Even before Joel Embiid went down in the second quarter against the New York Knicks last night -- with what was ultimately diagnosed as a facial contusion, after getting accidentally popped by the shoulder of teammate Markelle Fultz -- I was feeling like Philadelphia 76ers fans, including myself, probably needed to take a moment to appreciate the good health the team has enjoyed this season.
Yes, Justin Anderson and Furkan Korkmaz both lost considerable time. Yes, Embiid and J.J. Redick have both missed stretches. Yes, Fultz was out of the lineups for months with... well, mysterious maladies that were probably at least slightly related to a shoulder injury from the preseason (maybe?). But big picture, the team's starting five of Embiid, Redick, Robert Covington, Dario Saric and Ben Simmons have had a combined 93% attendance rate -- and while seemingly every other playoff contender is currently struggling with some sort of injury to a core player, the Sixers have seemed to be at their healthiest with the playoffs approaching.
If you think this was overdue for Philly, you are certainly correct. After nearly a decade of our biggest prospects and/or most important players missing entire seasons at a time, odds would say that at some point, the 76ers would luck their way into a year where their best guys actually managed to take the court for most of the 82 games. But just because it's overdue doesn't mean it's in any way guaranteed -- and, as we were reminded last night, one blow dealt to one of these guys can switch all the good vibes surrounding the team to bad pretty damn quickly.
For this particular Joel Embiid injury, it's a little hard to tell the severity. It looked bad at the time, with Joel writhing in pain and wooziness for several minutes before stumbling back to the locker room, and Embiid posted an ambiguous hospital Instagram of himself hooked up to a machine, with the caption "not good." He was cleared as concussion-free, and "facial contusion" doesn't sound like the sort of malady that end up keeping players like Embiid out an Embiid-like length of time -- but he might end up missing the Sixers' next game or two, and again, you just never know in basketball.
The good news is that Brett Brown's crew might not need JoJo all that badly for the team's upcoming schedule. A mini-road swing down south will take Philly to Atlanta and Charlotte over the weekend, where the Sixers should be talented enough to compete (and likely win) even without the All-Star big man. The team mostly acquitted themselves in JoJo's absence last night against New York -- slightly alarming how quickly they coughed up their double-digit lead to the Knicks after Embiid headed to the locker room, but they found their footing in time and ended up largely cruising to a 118-101 victory.
That's eight wins in a row now for the Sixers, the last six all coming by double digits -- the latter being the longest such streak in franchise history. Those numbers may be a little misleading, given how easy the Sixers' competition has been over that stretch: Only the Nuggets and the Jimmy Butler-less Wolves have presented any kind of theoretically tough matchup, though the Knicks and Nets both played 'em down to the wire. But hey, this is the Charmin-soft portion of the season Sixers fans dreamed about when they were trudging through one of the NBA's hardest schedules of the first three months. Gotta celebrate them taking care of business when it came time for them to do so -- and considering how decisive these wins have been, even against the better teams, they're hardly cheaping their way into the W column, either.
These are still very, very heady times for these Sixers, who still sit in fourth in the Eastern Conference standings, after LeBron James roasted the Hornets in Charlotte last night to keep the Cavs a half-game up on 'em. At 44-30, Embiid's stated goal of 50 wins is still very much in reach -- the team's only real challenges in their final games come against Cleveland and Milwaukee, both at home -- and should be achievable even if he has to miss a couple games. And hey, we got seven paragraphs into a Sixers' postgame without even discussing Fultz's actual play in his second game back from whatever. (I still think he looks good, though it'd be nice to see him run a couple high pick and rolls at some point before season's end.)
But today, let's not worry too much about how the Sixers have been playing, and just appreciate the gift we've been given of a Sixers season where the dudes who are supposed to be playing for us have, for the most part, actually done so. If we can finish the season without a spike to the team body count, that makes 2017-'18 a success pretty much no matter how we do in the playoffs.