‘Study the legends and become one’: Joel Embiid explains how Kobe Bryant helped shape his ever-evolving game

The 55-second video clip rapidly toggled between Joel Embiid and either Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan, with the 76ers’ star big man pulling off nearly identical moves with the ball in his hands. A turnaround fadeaway one step outside the lane. A crossover at the elbow. An over-the-shoulder spin and finish at the rim. An up-and-under move around the defender and off the glass.

That the 7-foot Embiid mirrors arguably the two most lethal scoring guards in NBA history is a visual representation of his dazzling skills during another MVP-caliber season. But with two years passing since Bryant’s death on Wednesday and the Lakers’ only visit to Philly this season on tap Thursday night, that compilation also represents how much Bryant continues to influence Embiid.

“[To] look similar, to add that you’re 7-2 and freaking 500 pounds, it’s huge for the confidence,” Embiid said. “After looking at it, it’s like, ‘It works. I need to keep on doing it. I need to keep on building.’ ”

“Any time that we could steal aspects of [Bryant’s] game, we did,” said Embiid’s personal trainer, Drew Hanlen, whose videographer, Sam Limon, put the piece together. “It’s one of those things, when you’re emulating somebody that you’ve always admired, it gives you more motivation to kind of master the certain aspects that you’re trying to replicate.

“We spent a lot of time studying Kobe’s film, studying the little ‘micro-skills,’ the little nuances of the game and then also mentality.”

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Embiid has long called Bryant his initial basketball inspiration. The first NBA game he ever watched was during the 2010 Finals, when Bryant’s Lakers beat the Boston Celtics. Six years later, Embiid fondly remembers that his first bucket as a pro was a Kobe-esque half-spin over his left shoulder for a fadeaway jumper.

But after the Sixers’ heart-wrenching loss to the Toronto Raptors in the 2019 playoffs, Embiid vowed to expand his game beyond the traditional post-up big man. If the Sixers did not have a true creator and closer on the roster, Embiid concluded, he would acquire and hone the skills to become one.

“To me, that’s really special,” Hanlen said. “That’s a sign of leadership that’s a different level. Most people just want to blame. … You think about all the closers in the NBA, they’re all guards or wings, and he basically was like, ‘OK, then turn me into a wing. Turn me into a guard.’ ”

That summer, Embiid and Hanlen used a three-pronged approach specifically to attack double-teams. They worked on his face-up game so that he could better read the defense compared to when his back was to the basket. They continued to improve his ballhandling to generate shots for himself and make plays for others. And they drilled how to shoot over those defenders with step-back and fadeaway jumpers.

“[Kobe is] the first one that made me fall in love with basketball,” Embiid said, “but as far as actually putting his game into mine, it was after all the failures that I had in the playoffs. I just felt like, ‘OK ...how can we get shots off?’ ”

The self-proclaimed “film geeks” watched and talked through “hours and hours” of clips of Bryant, Jordan, and Kevin Durant, Hanlen said. Then they took those observations to the floor, where walking through a move transitioned into breaking down its most minute intricacies — a baseline fadeaway, for example, includes everything from keeping the chin attached to the inside shoulder while nudging the defender to create the backward momentum, to spinning on the heel (not the toe) to quickly open the hips, to making sure the shot’s follow-through and floating foot “click” at the same time, Hanlen said — and then to repping against “dummy” defenders.

“Then we actually apply the move in the games,” Hanlen said. “It’s a long process, but it works, so it’s worth it.”

Hanlen first saw Embiid gain confidence in these skills last season, when a Sixers roster decimated by COVID-19 offered the perfect opportunity for experimentation. Embiid highlights his uptick in playoff production — he averaged 20.7 points while shooting 43.1% from the floor in his first two postseason appearances and 28.6 points per game on 49.8% shooting in his most recent two playoffs — as proof of his offensive advancements.

But after a dreadful 3-for-17 outing at Boston in early December, the lowest point in a slow start to Embiid’s 2021-22 season, he and Hanlen stayed up all night dissecting the reasons for his struggles. Hanlen reminded Embiid that, when aggressive double-teams pushed him outside the paint, he needed to face up and utilize his blossoming versatility. Hanlen also encouraged Embiid to become more comfortable taking 20 or more shots per game, sending text messages with statistical evidence of individual and team success when he does and clips of Bryant’s comments about trusting one’s shot-making ability.

“We’re just trying to get him aggressive, and Kobe was a big reason for it,” Hanlen said.

Embiid immediately hit a staggering gear that has continued to the present. Entering Thursday, he has averaged 32.5 points on 53.5% shooting along with 10.7 rebounds and 4.3 assists per game since Dec. 3, including five 40-point performances and one 50-point outburst in only 27 minutes. He is attempting a career-high 18.9 field goals and 10.9 free throws per game.

But he is not just a dominant force. He is a creative maestro. He brings the ball up the court off rebounds and initiates the offense. He scores through, around, and over the top of multiple defenders. He launches from beyond the arc and steps to the free-throw line 20 times in the same game. He has propelled — scratch that, pulled along — a Sixers team that is 12-3 in its past 15 games despite a barrage of injuries and teammates in health and safety protocols throughout the season, plus the fact that All-Star Ben Simmons has played zero minutes after requesting a trade during the offseason.

“That’s a big guy out there playing like a guard,” teammate Tobias Harris said of Embiid. “The moves he makes and the plays that he makes out there are really impressive.”

Added coach Doc Rivers: “That little turnaround in the post, that’s Kobe.”

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It’s quite the evolution from when Embiid and Hanlen started working together before his rookie season, when his handle was so raw that he could not even wrap the ball around his waist. He could, however, already emulate Hakeem Olojuwan’s “Dream Shake.” So it was never a joke when Embiid publicly said he wanted to be a point center someday, despite so-called experts insisting he should only focus on traditional big-man skills such as duck-ins and hook shots.

“This has been the game plan all along,” Hanlen said. “It just takes time to develop. People thought he was crazy. … They all wanted him to be this low-post, kind of old-school-mentality player, but we had a bigger vision ... and now you’re kind of seeing it come to fruition.”

That’s why Embiid wishes Bryant could have “seen what I have become,” he told The Inquirer following the Sixers’ win Sunday in San Antonio.

The first time he had a conversation with Bryant was following his final visit to Philly in 2015, when he invited the then-injured Embiid to the Lakers’ locker room for a 45-minute postgame conversation about how to embark on his NBA career. “That was real motivation for me,” Embiid said.

Though Embiid acknowledges he never received one of Bryant’s famous “Mamba Mentality” challenges or developed the deep relationship with the man that some of the NBA’s other current stars enjoyed, he continues to be inspired by his first basketball idol.

Now, the uncanny visual evidence of that influence lives on the internet. The video compilation of Embiid, Bryant, and Jordan is a spinoff, of sorts, of Hanlen’s #GameSkillsGameResults concept that illustrates his clients executing a specific move during a training session and then on the exact same spot on the floor during a game.

Before the video was posted with the caption “Study the legends & you may just become one … ”, Hanlen sent it to Embiid.

“He was like, ‘Holy [expletive], that is so [expletive] cool,’” Hanlen said. “ … He watches more film than anyone that I’ve ever met, and I work with a lot of high-level players. For him to see something and be able to do it, it’s really, really special.”

Especially when those moves mirror his first basketball idol.

“When you talk about catching the ball in the post and shooting before the double-team comes, fadeaways, and all that stuff, you’ve got Kobe and MJ,” Embiid said.