For a moment, it looked like the narrative had finally shifted; Joel Embiid was playing some of the healthiest basketball of his career, seemingly silencing the "injury-prone" critics with a dominant, fluid stretch of play leading up to the All-Star break.

Joel Embiid raised his arms into the air to encourage the crowd to make noise as the 76ers went into their first timeout, after bumping Nikola Vučević and finishing inside. Embiid had scored the Sixers’ first eight points Sunday,