Joel Embiid after the 76ers’ 29-point comeback: ‘Top three night’ in Philadelphia, and ‘I forgot how to play basketball’

Joel Embiid has been in Philadelphia long enough to have heard the arena at its loudest and at its angriest. On Thursday night he heard both in the same game, and he ranked it near the very top. “That was probably a top five night for me since I’ve been in Philadelphia,” Embiid said after the Philadelphia 76ers came back from 29 points down to beat the Cleveland Cavaliers 114-106 in their home opener. “I have no words. That was amazing.”

A few minutes later he moved it up the list. The 76ers had heard some boos in the first half, he said, “but then again, they came right back up to support us,” and that made it “probably a top three night for me since I’ve been here.”

Embiid scored 24 points on 8-of-16 shooting with 7 rebounds in 34 minutes, and 9 of his points came in the fourth quarter, when Philadelphia took its only lead of the night on his 16-foot jumper with 6:54 left. Tyrese Maxey led the 76ers with 32, Jaylen Brown added 21 and LeBron James had 17 points, 10 rebounds and 5 assists in his first regular-season home game for Philadelphia. Cleveland led 69-40 with 1:12 left in the first half. Philadelphia outscored the Cavaliers 69-37 after halftime, the franchise’s biggest comeback in at least 30 seasons.

The video above of Embiid’s full postgame news conference was posted by the 76ers.

‘I forgot how to play basketball’

Embiid called it a rhythm problem. He said he was a little off in Tuesday’s opener at New York and again in Thursday’s first half, and that he is still relearning his own game after three years of injuries.

“First game, a little off. First half today, still trying to figure out my spots,” he said. “It almost feels like I haven’t been healthy in so long that I forgot how to play basketball and where I’m extremely successful on the floor. So still getting back and trying to find that rhythm, and by the second half I got to my spot, made a few shots.”

Asked about the loose balls and rebounds his coach Nick Nurse had praised, he said the same thing applied on the glass. “One thing that I feel like I lost in the last three years that I haven’t been healthy, I feel like I just forgot the feel of rebounding and positioning,” Embiid said. “So that’s something that I’m working on. It goes back to everything really basketball-related for me.” Playing in traffic “is still a work in progress,” he added, “but I do whatever it takes to win. Offensively, defensively, it doesn’t really matter.”

A comeback ‘just on twos’

What struck Embiid most was how Philadelphia did it. The 76ers made only 7 of 28 threes, scored 64 points in the paint and went 23-of-30 at the free-throw line. “Usually when teams make that type of comeback, it’s a bunch of threes,” he said. “I don’t remember the last time I saw a team making that type of comeback just on twos.”

He said there was not much talking at halftime. “We just knew what we had to do. Taking care of the ball, that was one. And two, just be a little bit more aggressive on defense. And that’s what we did,” Embiid said. Philadelphia had 15 turnovers by halftime, by his count, and Cleveland finished with 21. “I would like for us to not be in that position in the first place, so we don’t have to do it every night, because that takes a lot of energy,” he said. “But it was different. I said it last game, it just feels different.”

Asked whether he and James Harden, his former teammate whom he went at in the second half, had patched things up, Embiid said they “talked all night.” He called Harden “probably a top three player I’ve ever played with.”

Maxey: ‘time to see what we made of’

Maxey, who played 42 minutes and was plus-19, said Cleveland was “way, way, way tougher than us” in the first half. His halftime message, he said, was that it was time to see what the group was made of, and that it could not be a team that is only happy when things are going well. He took the assignment on Harden, who he said “was orchestrating” Cleveland’s offense, because “we needed that spark.” He also told Brown that he would guard Harden, and that he needed Brown to score and be aggressive early in the third and fourth quarters.

The video above of Maxey’s postgame news conference was posted by the 76ers.

He also explained the walk he took toward the scorer’s table after one of his threes. “Our moms were sitting right there, so we were just telling them hello,” Maxey said.

Embiid said Maxey’s two-way growth does not surprise him. “I told him before the season, I think he should be a 50-40-90 guy. So not impressed,” Embiid said, laughing. “I see the work that he’s put in all these years, and I will take the credit and say that I was the first one that saw it.” On defense, he added, a lineup full of 6-foot-6 and 6-foot-7 players usually leaves a small guard to be targeted. “To look at our team and be like, who you gonna pick on? There’s nobody,” he said. He also called the second-year guard {VJ}, who had 11 points, 7 rebounds, 6 assists and 3 steals, “the future of this team.”

One of two this weekend

The 76ers play a back-to-back at home this weekend, against the Milwaukee Bucks on Saturday and the Detroit Pistons on Sunday, both at 7:30 p.m. ET (2:30 a.m. Cairo the following day). Embiid said he will play only one of them. “I’m not playing both games. I’m playing one of them. I don’t know, they’re going to tell me,” he said. “Whatever they tell me, I’ll do it. And then if I don’t agree with it, I might fight it, but I might not win.”