Go big or go home: 76ers pursue title dreams by bucking small-ball trend

Storyline No. 2: Can 76ers keep Embiid healthy for the spring?

Since being taken third overall by the Philadelphia 76ers in 2014. Joel Embiid has been one of the NBA’s biggest enigmas.

When healthy, Embiid is one of the best big men in the game, a two-way tower of power that can score from inside and out, clean the glass and protect the rim.

And therein lies the rub — health. Entering what would be his sixth NBA season, Embiid hasn’t logged two full campaigns full of games in his career, appearing in just 158 games over the three seasons he’s been able to see any playing time at all.

His progression last season was staggering. His averages of 27.5 points, 13.6 rebounds and 3.7 assists per game were all career highs, and looking at his numbers over 36 minutes shows that the spikes weren’t merely because his playing time went up by 3.4 minutes per game.

He increased his per-36 scoring by 2.2 points to 29.4 points, his rebounding by 1.6 boards to 14.6 per 36, while his turnovers have continued to trend downward, from 5.4 per 36 minutes as a rookie in 2016-17 to 4.4 per 36 in 2017-18 to just 3.8 per 36 a season ago.

Leading up to the All-Star break last season, Embiid appeared to have finally put the injury bug behind him. He was inactive just four times in Philadelphia’ 58 games leading up to the February festivities.

But coming back from the All-Star Game, Embiid was dealing with tendinitis in his left knee and would play in just 10 of the 76ers’ final 24 games in the regular season.

In the playoffs, what Philadelphia had was a limited version of The Process. He sat out Game 3 of their first-round win over the Brooklyn Nets and played 24 minutes or less in three of the four games in which he did appear.

Embiid took on a bigger workload against the Toronto Raptors in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, averaging 33.9 minutes per game, but he was held to just 17.6 points and 8.7 rebounds per game on 37.0 percent shooting in the series.

So how can the 76ers (a) get enough from their best player to get them some home-court advantage perks in the postseason without (b) entering the playoffs with Embiid dragging one body part or another behind him?

It was the second straight season Embiid entered the playoffs banged up — in 2018, he missed the first two games of the first round against the Miami Heat recovering from a facial fracture that sidelined him for the final eight regular-season games as well.

Given the suggestion by a former NFL doctor that the knee brace Embiid sported during the playoffs was an indicator the knee was arthritic, this could be a concern for the organization for the rest of Embiid’s time in Philadelphia.

Load management, then, will be key to ensure Embiid has some juice in the tank and is 100 percent (or as close to it as anyone ever is) for the postseason.

The Raptors held Kawhi Leonard out of 22 games last regular season, took the No. 2 seed in the East and then climbed on the Board Man’s back all the way to an NBA title.

The 76ers may have to consider a similar — or perhaps even more curtailed — workload to be able to finally see the best of Embiid in April and May (and perhaps into June).