensive efficiency has been elite, which is great when he’s out there. But it’s also begat a lot of confusion when he’s not. That quest is of a piece with the variety that Nurse exhorts his team for, with or without Embiid.
“Anytime we’re without Joel, I think offensively is where we’ve got to make sure that lots of guys pitch in to cover all that that he creates,” Nurse said pre-Knicks debacle. “That’s the biggest thing. I think we’ll have some size in there for rebounding. … But I think just the offensive creation, it can’t be one guy. It’s got to be everybody that hits the floor is going to have to chip in somehow, offensively.”
The predicament demands context, just as Nurse, in his clear disappointment Wednesday, didn’t want two games to overshadow a first half in which the 76ers exceeded most reasonable expectations.
If Embiid, who the 76ers were unsure would ever return to an elite level given his injury past, is going to be so good that his absence again creates problems, that’s a conundrum you invite without hesitation. It raises the ceiling for the 76ers in a seven-game playoff series for which, presumably, the version of Embiid that can play 20 of 25 games will not miss any of.
But to navigate the 82-game gauntlet to get there, the 76ers have to be better without him. If it feels like a return to the square-one conversations at the start of last season, that may not be a bad thing.
Contact Matthew De George at mdegeoge@delcotimes.com