Joel Embiid finally discovers he has the DNA of a champion. Down 2-1, can he lead the Sixers past the Knicks?

Joel Embiid’s son, Arthur, was born on Sept. 17, 2020, about three months before the first COVID-19 vaccine became available. The world was a cauldron of civic unrest and pandemic turmoil. Embiid’s NBA career largely had been a disappointment. He named his son after his little brother, who, six years earlier at the age of 13, had been killed by a passing truck while walking home from school in Cameroon.

A month earlier, in the NBA’s COVID bubble in a playoff run delayed by the pandemic, Embiid had averaged 30 points and 12.3 rebounds in a first-round sweep at the hands of the Boston Celtics. The Sixers played without injured point guard Ben Simmons, and Embiid was not as good as his numbers.

Everything changed when he became a dad a month later.

He began to eat better, sleep more, beef on social media less. He began to refine all aspects of his game. He began to study opponents. By the end of last season, Embiid was the NBA MVP, and he thanked his son for the inspiration.

“Losing my brother, and then giving his name to my son meant a lot. My son is the reason why I’m really sitting here,” Embiid said at the time. “When I found out we were having a kid, I just remember I was like, ‘I’ve got to be a great role model and I’ve got to set a good example. I want him to understand that his dad not only was pretty good, but he also worked hard and he went and took everything he wanted.’

“My whole mindset just changed. Everything about me just changed. The way I went about my business, my life, everything changed because I wanted to be a great father, set a good example.”

We’re seeing the effects of that change now.

It took a decade since he left Kansas and four years since the birth of his son, but Embiid finally understands what it takes to be a champion. It means ignoring the pain and soreness of a surgically repaired knee. It means ignoring fear and discomfort. It means, no matter how much you hurt and no matter how tired you are, you grab moments by the throat and pull the lesser players along.

Embiid’s left knee hurt. Embiid’s left eye was impaired due to a bout with Bell’s palsy he’s been dealing with for more than a week. You’d never have known it.

Trailing the series 2-0, in a sport that has never seen a comeback from a 3-0 hole, Embiid scored 50 points, his best postseason output by 10, and saved the Sixers’ season.

» READ MORE: Joel Embiid powers through Bell’s palsy for 50 as Sixers smack Knicks in the head. Literally.

This is what Michael Jordan and Dwyane Wade did. This is what Kobe did. This is what LeBron and Steph and Timothy Theodore Duncan did. This is how Hakeem Olajuwon, Embiid’s closest comp, won twice. They played through pain and injury and illness. That group of seven players account for 27 of the last 33 NBA championships.

Embiid had little in common with them before Arthur’s birth. Five years ago, there’s no way he’d be playing. On Tuesday, in Game 3 of the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs, he came closer to them than he ever has been before. Can he do it again on Sunday afternoon? He will try.

“I want to play as much as possible. I only have about, maybe, eight years left. So I have to enjoy this as much as possible and I want to win,” Embiid said. “I’m just trying to keep pushing. I’m not going to quit. If it’s on one leg, I’m still going to go out there and try, but that’s not an excuse. Got to keep playing better, and better, and better.”

That’s what a champion says.

Embiid underwent surgery 2 1/2 months ago to repair a torn meniscus in his left knee. He irritated the joint when he landed after a self-pass slam dunk in the first half of Game 1 on Saturday. In the same arena in which Willis Reed became the game’s emblem of toughness, Embiid emerged from the locker room just before the third quarter resumed. He stunk, and the Sixers lost, but he returned. He played better Monday night, but again faded in the second half. Thursday in Philly was a different story.

Embiid scored 33 points on 8-of-10 shooting in the second half. He made all five of his three-pointers. He flummoxed double-teams; he had three assists. He had three rebounds, but he dominated the paint.

He was, for one night, everything the Sixers could hope for him to be.

“Big fella came out and was just ballin’ for us tonight,” said Tobias Harris, Embiid’s longest-tenured teammate. “Everybody down the line was able to figure their role.”

Harris joined the Sixers in 2019, perhaps Embiid’s worst hour. A virus and knee tendinitis led to an average of 17.6 points and 8.7 rebounds in a seven-game second-round loss to eventual-champion Toronto on a Sixers team that, with Jimmy Butler, Harris, and JJ Reddick, was the best combination of talent since Josh Harris bought the team in 2011. Infamously, after the Game 7 loss in Toronto, outside the locker room just after the game, he wept in the arms of his fiancée. Hall of Fame big men Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley, the foremost NBA analysts on the planet, questioned Embiid’s hunger and leadership. The points they made were fair ... until Arthur arrived.

Embiid tore the meniscus in his right knee in the first round of the 2021 playoffs. His effectiveness diminished as the second round advanced, and when the Hawks won Game 7, Embiid told us that the game turned when Simmons refused to dunk the basketball in the game’s final minutes. This was the first glimmer of leadership; he never criticized teammates. Simmons never played another game for the Sixers.

Embiid, already playing with a thumb that needed surgery, fractured his right orbital bone in the first round of the 2022 playoffs. He missed the first two games of the second round and the Sixers and new point guard James Harden could not overcome the toughness of Miami. Embiid got tougher.

Last year, he sprained his right knee in Game 3 of the first round and missed the first game of the second round. He rallied, but by the end of the second round against the Celtics he’d run out of gas.

“Every single year you start asking yourself questions: “Why?” Embiid said. “Gotta keep putting my body on the line, for my family. ... I’m not going to quit. When I’m done I’m going to be proud of myself, and my people are going to be proud of me.”

Sure enough, this year has been different. For the first time in eight trips to the postseason he’s averaging more points in the playoffs than in the regular season. He’s also playing more minutes than in any regular season or playoff run.

And he’s done it with one eye, on one leg. Give him a patch and a parrot and he’d be Long John Silver.

Legends are born of such moments as Thursday. Jordan’s 38-point flu game in the 1997 NBA Finals. Isiah Thomas’ 45-point ankle game in the 1988 Finals. Reed playing with a torn thigh muscle in Game 7 of the 1970 Finals, the Knicks’ first title.

Granted, we might be making too much of a single game, but lord, what a game: a must-win 50-piece, on a bad leg, with a frozen face, and the heart of a champion.