Over the last few seasons, Joel Embiid has become one of the most decorated regular season players of his generation, with a top-3 finish in MVP voting for three consecutive seasons, an All-Star in seven straight, five All-NBA selections and back-to-back scoring titles the main bullet points on his resume that few people in the world can match.

The playoff success, up to this point, has not matched Embiid’s regular season dominance, especially when going up against tougher opponents. Whether it was the 37% he shot against the Raptors in 2019, the back-to-back eight turnover games against the Hawks in 2021, the low scoring totals (19.8 points per game) and inefficiency (42.6%) against the Heat in 2022 or the Game 7 disaster in Boston last season, the Joel Embiid playoff experience has not brought the same level of dominance that we’ve seen from October through March.

There are, of course, caveats that go along with those struggles, from the laundry list of injuries he’s had to play through seeming every year at this time, to spending the majority if your prime having Ben Simmons and Tobias Harris eating up $70 million of your salary cap sheet, “co-stars” being paid star-level dollars for role-player level production in the half-court. The Embiid supporters will designate those as legitimate reasons for the struggles, the doubters will dub them as excuses. Regardless of which side of that debate you stand on, the success against high-level competition in the playoff has not been what anyone envisioned.

Last night’s performance — a playoff career-high 50, 33 of which came in the second half, to go along with eight rebounds and four assists in a must-win, season-on-the-line game against the 50-win New York Knicks — was the kind of postseason performance that has largely eluded Embiid thus far in his career.

And it almost didn’t happen.

Barely more than midway through the first quarter Embiid fell to the ground defending OG Anunoby near the rim. After Anunoby dumped the ball off to Mitchell Robinson, the player that Embiid was defending, Embiid immediately reached out and grabbed Robinson’s right leg, sending Robinson to the floor and causing an official review to see whether the play should be upgraded from a common foul.

After the game, Embiid said that he was protecting himself, that he had flashbacks of the play against Golden State that led to his needing surgery on the meniscus in his left knee.

“We know the history that I have with Kuminga landing on my knee, so I kinda had some flashbacks,” Embiid said when explaining why he grabbed Robinson’s leg. “It was unfortunate. I didn’t mean to hurt anybody. In those situations I gotta protect myself because I’ve been in way too many situations where I’m always the recipient of the bad end of it. It was unfortunate”

That is a generous explanation from Embiid.

Embiid started grabbing for Robinson’s leg before Robinson even left the ground. Robinson had a clean lane between him and the basket, with Embiid lying on the floor on behind him. When a player dunks, he usually jumps towards the basket. The play, both in real time and in review, looked like Embiid, frustrated he didn’t get a call on the other end, making a bad decision.

I don’t necessarily think Embiid was trying to injure anyone, but I do think his emotions got the better of him and led him to making a reckless and dangerous decision. If this were a regular season game, I don’t think a Flagrant 2 and automatic ejection were off the table, and it would have been tough to really argue against it. The Sixers were a judgment call from the refs away from their season being effectively over.

That script — of frustration getting the better of Embiid in big games, leading to questionable decision making in crucial spots — has been a common criticism levied against Embiid in the past. And it, along with the sheer force of talent on display, is part of what made the second half performance from Embiid so encouraging.

When Embiid picked up his third foul of the game with 6:27 left in the second quarter, a number of us on press row were questioning whether Nick Nurse’s decision to leave him in the game was wise.

In general, I’ve always been a strong proponent of doing so — Embiid, historically, has great at backing off on defense just enough to not pick up that next foul, and of maximizing his playing time while playing through foul trouble. I hate — HATE — when coaches pull star players because of foul trouble. Doing so guarantees the very result (limited playing time for your stars) that you are trying to prevent. I wrote about it ad nauseam during the Doc Rivers era.

But this one felt different. Embiid looked out of control. It looked like his emotions were out of control, and I wasn’t sure it could be sorted out before a halftime break.

Embiid was, from that moment on, the best player in the game by a country mile, a truly dominant force that willed his team to a victory in a must-win game, and gave them a new lease on life as they look to come back from an 0-2 deficit.

Embiid scored 40 points in 26 minutes of play after picking up that third foul midway through the second quarter, and did so without committing a single foul. He drained four 3-pointers in the third quarter alone, pushing the Sixers to a 43-point quarter with their season on the brink. And he did it all with barely more than one functioning knee and, as revealed after the game, a case of Bell’s palsy that has the left side of his face essentially paralyzed, a condition he has been dealing with since before the play-in game against the Miami Heat.

“It is unfortunate. Every single year, you start asking yourself questions. Like, why?” Embiid said after the game. “But the one thing I’m not gonna do is give up. No matter what happens, I gotta keep pushing, gotta keep fighting, gotta keep putting my body on the line for my family, for this city, for this team.”

The way that we talk about players being “soft” has always been weird to me. It seems that it is often used synonymously with “being injured”, with the implication being that the injury should not be impacting a player as much as it is, and that other players, “players who aren’t soft”, would do a better job of playing through pain.

Let’s run through a quick list of what Joel Embiid has gone through in his quest to play NBA basketball, just off the top of my head: two surgeries to repair a fracture in his navicular bone (2014 + 2015) in his foot, a stress fracture in his back, two blown up eye sockets (2018 + 2022 ) that required a mask and risked long-term damage to if he took another shot to the face while playing, knee injuries in 2017, 2019, and 2024 that required surgery, a playoff run in 2022 that included both a torn ligament in his thumb (that required surgery) and a concussion, and now half of his face not working, on top of recovering from surgery to repair a torn meniscus.

And I’m sure that I’m forgetting a few in there.

In reality, the injury prone players are playing through more pain than most. Being injury prone and being soft is almost mutually exclusive. Unreliable? I get that. Soft? Probably a lazy and reductive way to describe a superstar who has had to fight through more adversity than most.

But nobody becomes a legend just by playing through injuries. The success, both individual and team, have to come along with it. Embiid is not going to flip the narrative of his career based on last night’s game, but it is a start, and a necessary one at that. And if the Sixers are able to find a way to win three of the next four, as they still have to do in order to keep their season alive, Embiids Herculean performance, against both the Knicks and the injuries that he is battling through, would be the start of a new, and significant, chapter of Joel Embiid’s basketball resume.

The absurdity of Joel Embiid’s +/-
So far, the Sixers are a +33 in three games with Joel Embiid on the floor, outscoring the Knicks 293-260 in the 115 minutes that Joel Embiid has played.

The Knicks have outscored the Sixers by 32 points — 69-37 — in the 29 minutes with Joel Embiid on the bench. On a per-minute basis, that is +13.8 points per 48 minutes with Embiid on the floor, -52.9 per 48 minutes with Embiid on the bench.

Joel Embiid has played in 56 playoff games in his career, with the Sixers having a .500 record on the dot at 28-28. Joel Embiid now has a career playoff plus-minus of +308 in 1,952 minutes. It should not be possible for those two stats to exist on the same player’s resume. But the Sixers have been outscored by 234 points in the 751 minutes that Embiid has been on the bench during his 56 playoff appearances.

HOW DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING.

Quotable

“He was awesome. He certainly did a good job. We were searching just a little bit for some kind of spark off the bench. Certainly had that in our thoughts to maybe go with Cam first, and then still have Melt in the back of our minds there a couple times too. But, Cam got going so he kind of soaked up those minutes.” — Nick Nurse, on the boost Cam Payne gave them.

“It started a day or two before the Miami game and then I had bad migraines, and I thought it was nothing. Usually, I don’t like to check it out but for some reason I ended up having to tell somebody. That’s why in the Miami game, my body, I was just not feeling it…It’s pretty annoying with my left side of my face, my mouth, and my eye. It’s been tough, but I’m not a quitter, so I have to keep fighting through anything.” — Joel Embiid, on dealing with Bell’s palsy.

“Going from the knee injury, mentally, the stress, that might be part of it. Like I’ve been saying, mentally it’s just been so draining, depressing. It could be part of it. So I need to take care of myself, mentally and physically.” — Joel Embiid, on what might be causing Bell’s palsy.

“The eye’s consistently dry. Blurry at times. Always gotta keep drops in it.” — Joel Embiid, when asked whether Bell’s palsy has impacted his vision at all.

“It hasn’t really necessarily gotten better. Just based on the conversations that I’ve had, it could be weeks, it could be months. I just hope that it [doesn’t] stay like this. I got a beautiful face. I don’t like when my mouth is looking the other way.” — Joel Embiid, on whether the Bells palsy symptoms have gotten any better.

“Nah. Just trying to keep pushing. I’m not gonna quit, even if it’s on one leg I’m still gonna go out there and try. But, no. That’s not an excuse. Gotta keep playing better, and better, and better. Tonight I got lucky. I made a few shots.” — Joel Embiid, on whether he feels he can trust the knee more than he did earlier in the series.

“Finally, we have this one guy, just a franchise player that’s just always happy, everybody wants to be around him, plays hard. Good basketball player, obviously, but great human being. Throughout what we went through and you finally found that guy? I mean, he’s great, and he’s amazing.” — Joel Embiid, on Tyrese Maxey winning Most Improved Player.

“You got to stay ready. Your opportunity can be called at any point of time. Like myself, I got called today and I stepped up to the plate and I was ready to play. Sometimes, you just gotta stay ready on your own because you may never know when it happens, so just stay locked in. So I was locked in and thank God, my shots fell today, so I get that opportunity again.” — Cam Payne, on staying ready for his opportunity.

“Energy costs nothing…We as humans feed off of energy, we feed off of confidence, we feed on things. If you’re always negative on somebody, you may not get their full potential. Sometimes a lot of bench guys, that’s our job to keep giving guys confidence. Keep showing love to the guys that’s out there playing. You never know when you might be out there, you want that energy back.” — Cam Payne, on playing with energy.