Joel Embiid and the Sixers have the talent, but they need championship toughness

Doc Rivers had just gotten done extolling the toughness of his team when he said the only three words that really matter.

We’ll find out.

“We’re going to get challenged in the playoffs,” the veteran head coach said on Tuesday afternoon, “and we’ll find out.”

Does 54 wins mean anything more than 51 did?

We’ll find out.

Has Joel Embiid reached a point where you’d be a fool to bet against him?

We’ll find out.

Is James Harden back to being a player who can single-handedly turn the tide of any playoff series?

We’ll find out.

Are the Sixers a fundamentally different team than the one that finished last season with their tails between their legs? Can they deliver a punch? More important than that, can they take one?

Yep. We’re gonna find out.

“There’s going to be some adversity somewhere,” Rivers said. “There always is if you plan on going where we hope to go. And that’s when you know what team you’ve got.”

There is a lot that we do know about these third-seeded Sixers as they prepare to face the Nets in their playoff opener at the Wells Fargo Center on Saturday.

We know that Embiid is playing the best basketball of his career. We know that he is putting up numbers that only a handful of the game’s all-time great centers have ever matched, from his league-leading 33.1 points per game to his scintillating .655 true shooting percentage.

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We know that Harden is a dramatically better version of himself than the guy who spent last postseason with a body that would not cooperate. You see it first and foremost in the return of his three-point shot. The bounce, the lift, the touch. After shooting just 33% from behind the arc last season, Harden finished the 2022-23 regular season at 38.5%, his best mark since his third season in the league.

You see it secondly in the way that he has embraced life as a facilitator. During his nine seasons with the Rockets, Harden averaged 2.5 shot attempts for every assist. In 58 games this season, that ratio stood at 1.4. He is playing the smartest, most team-oriented basketball of his career, averaging nearly 1.5 fewer turnovers per 100 possessions than he did in Houston or Brooklyn.

Just as important as any of this is the rotation that the Sixers have built around Embiid and Harden. This is a more well-rounded group than any Embiid has had since 2018-19, when he and Jimmy Butler took the eventual NBA champs to the brink in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals.

In De’Anthony Melton, P.J. Tucker, and Jalen McDaniels, they have a trio of wing defenders who each is arguably better than any the Sixers have had since Butler. Granted, that’s arguable, especially if you do not disqualify Matisse Thybulle for his inability to keep himself on the court. As a group, though, they are the sort of complementary players who the Sixers have found themselves lacking in each of the last two postseasons.

“We have toughness,” Rivers said. “We have some instigators.”

We know all of that. Yet there is a reason the Sixers will enter this postseason as definitive underdogs.

Part of it is due to the level of talent of the two teams in front of them. In the Celtics and the Bucks, they will need to get through a couple of teams that have combined to win eight of the last 16 NBA Finals games and 70% of this year’s regular-season slate.

Yet talent is not the biggest thing that separates these teams. The defining characteristic of the Sixers over the last couple of postseasons has been their failure to coalesce into something greater than the sum of their parts. The Bucks and the Celtics are both those sorts of teams. Energy, ball movement, defensive intensity. More often than not, those are the things that serve as the differentiators among the playoff elite. They are also the things that were lacking in their six-game loss to the Heat in last year’s conference semifinals.

“I don’t think I’m breaking any news,” Rivers said, “but ... we were not a very physical, tough basketball team. We just were not. I said it before the playoffs and unfortunately it was the truth. You know? Not just physically. I think we’re a mentally tougher team. I think there’s a lot to it.”

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Everyone remembers Embiid’s comments about the Sixers’ lack of toughness after that series.

“Since I’ve been here, I’d be lying if I said we’ve had those type of guys,” Embiid said. “Nothing against what we have. It’s just the truth. We never have P.J. Tucker.”

Well, now they have him. But they are dead in the water if they think that will be the difference.

The dirty little lesson from last year’s disappointment is that the stars are the ones that create the identity of a team. Butler was that guy for the Heat last year. Embiid needs to be it this year for the Sixers.

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Guys like Tucker are great. But Embiid doesn’t just need that guy beside him. He needs it within him. For the Sixers to have a chance against the Celtics and the Bucks, they need their big man to show that he can be tougher than the circumstances. It isn’t a question of talent, nor of desire. Some of it is health. But with or without that, what the Sixers really need is will.

In every sport, for all of history, the thing that has separated the all-time talents from the all-time legends is the ability to overcome. It takes a certain level of talent to be an unstoppable player. But it also takes a certain mentality: a refusal to be stopped.

That, right there, is the ultimate in toughness. There’s no shame in finishing a season as the third-best team in the league. There’s no shame in winning an MVP award but losing out on a title. There’s no shame in anything that Embiid and the Sixers have accomplished since he broke into the league. But they say they want more. Well, that’s what it takes.

“It’s the playoffs now, and that’s when you really figure out about a team’s true mental toughness,” forward Tobias Harris said. “Regular season, there really isn’t too much adversity. Now is the time when you see who is going to crumble and who is going to rise to the top.”

One way or another, we’re about to find out.

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