The Sixers have no shot without Joel Embiid. The real question is, how much of him do they need?

Everyone has a different sense of when spring has sprung. Some count the hours of sunshine, others count the blossoms on the trees, others count the number of days it has been since Joel Embiid suffered a work-related injury. Whatever your measure, the equinox is officially here.

In like a lion, out like a lion with a sprained LCL. That’s how it goes for the Sixers this time of year. Two years ago, it was a meniscus injury. Last year, a torn thumb ligament and a concussion. This year, it’s a sprained lateral collateral ligament, as The Inquirer recently reported. Each of the injuries occurred in Game 3 or 4 of the first round of the playoffs, and each left Doc Rivers doing the same thing he did for 10 minutes on Tuesday morning: swatting away questions about Embiid’s availability for the start of the conference semifinals.

“You know, you guys can ask this 20 different ways, and it’s not going to make any difference,” Rivers said in a relatively light-hearted manner after fielding his latest batch of questions about his big man’s chances of starting Game 1. “It’s going to be the same answer.”

Trust us, Doc. We know.

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It’s unfortunate; it’s frustrating; it’s borderline depressing. For a lot of people, it’s all of those things. Rivers spent a lot of his time on Tuesday insisting that he isn’t one of those people. Hard as that may be to believe, you don’t spend three decades in the NBA without becoming something of a pragmatist. Rivers knows more than anybody the extent to which Embiid’s injury history lingers over the team even during the good times. He also knows that it is a fact of life for which there is no obvious remedy. Embiid is a big man with big talent and a big usage rate, all of which makes him a big target. The best you can ever do is hope for the best.

“It’s not what you want, but I don’t know the word ‘frustrating’ is what I would use,” Rivers said. “I mean, it’s just part of our journey and part of our story. You go through stuff. Listen, it can be someone else. We want everyone to be healthy. It doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. So what are we going to do about it? What we have to do is prepare everybody and if or when Joel can play, we make sure that he can play the best that he possibly can.”

Therein lies the crucial questions. They are the only ones that matter as the Sixers await the start of the conference semifinals, presumably on Saturday against the Celtics, who had a chance to close out the Hawks in Game 5 on Tuesday evening.

Can they beat the Celtics with 95% of Joel Embiid?

How about 75%?

Sixty percent?

The only thing we know for sure is that they cannot have zero percent of him. We’ve seen that movie before, and it isn’t the sort of uplifting romp that leaves you dancing out of the theater and sending random messages of love to your friends. Unless that’s how you felt at the end of Saw.

The Sixers have a better team around Embiid than they did last year, when they lost Games 1 and 2 to the Heat with the big man recovering from his Raptors-induced wounds. That was a focal point when Rivers and team president Daryl Morey joined the organization three years ago, and they’ve made great strides in surrounding their MVP with a more complementary set of characters. This year, the Sixers were “only” 10.1 points worse with Embiid off the court than they were with him on it (on a per-100-possession basis). That’s an improvement over their -11.5 last season, which itself was an improvement over the -12.4 they posted in 2020-21.

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But don’t ignore the key word there. The Sixers have a better team around Embiid. There are all kinds of numbers you can look at to see the huge role Embiid plays in everyone else around him looking as good as they do. For instance, look at the extent to which his presence impacted their three-point shooting numbers during the regular season.

* P.J. Tucker: .451 with Embiid on the court, .237 without him.

* Tyrese Maxey: .454 with Embiid, .404 without.

* Jalen McDaniels: .500 with Embiid, .364 without.

* De’Anthony Melton: .417 with Embiid, .348 without.

* Danuel House: .429 with Embiid, .316 without.

The only three Sixers regulars who did not shoot significantly worse without Embiid were Harden (.372 with Embiid, .408 without), Georges Niang (.389 with, .409 without), and Tobias Harris (.390 with, .386 without). This, according to PBPStats.com.

That doesn’t even factor in Embiid’s other-worldly impact on the defensive end, where his presence in the paint and at the rim is almost comically singular.

“When he’s not out there, we have to lock in even more defensively,” Melton said after practice on Tuesday. “It’s more so probably a team defense: team rebound, team guard, team rotate, help the helper. That’s stuff we’ve got to figure out, stuff we have to more lock in on at this point.”

The fact that the Sixers have not ruled Embiid out for the start of the second round is as promising a sign as any. While Embiid did not practice on Tuesday, he was on his feet doing what appeared to be stability work in the team’s weight room during the brief period of time when the gym was open to the media. Last year, we saw him play through a torn thumb ligament that required offseason surgery. In 2021, he had stretches of dominance while playing through a torn meniscus in the Sixers’ semifinals loss to the Hawks. If the team isn’t counting him out, you’d be unwise to do it on your own.

That said, the question remains. Assuming Embiid plays, how healthy do the Sixers need him to be in order to have a chance at knocking off the second-seeded Celtics? Judging by the regular season, even 110% of him may not have been enough.

That’s approximately what the Sixers got in their one win over Boston, a 103-101 nail biter in which Embiid scored 52 points with 13 rebounds and six assists against a Celtics team that did not have star Jaylen Brown or big man Robert Williams.

At this point, all anybody can do is hope the Sixers get a chance to find out.

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