CAMDEN, N.J. — If you were tracking buzzwords from Joel Embiid on the opening day of 76ers training camp Monday, you would not have gotten the bulletin-board material of years’ past.
He started out with a plea for “consistency” in roster composition that has so far eluded him. He spoke about “empowering” teammates, and he luxuriated in the glow of winning a gold medal at the Paris Olympics with Team USA. Of course, Embiid couldn’t help himself with one declaration, albeit one that won’t spark controversy, by his standards or anyone else’s.
Embiid’s main goal is to be healthy at the business end of a 76ers season. “As soon as we lost last year, I texted Daryl (Morey, Sixers president of basketball operations) and I was like, we’ve got to do whatever it takes to make sure that in the postseason, I’m helping,” Embiid said Monday in Camden. “So this year, there’s no agenda, there’s no All-Star, there’s no All-NBA, there’s none of that.
It’s whatever it takes to make sure that I get to that point and I’m ready to go. “Basically every single year of my career, I’ve been hurt in the playoffs. So I think that’s the goal.
And it’s all about doing whatever it takes to get there.” Embiid, now 30 and 10 years removed from his draft night, knows the score. He’s won two NBA scoring titles, an MVP award and seven All-Star nods.
And zero playoff series beyond the first round, a 5-7 record overall in series. So for all the discussion of th.