This Was Always Gonna the Easy Part
Some people are calling this the honeymoon phase between The Beard and The Process -- as in "just wait till the honeymoon phase is over" -- and that's fair enough. What that really means, though, is that this is just as simple as NBA life is ever going to
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I think just about every Sixer fan came to the same conclusion about the Joel Embiid/James Harden pairing comfortably before Harden actually jerseyed up for Philly the first time on Friday night. We'd read all the wary trade assessments, heard all the thoughtful cautions, at least glanced at all the likely troll jobs, spent two solid weeks thinking it through and pretty much unanimously decided: None of it mattered. Usage concerns? Stylistic discrepancies? Lack of shooting around them? Harden's age? Embiid's alpha status? Nah. If Harden and Embiid were healthy and on the floor together, they would be awesome immediately and none of that other shit meant a good goddamn.
Part of that, no doubt, was blind enthusiasm and confirmation bias, combined with our fanbase's fight-or-flight defense mechanism being permanently stuck in one direction when it comes to doubters, haters and mostly well-meaning hoop nerds talking down on our team. But most of it was just... well, if not common sense exactly, then certainly something that felt a lot like it. This was James Harden and Joel Embiid we were talking about here. These aren't a couple of bumper cars, they're two of the finest-tuned and most adaptable vehicles ever to run 24 hours at Le Mans. They’re basketball prodigies who have evolved and maximized their games throughout their careers and were both talked about as MVP candidates last season. How are they gonna fit together? I dunno, did the guy who invented the Reuben ask whether sauerkraut could adjust to pastrami's game? Greatness figures it out, and usually pretty quickly.
As usual, we were right. Through two games, Joel Embiid and James Harden have played like the most lethal duo in the NBA, while Tyrese Maxey and Matisse Thybulle -- arguably the only two non-fungible guys on this current team in the long-term sense, unless you count the guy making five times more than both of them combined -- have both thrived off their spectacularness. Harden and Embiid could've run that pick and roll 100 times in the fourth quarter against the Knicks (and maybe they did, I lost count at some point) and gotten a bucket and/or a foul at least 80 of those times. Turns out, Joel Embiid is more than happy to fulfill his pick-and-roll responsibilities when he's working with a ballhandler who can live up to his end of the bargain. Turns out, James Harden is fairly chill about moving the ball and playing off guys when he has guys worth playing off and moving the ball to. It all adds up to easy basketball, the likes of which we have never even dreamed on this team.
But of course it was easy -- because this is all the easy part. The hard part with James Harden on the Sixers comes later.
Some people are calling this the honeymoon phase between The Beard and The Process -- as in "just wait till the honeymoon phase is over" -- and that's fair enough. What that really means, though, is that this is just as simple as NBA life is ever going to get for these two. Because right now it's only about basketball, and proving that they can do the things that they do individually effectively enough in tandem to win a bunch of basketball games, one at a time. And they can, and they will. But soon enough, it's gonna be about history, and about ghosts, and about not only reliving their own greatest professional failings in the hopes of finally eclipsing them, but turning to the other guy to specifically help them do so. And that's when it gets tough.
As much as the careers of Joel Embiid and James Harden have been defined by regular-season greatness, they have equally been defined by postseason disappointment. You probably don't need me to go over Harden's litany of playoff letdowns and you certainly don't need any reminder about Joel's. But suffice to say that both players going down in Game 7 of the semis last year in series that their teams probably should have won -- for a variety of reasons, some more excusable than others -- did not feel particularly out of character for their respective May legacies to this point.
And that's fine! Really. The story of the NBA is mostly the story of players who just couldn't get over the hump, until they did -- from Oscar Robertson to Jerry West to Julius Erving to Michael Jordan to LeBron James to Giannis Antetokounmpo. And more times than not, one of the biggest reasons for those guys making the championship leap was them being newly paired with a top-tier running mate: Oscar with Kareem, Julius with Moses, LeBron with the other Heatles, even Giannis with Our Boy Jrue. Not everyone gets there, but the mere virtue of not already having been there is in no way a death sentence, or even necessarily all that meaningful: One championship and all of a sudden everything that once felt pre-determined suddenly just feels like a prelude to the real story.
All that said: It's not like there aren't reasons why they've never gotten there before. Folks already complaining about Harden and Embiid parading to the free throw line like Hannibal crossing the Alps will no doubt be overjoyed this postseason, when defenses tighten up, whistles get swallowed and Jo and James end up gesturing wildly at the refs while their teammates are forced to defend 4-on-5 in transition. Health was a problem for both guys last postseason; Harden has been more durable historically than Embiid but he's also a half-decade older. Neither star has a true carry-the-team-over-the-finish-line moment on their resume past the first round, the biggest games have not yet brought on the finest play for either. The East is beastly this year; failing major injuries, no one is setting themselves up to be steamrolled even in the early stages. This relationship will be put to the test.
And under such conditions, little relationship stresses become big relationship stresses. There was a moment in the third quarter of the Knicks game on Sunday when Harden fed Embiid on the wing and then inched away to space for him as his own man creeped his way towards a hard-double on Embiid -- but rather than kick it out to a mostly open Harden, Joel dribbled to the baseline for a tough fadeaway over two defenders with 12 left on the clock. The shot went in, because Jo is absurd, so probably no hard feelings there in the moment -- but it was the wrong play and both guys likely knew it. That doesn't mean much in Q3 of a nothing game against one of the worst teams in the NBA, but late in Game 6 against Boston or Miami -- when Harden has already yelled at Embiid for doing that 15 times already this season -- it's the kind of stuff between two great players that ultimately gets corrosive.
I don't mean to concern-troll with this; I don't actually think that Embiid is a selfish player or that Harden has an impossibly short fuse or that either or both of the two will see their worst selves emerge as the play gets tougher. I think that if the two of them stay healthy the Sixers will make the finals this year. I only mean to say that just because so many national folks were wrong (wrong, as in the opposite of right) to be concerned about Embiid and Harden being a tough fit together, doesn't mean there aren't still reasons to be concerned, period -- especially after it's been long enough for both of them to have a lengthy list of things to roll their eyes at the other about.
But ultimately, that's fine too: It just means that the time to win really is this season. And it means that in the meantime, we should make sure to cherish every single one of these early Embiid-Harden games right now -- when basketball is simple and loving is easy.