Can Joel Embiid and the Sixers be the face of the NBA?
Of course you dont. But he did. In the Dec. 11, 1992, editions of the Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert, the finest and most famous film critic of all, wrote this:  Rob Reiners A Few Good Men is one of those movies that tells you what its going to do, does it, and then tells you what it did. It doesnt think the audience is very bright. There is a scene that is absolutely wrong. In it, a lawyer played by Tom Cruise previews his courtroom strategy to his friends. The strategy then works as planned  which means that an element of surprise is missing from the most important moment in the movie, and the key scene by Jack Nicholson is undermined  robbed of suspense, and made inevitable. Hey, even the best of the best has a bad day once in a while. The reason that A Few Good Men is great and consuming, the reason that you cant tear yourself away from it once you happen upon it while channel surfing, isnt the plot. Its Nicholsons ham-it-up acting and Cruises perfect casting, the contrasting and complementary nature of their characters, and Aaron Sorkins gift for writing snappy dialogue and memorable monologues. It doesnt matter that you know how the movie is likely to end. The talent is just that good. The talent draws you in. For much of its recent history, the NBA has followed that same formula. In fact, the league has been at its most successful when it has adhered to that formula as closely as possible. Precious little. From the East, it would be the Celtics, maybe the Sixers. In the West, it would be the Lakers, maybe the Rockets. With the exception of some occasional interludes, the pattern has held since. Everyone generally has had a pretty good idea of which teams will vie for the championship each year, and the results have borne out those expectations: the Bad Boy Pistons, Jordans Bulls, Hakeems Rockets, Kobe and Shaqs Lakers, Tim Duncan and the Spurs, Lebrons teams in Miami and Cleveland, the Warriors dominance. In the NBA, championships are won in bunches. Cinderellas and surprises really dont exist. Its the talent  from Magic/Bird/Michael to LeBron/Steph/KD and everyone between those poles  that has drawn people in.  READ MORE: Sixers-Hawks Game 3 notebook | 12 things to know  Except now, in this postseason, the NBA has reached an inflection point, a moment that might redefine its recent past and chart the course of its future. He had arguably the best season of his incredible career, and the Warriors still bowed out in the play-in. That dynasty is dead. He and the Lakers got bounced in the first round by the Phoenix Suns, and the one-sidedness of that series whenever Anthony Davis was in street clothes affirmed that James is past the point that he can carry a team single-handedly to the Finals. And given that the Lakers missed the playoffs in his first, injury-riddled season with them, it appears more and more that, to lead them to another title, he would need the five-month runway of rest that the pandemic provided last year. These NBA Finals will be the first without either James or Curry since 2010, which sets up these playoffs as an indicator of which players and teams will make up the leagues elite for the next few years and how we will view this era years from now. If the Brooklyn Nets keep rolling to the championship, then Kevin Durant will have his third ring as part of the leagues latest breed of super teams. If the Los Angeles Clippers win, it will elevate Kawhi Leonard to a higher plane of superstar: three championships with three franchises, two of which had never smelled a title until his arrival. The leagues last two MVPs  the Nuggets Nikola Jokic and the Bucks Giannis Antetokounmpo  are caught in the midst of fairly humiliating second-round performances from their teams. The Suns are playing crisp, cohesive, beautiful basketball. Joel Embiid is delivering a measure of dominance  statistically at least, tangibly at best  that matches or surpasses anything any player has accomplished in an NBA postseason. Perhaps this is merely the beginning of a long stretch of greatness for Embiid and the Sixers. Perhaps Jokic and Antetokounmpo are destined to remain trapped in that same non-championship netherworld that Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, and Karl Malone occupy. Perhaps the league is starting a stretch similar to the one it had in the late 1970s, when the crown was up for grabs every year, even among teams in smaller markets. For once, the NBAs world is wide open. This is a rare and unfamiliar place for the sport, and it will be fascinating to see how long it takes for the league to settle back into the suspenseless story with the inevitable ending that no one can stop watching.