‘You can’t put it into words’: Georges Niang’s Inquirer diary takes fans inside Joel Embiid’s historic night

Welcome to the latest edition of Georges Niang’s 2022-23 Sixers diary. Throughout the season, the reserve forward will exclusively share first-person insights about his on-court and off-court life as part of one of the NBA’s more intriguing teams.

In this entry, Niang describes what it was like to be a teammate on Joel Embiid’s historic 59-point night, how he developed his shooter’s mentality, why it was important for him to visit polling places on Election Day and why the Sixers’ conversation on the flight home from last week’s loss in Atlanta was meaningful.

Past Entry: Oct. 26: “It can’t rain forever” as Sixers start 1-4

There’s some guys that could rest for four days and, as long as their body is feeling good, they’ll be ready. For me, it’s kind of like my namesake: The minivan needs a couple days to get himself prepped up to get ready to play at a high level.

The biggest thing for me this week was to take some time for my body to regroup. That’s kind of what I did on Monday. Maybe do something in the afternoon, whether that’s riding a bike or getting a little sweat in. Not to completely take any time off, but you kind of want to slowly get yourself geared up to be ready to go at full tilt on Friday. Monday, do a little something. Tuesday, we had a little walk-through and I got a little extra work in after. Then Wednesday, we kind of went hard, so Thursday you’ll kind of teeter back a little bit. And then shootaround, you try to get yourself geared up to get ready to play against Milwaukee, because that’s not going to be an easy task.

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With injuries, illnesses, we don’t know who we’re going to have on a night-in, night-out basis. Early on, we were struggling to figure out how to make it work. We’re kind of slowly figuring out how to win games down the stretch, the way we need to play, what things are working for us, what’s not. You can’t ever put your finger on injuries or who’s going to be missing one game, but you can control how hard guys play and how smart they play. The point-guard-by-committee group, obviously Tyrese has done a great job. But De’Anthony, Shake, Furkan when he got his opportunity, all those guys have done well. We’re defending people and getting timely stops and that’s what’s helping us win games down the stretch.

During Sunday’s game, Jo drove left and shot an airball at the beginning of the first quarter, and then I remember him looking back and saying something to the effect of, “All right.” In other words, like, “I’ve got this figured out.” And then from then on, it just seemed like he couldn’t miss. The second half was a real treat. Whenever you see a guy who is just honed in on his craft and doing what he wanted to do, you can’t really put it into words. It’s more like music to the eyes, if that makes sense.

Jo shows emotion very few times. So to see him smile and be happy about his success was really cool to see. He’s always deflecting and telling people, “I need to be better,” but he could accept our compliments and be like, “You know what? I did this.” It was one of the only times that I’ve been around Joel where he was accepting that.

As for me, I’m just comfortable with who I am and I know what I bring to the table as a shooter. Every night’s not going to be your night, but when it is your night, you want to take full advantage of that and stay hot — like I was against Phoenix. You have a feeling when shooting the ball that you know it’s going in. Before I even let it go, it had a chance to go in. That’s obviously a good feeling. And then when you have your teammates looking for you and coaches drawing up plays, you just have that ultimate confidence. I feel like if anybody has that confidence or belief in them from their teammates, they’re going to be able to make shots.

Phoenix happened, and then, obviously, I went on a little streak where teams were adapting to me. It’s the challenge of the NBA: People aren’t just going to let you make shots, so now I’ve got to continue to find ways to be effective, to help my teammates stay involved even if I’m not making shots — whether that’s defending, rebounding, passing. What’s helped me not get lost in a shooting slump is to try to always think about how I can impact my team with winning. If I’m not making shots and I’m focused on rebounding, I feel like, nine times out of 10, the ball ends up in my hands and I end up making shots when I wasn’t even really focused on making shots.

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I was lucky enough to have two people in my life help me with that mentality: Kent Lacob, who was the GM of the Santa Cruz Warriors, and Alex Jensen, who was an assistant coach in Utah. I remember I was struggling with Utah. I always had nerves, like I wanted to make shots. Kent Lacob said it in a more PG-13 way: You just have to be patiently relentless. Relentless in your work ethic, your sleep habits, just constantly devouring the details in everything that you do. Then, I remember going to the arena that day, and Alex Jensen — who would more tell you things straight-up — he was like, “You have to be good at not giving a [expletive], but actually giving a [expletive].” Those are the two things that I just kind of live my life by. “Yeah, that’s great, I made a couple shots, but I still have to shoot the next shot that comes my way.” Or, “That’s great, I missed a couple shots, shoot the next shot that comes my way.” Or, “Oh, that’s great, I had a turnover, but I still have to be aggressive to make the other play.” You can’t dwell on one thing or one moment. You kind of just have to flow through every situation.

On Election Day, I visited polling places with the Sixers. I didn’t grow up in Philadelphia, but I think being a part of this organization, part of our duty as community members is to impact change and to impact things that are going on in our day-to-day life. And there’s no better way than voting. I don’t want to pressure anybody to vote for who I want in office. I want them to vote for who they feel is going to be the best person to represent them. Whether that’s a Democrat, whether that’s a Republican, I don’t know, but it’s your duty as a community member to make this community as great as you can. And by voting, you’re using that duty to its fullest. I think it’s extremely important, one, to talk about it, but actually to get out there and be with the people and impact that. It was cool that everybody could get there and realize that their voice matters and be a part of something bigger than themselves. It wasn’t about any one person. It was about all of us.

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On the flight home after the loss in Atlanta, when you can just sit down and be honest with your teammates, that’s some of the best dialogue you can have. Rather than having passive-aggressive energy, you can address some things that you feel like you want to get off your chest or they want to get off their chest. It’s a whole magnitude of things that you can talk about. There’s no coaches involved to chime in. It’s just guys being vulnerable and guys talking to each other. Because at the end of the day, you’re on the court with them, so if you can trust them even more by having these conversations, that’s even better for the rest of the team. I’m not going to get into specifics, but there’s just things that we need out of everybody night in and night out. Making those be clear and what we expect out of each other and what we expect out of ourselves and getting on the same page with that, from then on out, you move forward. I wouldn’t say that flight was something crazy, because we’re always sitting around chatting. I think we have a lot of guys who genuinely want to win, so we’re always trying to figure things out. That was one of those times.

Through the days where it was like, “Man, this is really hard,” that’s the best part is when you can realize, “Hey, we worked through some tough times to get to this point. Now let’s keep it rolling.” We’re at a point where we still have our work cut out for us, but we battled back. It’s exciting to see us grow through some things where, early on, we didn’t allow ourselves to be in a place to win those games. We still had to improve.

The Sixers are on the go.

— Georges Niang, as told to Gina Mizell