Patience pays off as Joel Embiid, All-Star starter becomes a reality

LOS ANGELES — Later tonight, Joel Embiid will take the court at the Staples Center and hear his name announced as a starter in the NBA All-Star game. He’ll be joined on “Team Steph” by fellow starters Steph Curry, James Harden, DeMar DeRozan and Giannis Antetokounmpo, a verifiable who’s who of NBA MVP candidates.

It’s the latest measuring stick in what has been an incredible rise for Embiid, who picked up the game of basketball a little over eight years ago.

Despite not making the varsity team at the outset of his junior season in high school, Embiid received a scholarship offer from Kansas. There he showed enough talent in just 28 games, the first eight of which came off the bench, to be considered the consensus No. 1 prospect before a fractured navicular bone was discovered in the days leading up to the 2014 draft.

The journey from there was difficult, and well-documented. Embiid missed the 2014-15 season recuperating from surgery to repair the navicular bone in his right foot, then missed the 2015-16 season when an additional surgery was needed in order to get the foot back to full health. He struggled with his conditioning, reportedly got argumentative with team trainers and went through personal tragedy when his younger brother, Arthur, died in an automobile accident.

The entire ordeal left Embiid on the fringe of quitting the sport.

Yet he stuck through it, continuing to work on the parts of his game that were not limited by injuries. He eventually got his conditioning and weight under control as well, making his long-awaited (and frequently doubted) debut on the basketball court in a preseason game on Oct. 4, 2016 against the Celtics. The final stat line read just 6 points and 4 rebounds in 13 minutes of play. The numbers may have been underwhelming, but the achievement was bordering on monumental.

If his first taste of NBA basketball was underwhelming statistically, his first regular-season game would be dazzling. Dropping 20 points, 7 rebounds and 2 blocked shots in 22 minutes of play against Steven Adams and the Oklahoma City Thunder, Embiid showed the world that he was ready to hit the NBA running.

Not only did he convince the viewing public how dominant he could become, but he convinced himself as well.

“Before I started, before my first game last year, I didn’t think I was going to be good. I thought I was going to be, like, a good role player,” Embiid told the media assembled at All-Star weekend. “I couldn’t figure out if I was actually going to be dominating in the league. Then after that first game, I saw what I could do, and I saw that I had the opportunity and the talent to be up there. From there I just believed in myself and kept going.”

For as much as 76ers fans may have felt like their franchise was snake-bitten after Embiid’s second surgery in the summer of 2015, what has transpired since has been better than almost anyone could have expected.

Sure, a torn meniscus midway through the 2016-17 season derailed what had been a stellar rookie season, but the fact that it wasn’t the navicular bone that ailed him was a major step. Embiid had gotten on the court and shown no ill effects of the two surgeries that had derailed the careers of so many great big men in the past, and that was significant.

For Embiid to now be averaging 23.7 points, 11.1 rebounds, 3.1 assists and 1.8 blocks per game, while playing 31.4 minutes per night, beginning to compete in back-to-backs and anchoring the league’s third-best defense, he’s already shown why the decision to bet on him was the right one to make.

The All-Star game is a celebration of the journey and talent of Embiid, the team’s first selection since Jrue Holiday (2013) was named a reserve. The last Sixers player voted in as a starter was Allen Iverson in 2006. It’s been awhile.

It’s also a celebration of how far the team has come in such a short amount of time, especially considering that Embiid has Ben Simmons and Dario Saric, who competed in Friday’s Rising Stars challenge, out in Los Angeles to share the experience with him.

And it’s a good reminder of how important patience is in the team-building process.

One could argue the Sixers built much of their nucleus on that fateful June night back in 2014. Not only did they acquire Embiid, an All-Star starter who has the talent to be a future MVP candidate, but they also acquired Saric in a draft day deal, selecting Elfrid Payton with the 10th pick, knowing Orlando coveted him and eventually shipping the point guard to the Magic.

Saric, now in his second season in the league, is averaging 14.7 points, 6.9 rebounds and 2.7 assists per game, shooting a career-best 38.7 percent from beyond the three-point line. He’s been on absolute fire of late, averaging 17.6 points, 6.9 rebounds and 2.9 assists per game, while shooting 48.9 percent from the field, 46.2 percent from three-point range and 94.9 percent from the free-throw line over the last 22 games. The Sixers have gone 15-7 over that stretch, and he’s become an integral part to one of the very best five-man units in the NBA.

But it took time.

The Sixers knew, heading into that 2014 draft, that they’d lose, at minimum, three combined seasons before Saric and Embiid would make their NBA debuts. Embiid would miss the 2014-15 season recovering from surgery, and Saric had just signed a three-year contract with Anadolu Efes in Turkey that didn’t have an NBA out until at least two seasons were in the books. They attempted to negotiate with Efes to see if Saric could come over a year earlier, but there was no expectation they would be successful in doing so.

Yet that draft day showed two things. First, it continued a trend of masterful trades that the front office would make. In addition to Saric, the Sixers also got a first-round pick back (the pick they initially sent to Orlando as part of the Andrew Bynum trade) and a second-round pick from the Magic.

Second, and for as deft as that front office was at taking advantage of desperate teams in trades, it showed their greatest competitive advantage: patience in a historically impatient profession.

The Sixers continued to exploit these two fundamental advantages over the next 13 months. When many in the media insisted they had to grow the fundamentally and cripplingly flawed Michael Carter-Williams into the point guard of the future, they instead capitalized on his sky-high trade value and acquired a draft pick from the Lakers, now likely to fall in the 7-through-10 range of this year’s draft. You’d be laughed at for suggesting Carter-Williams could get you any first-round pick in a trade now, just three years later. When many wanted the Sixers to spend their cap space and finally “hit the go button” in the summer of 2015, they instead rented it out for future draft picks, landing two pick swaps and the 2019 unprotected Kings pick in July 2015 for literally nothing of consequence.

In fact, if you look at nearly every reason Sixers fans have to be excited for the future, they almost all boil down to decisions made in that 13-month window from June 2014 to July 2015.

Embiid and Saric, of course, were drafted in June 2014. The lottery pick they’re likely to have in the upcoming draft? From the Carter-Williams trade. The mid-first they’ll also have this year? Would be in Orlando if not for extorting the Magic’s desire for Payton.

Markelle Fultz is only on the roster because the Sixers had the trade assets to move up, first to jump from No. 5 overall (their initial post-lottery slot) to No. 3 (thanks to the pick swap acquired in the July 2015 trade with the Kings), then to No. 1 by including a future pick, now likely to be the 2019 first-round selection of the Kings (also included in that July 2015 trade).

Even Simmons, selected by Bryan Colangelo with the first overall pick two months after replacing Sam Hinkie, was an opportunity that existed because the Sixers, told by most it was finally time to hit the go button, decided to take one more dance with the lottery gods. Once you added the ping pong ball combinations the Sixers had by virtue of pick swap rights with the Kings on top of the their own 72-loss season, they had the highest odds of landing the No. 1 pick in the history of the current lottery format.

(Assets acquired by the Sixers between June 2014 and July 2015, and how they were eventually used)

As the Sixers were making moves that were instrumental in the construction of one of the most exciting young cores in the league, they were beginning to lose control of the narrative, from both inside and out of the organization as many questioned where the progress was. Anger was already building up to a fever pitch long before Jahlil Okafor started making the front page of TMZ in the fall of 2015, a series of events which kicked off the organizational changes that resulted in Hinkie losing control of basketball operations the following spring.

Hinkie, the architect behind the rebuild, has yet to return to the NBA in the two years since his departure. Sachin Gupta, the vice president of basketball operations and Hinkie’s second in command, is a consultant for the Houston Rockets. Ben Falk, vice president of basketball strategy and third in the basketball operations hierarchy, has instead shifted his focus to the public sphere, building one of the best statistical databases available and establishing himself as a must-read basketball analyst.

Their patience far exceeded that of the constituency they served.

That’s not to paint this as a Colangelo-or-Hinkie proposition. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from those pivotal moments in 2014 and 2015, it’s that most decisions take years for their worth to be accurately judged. Many of the moves that Colangelo has made haven’t had the time to fully develop, most notably the crucial decision to trade up and select Fultz. Many more crucial decisions are yet to come.

But it’s a matter of fact that the patience of years past is a big reason why the Sixers are where they currently sit — with a 30-25 record, a very real chance at a playoff appearance, a franchise superstar, a leading Rookie of the Year candidate, a drastically improved Saric, an extremely talented Fultz, room for maximum cap space to pursue a free agent and a world of trade capital still at their disposal.

“It just shows you that the process is finally paying off,” Embiid said when asked what he thought about Simmons, Saric and himself experiencing All-Star weekend together.

Yes. Yes it does. Now it’s Colangelo’s job to turn that foundation into an NBA champion.

Top photo: Jesse D. Garrabrant/Getty Images