Joel Embiid’s return gives Sixers hope again — but they’ve heard this song before

PHILADELPHIA — Not much changed in the ending.

The Philadelphia 76ers walked off their home floor again, with a bevy of New York fans again chanting “Let’s Go Knicks,” after another road win by Tom Thibodeau and company in the City of Brotherly Love. This time, Karl-Anthony Towns got the walk-off love as he left the court at Wells Fargo Center with his dad in tow, quickly followed by Josh Hart and Miles McBride.

Joel Embiid and his Sixers had long since left the floor.

Their season, already off to such a horrendous start, filled with injuries and doubts and an awful moment of confrontation, continued its spiral Tuesday in a 111-99 loss to the Knicks, dropping Philly to 2-8. But this is where Philadelphia hopes things bottom out.

Well, maybe that comes Wednesday, when the undefeated Cleveland Cavaliers play here.

For now, all the Sixers have to comfort themselves was Embiid’s return to action Tuesday after he missed the first six games of the season while continuing to rehab his left knee, followed by a three-game suspension levied by the NBA after Embiid shoved a Philadelphia Inquirer columnist during a postgame incident Nov. 2. The columnist had written several incendiary opinion pieces about Embiid’s conditioning but also referenced Embiid’s late brother Arthur and Embiid’s son, also named Arthur, in an Oct. 23 column. That set off the 30-year-old Embiid.

Tuesday, Embiid was far from his dominant self. He was rusty, finishing just 2-of-11 from the floor, scoring 13 points in 26 minutes. His old, and perhaps now former nemesis, Towns, had the upper hand all night, finishing with 21 points and 13 rebounds. Towns finished the game for New York, while Embiid sat the last few minutes to keep him from racking up more than the 25 to 30 minutes the Sixers had plotted for him pregame.

“You can do whatever you want in practice and scrimmage, but the game is a different story,” Embiid said afterward. “I’ll be fine.”

His words, a franchise’s worries.

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Embiid hasn’t been fine most springs, when championships are decided, after suffering injuries late in the regular season or in the playoffs. Last year, he missed two months with a meniscus injury in his left knee, then suffered a bout of Bell’s palsy during Philadelphia’s series loss to the Knicks. So the Sixers and their superstar agreed this season he’d be held out of a bunch of regular-season games to give him the best chance of getting to April and May healthy. The organization’s misrepresenting statements cost the Sixers $100,000, but one doubts they cared much. Embiid says playing is up to him, but of course, it isn’t, not really.

Yes, Embiid played for Team USA in the Olympics, including a huge game against Nikola Jokić and Serbia in the semifinals, showing up when the United States needed him most. But that stint was two-plus months before the start of training camp, and the time off showed.

Against New York on Tuesday, he missed his first five shots from the floor, not scoring a field goal until he hit a 3-pointer with nine minutes left in the third. Embiid, as ever, got to the line, making 8 of 8 free throws in the first half. But Embiid was noticeably lagging throughout the second half. He was pulling on his shorts after his first stint of the second half. And though he asked the crowd to rise up late in the third quarter, he couldn’t lift up Philly in the fourth, as New York pulled away.

“When he’s playing well, he’s kind of got command of the game at the offensive end,” Sixers coach Nick Nurse said afterward. “He’s either creating good shots for himself or creating a lot of defensive schemes against him, which is creating much easier shots for our guys. That’s part of rhythm, that’s part of conditioning, all that kind of stuff. He’s a great shooter. That’ll come back, too, I think.”

The Sixers now have to hot-wire their hopes of finding continuity with yet another new core group.

Paul George, the premier free-agent acquisition of the offseason, is just coming back himself from a preseason bone bruise that cost him the first five games of the season. He looked great Tuesday, though, looking exactly like the silky smooth scorer and facilitator the Sixers hope he can be, finishing with a game-high 29 points. But guard Tyrese Maxey, who took such a big step last season playing alongside Embiid, missed his third straight game with a pulled hamstring. It doesn’t leave Nurse a lot of time to evaluate who plays best with whom.

For example: Philly brought in Guerschon Yabusele, who starred on the French national team in the Olympics, helping lead Les Bleus to a silver medal. He was sensational. The Sixers hoped he could play for them in small-ball units at center. And with Embiid out, they got a good long look at him. Through the first nine games, he shot better than 43 percent on 3s on decent volume. Now, though, Nurse will have to play Yabusele and Embiid together, with Yabusele playing more power forward. The shots are different. The rhythm is different. Whom Yabusele now guards at the other end is different.

Nurse got exactly what he wanted to see late in the first quarter, when Embiid returned after a few minutes on the bench, drew two Knicks to him at the top of the key and fed an open Yabusele on the wing for a 3. But that was the only shot Yabusele hit all night in seven attempts.

Still, it’s crystal clear how formidable the Sixers can be when Embiid gets back to his old self, flanked by a healthy George and Maxey; solid role players such as Kelly Oubre Jr., Yabusele, Caleb Martin; rookie Jared McCain, who’s utterly fearless; and vet stashes such as Reggie Jackson, Kyle Lowry and Andre Drummond. Philadelphia’s offensive potential is staggering once everyone is healthy, so the Sixers are doubly fortunate their awful start hasn’t buried their playoff chances in the less-than-fully-functional Eastern Conference; the Sixers entered play Tuesday just a game out of the Play-In round.

George knows the pressure Embiid is under. He was a franchise player for the Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder, and then a co-franchisee with the LA Clippers alongside Kawhi Leonard. That weight of being the man feels like you’re wearing a burlap jersey and concrete Nikes.

“I think it’s no pressure for him,” George said. “He is the piece. He is The Process. I think he just finds his way, as he should. We’re here to kind of keep things going afloat until he gets back to himself. But I don’t think there’s pressure for him to do anything extra. He’ll find his rhythm as the games go on, as we learn how to play off of him and play around him. I’ve seen it in practice, so I know he’s not too far off.”

I asked Embiid if the urgency of the 2-8 start, and the ticking down of his prime years, is pushing him to come back sooner rather than working through the regular season more slowly, as had been the long-term plan. He recalled his rookie season, after he’d missed two years rehabbing following multiple foot surgeries. Embiid roared out of the gate, finishing third in Rookie of the Year voting — even though the Sixers held him out of all but one game of the second half of the season.

“We were still really competitive,” he said of what became a 28-54 season. “And even that year, if they would have let me finish the year, I thought we actually had a chance of making the playoffs. So, urgency, sure. But you’ve also got to understand, we haven’t been healthy. Everybody’s getting back. Like I said, based on how it’s gone the last couple of years, with us on the floor (together), I think we’ve got a pretty good chance.”

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,” William Butler Yeats wrote a century ago, about something else entirely. But it’s up to Embiid to make sure people here don’t start seeing a connection.

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(Photo: David Dow / NBAE via Getty Images)