After nearly kicking his way out of Game 3, Joel Embiid is lucky to learn from a win

NEW YORK — The game had been over for upward of half an hour when the world’s most valuable and contradictory basketball player emerged from the visitor’s locker room. His game uniform untucked, an ice pack wrapped around his right knee, a pair of brown Ugg slippers on his Size 17 feet, Joel Embiid lumbered through the Barclays Center’s narrow hallways like a biblical giant in a submarine. After an initial wrong turn, he retraced his steps and followed a gaggle of media members into a makeshift interview room, where he sat down at a folding table and awaited the inevitable question.

“I don’t remember,” Embiid said a few moments later, when the topic of the most underpenalized gut shot in NBA history initially was broached. “It takes me a lot to process a game after that type of fight. I have to go watch the tape, see what we can do better, what I can do better. I’m just happy we got the win.”

» READ MORE: Sixers survive Joel Embiid injury, James Harden ejection to take commanding 3-0 series lead

The sheepishness in Embiid’s voice suggested he knew what the tape of the Sixers’ 102-97 Game 3 win would show. It would show that the NBA’s ostensible MVP came within a couple of inches of costing his team a desperately needed short series, saved only by the inaccuracy of the dropkick he attempted to deliver to the nether regions of a gloating Nets center. It would show that he and his teammates spent long stretches of the subsequent 40 minutes in various stages of psychological meltdown until they were again rescued from disaster by a 22-year-old kid. It would show that Embiid’s superstar teammate, James Harden, may ultimately have paid the price for his unpunished transgression when he was ejected for what appeared to be, at worst, a push-off foul that connected with a defender in an inopportune place.

» READ MORE: Sixers star James Harden calls his flagrant 2 foul and Game 3 ejection ‘unacceptable’

The thing about game tape is it tells no lies. Embiid knows that, and he came close to admitting as much.

“The whole game, you could see what they were doing, just trying to get a rise out of me,” Embiid said. “I’m too valuable, especially after the first one, I just understood I’m too valuable to get into this stuff. ... You could see what the game plan was. Try to make me frustrated so I could get ejected. I’m too mature to put myself in a position where I’m going to get ejected. I just went about my business, and we got the win.”

Embiid means well, which makes him a difficult person to chastise. That, and the fact that even in his worst moments, he is the most impactful player on the court. You saw that throughout Game 3. Even as the Nets’ persistent mobbing of Embiid rendered him a nonfactor on the offensive end, his deterrence at the defensive rim meant as much as any of the points he might have scored. The highlight was a block of an attempted game-tying layup by Spencer Dinwiddie with 8 seconds left, but just as big was the avoidance he forced Brooklyn into all half.

Still, you can’t help but wonder if Embiid recognizes why the Nets have chosen the game plan he referenced. There’s a reason that this undersized, undermatched team thinks it can succeed in getting under his skin. On a macro level, the strategy has been a failure, thanks in large part to the improved supporting cast that Embiid now has around him. In P.J. Tucker and De’Anthony Melton and Tobias Harris, the Sixers have a trio of players who rarely appear fazed. Same goes for Tyrese Maxey, who couples that mental toughness with a preternatural ability to knock down big shots.

» READ MORE: Tyrese Maxey cuts through Game 3 chaos to help lift Sixers to victory over Brooklyn Nets

Embiid isn’t there yet. To a certain degree, that’s understandable. He is a big target who is so good and immense that it can be difficult to appreciate the punishment he takes. When he fell to the court in the first quarter and saw Claxton going out of his way to step over him with a stare-down, Embiid already had endured 8 1/2 quarters of slaps and forearm shivers. This series has not been fun for him on the offensive end, and that is very much by design.

That being said, there is a decent chance that the next round will be just as much of a grind. The Celtics know Embiid better than anybody. In Al Horford and Marcus Smart, they have a couple of scrappers who know how to get under his skin. You can forgive the kick to Claxton. But Embiid also needs to find a way to channel that aggression into his game.

That’s how the great ones do it. They feed off these moments. They issue their payback the next time down the court.

We’ve seen him do it. He’s good enough that it should be expected. That’s a lot to ask. But those are his standards.

» READ MORE: Forget must-win. The Sixers are in a must-sweep situation with Celtics looming in Round 2.

The Sixers did get the win. That much is certain. And that counts for a lot this time of year. Up 3-0, winners of a slugfest in which one star was ejected and another one should have been, the Sixers suddenly are a game away from sweeping the Nets and securing a berth in the Eastern Conference semifinals. That’s the big story, and it is very much a good one.

Just as big, though, is the question that will dictate where they go from here. What did they learn? Because they need to have learned something, or these Sixers will go down as the latest in a long line of unserious teams.