The Sixers’ culture doesn’t revolve around Joel Embiid. It is Joel Embiid. | Mike Sielski

Someone had neglected to turn down the volume on his phone late Wednesday night, the play-by-play of a great basketball game audible throughout the Wells Fargo Center’s interview room just as Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey were sitting down to speak. The 76ers had won their third straight game since acquiring James Harden, this one by 123-108 over the Knicks, but no, the questions about that game would have to wait a moment. Someone was so immersed in the closing seconds of Bucks-Heat, of a one-point Milwaukee victory on a Jrue Holiday bank shot with two seconds left, that he paused before pressing the button to silence the sound and let the press conference commence.

Someone was Joel Embiid. Anyone who has spent significant time around the Sixers since they drafted Embiid in 2014 should have guessed it. Fewer professional athletes are devoted students and fans of their sports than you might think, but Embiid loves basketball. Sam Hinkie once said that, during the 2014-15 season, Embiid’s first with the Sixers, less than four years removed from the first time he touched a basketball as a kid in Cameroon, Embiid watched more NBA action than anyone else on the team.

“If you think about the likelihood of being seven feet tall and the likelihood of loving basketball and the likelihood of both those things happening, he is weird in that way,” Hinkie said. “There are a whole bunch of T.J. McConnells who love basketball and can’t get enough of it. As there are relatively fewer seven-footers, there are almost no seven-footers who love the game.”

Embiid does. Now Wednesday night, after he had scored 27 points on just 15 shots and grabbed 12 rebounds in what was mostly an off-night for him, after Harden had put up 26 points, nine rebounds, and nine assists himself, Embiid turned his attention from Bucks-Heat to his own team. He was asked how it was that the Sixers could insert Harden into the lineup and have the transition be so seamless, and Embiid said something that, if you thought about it, didn’t make much sense.

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“It’s not surprising,” he said. “Like I said, we have a system in place. Before he came, we were playing good basketball, being the third seed, fighting every single game, winning every game that we were supposed to and also some tough games. So when you add that type of talent to a team, as good as he is, he just makes it easy because of what’s already in place, whether it’s from the coaching staff or the system that’s in place. That’s why we all fit. … It all goes back to the culture that we built, the system that we have in place.”

System? What system? Culture? What culture? There hasn’t been enough stability around the Sixers since Embiid’s arrival for them to establish any kind of culture. Doc Rivers hasn’t been their head coach for a year-and-a-half yet. Daryl Morey showed up after Rivers did. Culture is often just a convenient, trendy shorthand for the benefits that a transcendent player or players bestow on a team. From 2014 through 2018, for instance, the Cleveland Cavaliers didn’t have a great culture. They had LeBron James in his prime. When the word means something, it calls to mind an organization that knows what it wants to be, that goes about things in a certain way and is successful for following that formula: the Heat with Pat Riley, the Patriots with Bill Belichick, the Steelers with Mike Tomlin.

The Sixers haven’t been close to that kind of organization. Too much change. Too much upheaval. And it would have been inappropriate and inaccurate for Embiid to absolve himself completely of blame, to paint himself as a paragon of basketball virtue. Of course he’s a superstar now, the prospective NBA MVP. Of course he owns the city. But through the early years of his career, he as much as anyone defined the Sixers’ culture, and that culture wasn’t good.

He went from chugging Shirley Temples and piling on sugar pounds to gaining a reputation for selfishness and petulance both in the locker room and around the league. It took him growing up, becoming a father, and understanding the measures of conditioning and commitment necessary to maximize his talents. More, it took the hard lessons of four playoff exits in the second round or earlier, and it took him getting clear of all the chaos and controversy that enveloped the franchise.

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Hinkie. Brett Brown. The Process. Jahlil Okafor. Jerry Colangelo. Bryan Colangelo. Ben Simmons. Markelle Fultz. Jimmy Butler. Zhaire Smith. Elton Brand. Al Horford. Josh Richardson. Bully Ball. Rivers. Scott O’Neil. Morey. Those are just the names and the catchy terms. The details, so many of them so strange, would require too much time and space to list and explain. That the Sixers are still in position to win a championship is a testament to Embiid’s maturation, to his status and staying power as the last man standing after so much turmoil.

“I’ve been through a lot, whether we’re talking about freaking GMs using burner accounts, talking trash on their players,” he said. “I’ve always thought I would have one coach for the rest of my career, Coach Brown, and obviously we changed. I’ve seen so many players. I remember my first two or three years. We had probably over 80 players in one year — guys coming in, guys getting cut. It’s hard. It’s hard to keep that culture. I wouldn’t say it’s all about me.”

Anyone else would. Anyone else should. He shied away from saying it Wednesday night, but it’s the truth: The Sixers don’t have a system. They have him. Joel Embiid isn’t The Process. He’s The Culture. Someone get the man a new nickname.