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Joel Embiid truly believes the Philadelphia 76ers can make the playoffs

ben rohrbach
Senior NBA writer
Joel Embiid imagines the possibilities. (Getty Images)
Joel Embiid imagines the possibilities. (Getty Images)

Joel Embiid is riding high. He’s a virtual lock to win the NBA’s Rookie of the Year honor, and he’s polling one spot outside a starting All-Star spot in the Eastern Conference, which maybe means he’s one spot away from a date with Rihanna. His Philadelphia 76ers have won three of their last four games, which brings their win total equal to the amount of victories they had all of last season.

After their most recent win over the Brooklyn Nets on Sunday, Embiid and his teammates celebrated with rapper Meek Mill at a New York City strip club. A former porn star tried levying some criticism of this recent success streak, and Embiid totally won that exchange, too. Everything’s coming up Embiid.

So much so that he believes the 76ers — they of the 10-25 record who are holding their place in line for one of the league’s three worst records for a fourth straight season — can make the playoffs.

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This season.

Really.

“I think we’ve improved a lot,” Embiid told reporters on Sunday, via CSN Philly’s Jessica Camerato. “We’ve been playing good basketball, we’ve been winning games, and I don’t know, we’re like seven or eight games out of the playoffs, so we have a chance. We’re learning, we’re going together, learning how to play with each other and things are going good now.

“I look at it. I think we’re like seven or eight games from eighth place, so I think that’s a goal. I think we have a chance. We’ve been hot lately. We’ve won three out of four lately, so I look at it and I think we have a chance. We’re really figuring things out. We’re starting to learn how to win games.”

Some of that Embiid swagger is rubbing off on his young teammates, too.

“It’s an amazing thing to really have this mindset of potential playoffs in just a matter of a year,” added Noel, who’s lobbied Philadelphia’s front office for a trade all year. “Guys are really looking forward to it. Presuming everything stays on the right road with health and the direction we’re going now, we’re playing good basketball, that’s definitely a possibility.”

Ah, to be young and foolish. The Sixers went almost three years without winning three of four games, so the fact they’re talking playoffs now is a little like Shia LaBeouf thinking he had it all figured out after a few “Transformers” movies, but good on the Sixers for believing in themselves. You wouldn’t want it any other way, really, not midway through the season, not 7.5 games out of the eighth seed.

After years of watching the 76ers tank their way to the bottom of the standings, you might think they would accept their status as a bottom-three team by now, so it’s refreshing to see the youngsters who have known nothing but misery on this franchise still hold any shred of positivity. We should expect nothing less from Embiid, who publicly voted himself an All-Star and has adopted “The Process” as a nickname, breathing fresh air into a concept that was previously associated with a perpetual stink.

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Joel Embiid is riding high. But let’s keep him grounded. The 76ers still rank dead last in offensive rating — more than two points per 100 possessions less than the next-worst unit — and their below-average defensive rating adds up to a deficit of seven points per 100 possessions for the season. Only the Nets have been worse. Speaking of Brooklyn, Philadelphia’s three wins over the past 10 days have come against the Denver Nuggets, Minnesota Timberwolves and Nets — a trio of the league’s nine worst teams — so maybe Philly’s young colts should pump the breaks on the playoff talk for a bit.

Maybe wait until after this upcoming stretch of five straight games against potential Eastern Conference playoff teams (New York Knicks, Charlotte Hornets, Washington Wizards, Milwaukee Bucks, Toronto Raptors) before weighing the possibility of leaping five teams for eighth place. Or longer. A 1-17 record against teams currently in the NBA’s 16 playoff spots isn’t a great recipe for getting there.

That seems to be the sentiment shared by Sixers coach Brett Brown and the Sixers’ veteran players.

“I don’t think that should be our concern as much,” Gerald Henderson said of a playoff push. “Even now, teams that are going to make the playoffs, they’re not thinking about the playoffs. They’re thinking about staying healthy, what it looks like out on the court so they can prepare themselves to play after the season. We just need to focus on playing consistently, taking care of our fourth quarters and contributions from everyone.”

In other words, trust the process.

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Ben Rohrbach is a contributor for Ball Don’t Lie and Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!