Daily News | Joel Embiid needs a little more Jimmy Butler and Nikola Jokic. Nick Nurse can make it happen.
Can Joel Embiid become a quarterback? Can he become a facilitator? Can he become a player who sees the court in four dimensions? Can he look at a brick wall that a defense has built and recognize that it can actually work in his favor?The more I think about it, the more I think that those are the central questions the Sixers must consider as they consider life after James Harden.
The basic gist: why should anybody believe that you are the thing that can make this team get better? If that’s your viewpoint, then you may have found Thursday’s news conference unnerving. On a couple of different occasions, Nurse was prompted to explain his expectations for Harden in unequivocal terms. Reading between the lines, the Sixers internal thinking goes something like this: he’s our best chance at our best team, and we realize that it may not happen.
Whatever you think about Harden, his departure would leave the Sixers with nobody who has displayed even the vaguest bit of competence running the point in a playoff situation. It would also leave them with only the mid-level exception, a 2029 first-round pick, existing players, and the NBA’s sign-and-trade rules to acquire a replacement.
That’s what you’ve seen out of Butler this postseason. It’s what you saw from James as he air-traffic-controlled the Lakers to the Western Conference finals. It’s where Jokic’s greatest value lies. The best players on the best teams tend to be quarterbacks. And if you have one of those, you don’t necessarily need anything more than the Sixers already have.
Embiid has the ability. He has the size. He has the strength. He has the soft hands. He has the touch. More than anything, he has the will. He wants to win. You hear it in his voice whenever he talks about Butler. He recognizes what it takes.
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