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?

If not, can he become more of a fluid cog in an offense than an all-or-nothing proposition?

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.

In Embiid, they have a player who has the physical makeup and skills to be every bit the player that Jimmy Butler has been for the Heat, that LeBron James has been for the Lakers, that Nikola Jokic has been for the Nuggets. The biggest difference between the Sixers and those teams is the way those guys leverage their skills.

It’s Nick Nurse’s biggest challenge. It’s also his most tantalizing opportunity. It’s why he was sitting where he was Thursday afternoon, flanked by a couple of bossmen, fielding questions about the steps the Sixers must take to take the step that has long eluded them.

The conventional wisdom says that they are stuck. That’s the context that Nurse confronts as the third head coach of the post-Process era. After Josh Harris and Daryl Morey officially introduced him to the general public on Thursday, Nurse was met with a barrage of questions that were tinged with a skepticism six years in the making.

The basic gist: why should anybody believe that you are the thing that can make this team get better?

It’s a perfectly valid question. The Sixers have spent six years digging to the bottom of the toolkit and then sifting through it again. We won’t waste our time chronicling the missteps. Ben Simmons, Jimmy Butler, Tobias Harris, Al Horford, James Harden. You already know each of the stories.

The options have been exhausted. There is nothing left to chase. They have used up the cap room. They have traded the first round picks. They have secured the Bird Rights. They have gotten more whacks at the piñata than any organization deserves. At some point, the stick ends up breaking.

» READ MORE: Get to know Sixers coach Nick Nurse, from those who covered him with the Toronto Raptors

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.

“James Harden is a great player,” Nurse said at one point. “I would say this, James has a decision to make, and I’d be very happy if he came back.”

That’s a far different message than the one that the Sixers were implicitly relaying at this time last year in their answers to Harden questions.

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.

You can talk yourself blue in the face with the possibilities. Morey had previously acknowledged that the Sixers would need to get creative if Harden ended up leaving. Maybe they can shed Tobias Harris’ salary and sign Fred Van Vleet, Nurse’s former point guard in Toronto and an intriguing two-way fit alongside Embiid. Maybe they can use the mid-level exception to replace Harris with a more complementary wing player. Maybe Tyrese Maxey’s next step forward is the vision, finishing, and change-of-pace ballhandling required of an NBA point guard.

Or maybe the answer is Embiid, as it has been the whole time. Maybe the Sixers’ best chance at becoming a championship team is Embiid becoming the sort of player that makes it happen.

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.

On Thursday, I asked Nurse if he thinks Embiid needs more of that in his game, and if he can make that happen.

“The short answer to that is yes,” Nurse said. “I think he has the ability to do that. I think it’s part of what I historically like to do as well. I also think there’s a lot of changing defenses now, a lot more than you were probably seeing six or seven years ago. So you’ve got to be ready to combat and be ready for all those. There’s a lot more switching. All those things going on. We’ve just got to be ready for all of it.”

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.

The hardest thing to do in sports is to read and react. You see that every Sunday in the NFL when you watch the guys under center. It’s the same in basketball. The most impactful players almost always have a little bit of quarterback.

Embiid doesn’t need to be Jokic. He doesn’t need to be Butler. Those guys were playing basketball well before they were 15.

He just needs to take the next step. It’s a big one. But it’s manageable. Let’s not forget that the Sixers were a historically poor shooting night in Game 6 away from playing for a berth in the NBA Finals.

Nurse is here to provide that little bit extra. Embiid is priority No. 1. He always has been.

» READ MORE: Nick Nurse would be ‘very happy’ if James Harden returned to Sixers, echoing Daryl Morey’s public comments