Will Joel Embiid ever become the Sixers’ playoff hero, or is he destined to be a diva? | Marcus Hayes

With the Sixers’ season 48 minutes from ending, and with the team’s best player haunted again by adversity, it’s really the only question that matters.

Joel Embiid: Hero or diva?

Does he deserve a medal? Or does he just need a Snickers?

Should you be inspired by his bravery, having overcome his bad knee and his bad tummy to play in nine of the team’s 10 postseason games? Or should you be incredulous that “The Process,” as he christened himself, won’t lay off the milkshakes and Shirley Temples and become a lean, mean, dunking machine?

Embiid leads the team in scoring, rebounding, and salary, but also in celebrations, trash talk, and sour faces when he’s sick. Are his head-lolling, shorts-grabbing, woe-is-me antics affecting the team he purports to lead? His mouth tells you he’s all guts, but his body language screams “surrender.”

» READ MORE: Raptors made Sixers pay from three-point range in Game 5 of NBA playoff series

We’ve been told Embiid has been feverish and bedridden since Sunday morning. Indeed, Embiid looked overmatched and uninterested for the second game in a row in these Eastern Conference semifinals in Tuesday’s 125-89 loss in Game 5, which gave the Raptors a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series. He scored just 13 points and turned the ball over eight times before exiting early in the fourth quarter, with hip-hop star and Raptors superfan Drake mocking him as he left.

It got so ugly that even legendary party animals Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley -- buffet-busters as players, and now analysts on TNT -- felt entitled to criticize Embiid over his absence of spine.

Embiid’s torpid pregame walk into the Scotiabank Arena and his head-in-hands poses on the Sixers’ bench must have had hardened players rolling their collective eyeballs. Embiid has a cold, not the Spanish flu.

Then again, Iberian defenders Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka make Embiid pretty miserable even when he’s healthy.

» READ MORE: How social media reacted to the Sixers’ loss

How many of Embiid’s expressions of anguish are authentic? How many are exaggerated? Is this courageous leadership, or is it dereliction of duty?

Also: What brand of leadership requires a band of defenders and a bodyguard?

After Game 5, Sixers coach Brett Brown celebrated Embiid’s grit, and he called criticisms of Embiid’s effort and heart “grossly unfair.”

Embiid didn’t attend practices Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. He texted Brown a full 9 hours before Game 4 on Sunday to tell him not only that he was sick but also that he might not be able to play. Maybe he shouldn’t have. He stunk. He was even worse Tuesday, the Sixers’ worst playoff loss since Celtics beat them by 40 in Game 1 of the 1982 Eastern Conference finals.

He was so bad, he needed postgame protection.

» MARCUS HAYES: Joel Embiid led Sixers’ surrender to Raptors in Game 5 of NBA playoff series

When Embiid went to the podium for his press conference, veteran Jimmy Butler insisted on coming with him, according to a Sixers spokesman. Butler had already met the press at his locker. From the podium, Butler stared daggers and shook his head when Embiid was asked about being mocked.

At his locker, Butler -- the Sixers’ bell cow in this series -- said the Sixers would “ride or die” with Embiid.

Embiid embraced the love.

“Coach texting. My teammates. It doesn’t matter what type of condition I’m in. It just shows me how much support I’ve got,” he said. "At that point, I just think to myself: ‘Man. The support I get is incredible.’

“It’s heartwarming, too. I just tell myself I just got to push through it. Just like [Butler’s] telling me: It’s all about 2½ hours, 3 hours. Just trying to get through it.”

This is necessary?

Embiid is in his fifth NBA season and his second playoff run. He’s 25, he’s making more than $25 million this season and has made more than $45 million.

Joel Embiid is not a kid. And he wants to be The Man, and played that way for 64 regular-season games, averaging 27.5 points and 13.6 rebounds. He’s at 20.4 points and 10.2 rebounds in those nine playoff games, and just 17.0 points and 7.6 rebounds in five games against the Raptors’ Iberian nightmares.

At least he’s coming home. He reiterated Tuesday that Philadelphia’s adoring crowds fuel him like nothing else, and when he feels good he plays well.

“That’s one of the keys for me playing so well this whole season, this postseason. I’ve got to smile on the court. I’ve got to lift my teammates up. I just got to be myself,” he said. “At the end of the day, that’s how I dominate. If you see me smile, that means I’m doing what I’m supposed to do.”

That’s great. But what hero needs the ideal environment?

Jordan and Kobe delighted in carving the hearts out of fans in New York and Cleveland, in Houston and Phoenix. Embiid’s more of a homebody, it seems.

Soft robe. Comfy slippers. Maybe a nice, warm bath.

Seriously.

Somebody get that man a Snickers.