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In Sixers' other debut, Saric doesn't dazzle like Embiid does

On the day of his first NBA game, Dario Saric had ribs for lunch, then took an afternoon nap. He lives in the city, and there's a good rib joint near his place, and he always takes a nap before a game. "Gives me some energy," he said Wednesday night.

On the day of his first NBA game, Dario Saric had ribs for lunch, then took an afternoon nap. He lives in the city, and there's a good rib joint near his place, and he always takes a nap before a game. "Gives me some energy," he said Wednesday night.

He was sitting in the 76ers' locker room at the Wells Fargo Center, the Sixers' season opener against the Thunder still more than an hour away. His was the other debut for the Sixers on Wednesday, the secondary attraction in their 103-97 loss. There was Joel Embiid's, and there was Saric's, each after a two-year wait. The game was the great unveiling, the first real hint of what the Sixers are supposed to be someday, the first chance to begin validating former general manager Sam Hinkie's double-barreled gamble at the 2014 draft.

It was risky enough to select Embiid with the No. 3 pick, even with everyone acknowledging that, if healthy, he could change a franchise forever. But agreeing to that trade with the Orlando Magic, knowing that Saric was obligated to play in Turkey for at least two years, was always the more precarious play. Sure, Saric had been a child prodigy in Croatia, a source of NBA scouts' fascination for years as a versatile 6-foot-10 forward, but who could accurately project how good he was or would be? If he became nothing more than a guy on the roster, a functional cog in a lineup, would he have been worth the wait?

"I feel happy because of that," Saric said. "People expect something from you. But in some ways, it's a kind of pressure, you know? You're coming to play in the United States for the first time - different game, different rules. You have to catch rhythm. It's a little bit pressure, but it's OK, you know?"

Saric is 22, and he has the eager-to-please demeanor of a lab retriever, and on Wednesday night he wore a black mustache-and-goatee combination that make him resemble an actor unenthusiastic about having to play Zorro. If he looked out of place for facial-hair reasons, he didn't for basketball reasons. He played as if he were still finding his way, as the Sixers are. He shot 2 for 12 from the field and had five points, seven rebounds, and three fouls in 27 minutes. He was not at all spectacular - a little slow on defense, a little tentative on offense, thinking through everything instead of acting and reacting on instinct. He didn't move the people in the stands the way Embiid can, the way Embiid did with his 2o points in just 22 minutes.

"He is the man," Saric said.

Saric is not. He is not supposed to be. He is supposed to be a man, one of a small group of players around whom the Sixers will build: Embiid, Ben Simmons, perhaps Jahlil Okafor, maybe Nerlens Noel. In that vision, Saric and Simmons are the facilitators, the wing players who make everything easier for Embiid, who know where to go with the ball and when, who can grab a rebound and push the ball. Already Wednesday, Sixers coach Brett Brown had Saric and Embiid running some two-man sequences, with Saric floating or bouncing passes to Embiid on the low block, then rotating or cutting to the basket - the seeds of an unspoken symbiosis on the court, one that Saric could have put off even this season, if he had wanted to, while making more money playing professionally in Europe.

"He loves basketball," Brown said. "He's been raised to play basketball. His dad was a professional basketball player, played with Drazen Petrovic. You look at the history and the culture of that region, just the growth of basketball in that whole area that he was raised in, the family he was raised in. He's been a pro basketball player for a long time.

"He honored his word: 'Coach, I'm coming.' Every year, he'd tell me the same thing. He'd get upset with me. 'Dario, how's it going?' 'Coach, I told you. I'm coming.' And I'd go to Istanbul, and I'd go to Istanbul, and here he is. . . . In many ways, he was raised to be here."

His was not the thrilling display that Embiid's was. It was not memorable, really, in any regard, and maybe no one should have expected it to be. It is all still so early, for him and for Embiid, and if Embiid's performance sent an electric current through the city's basketball community, the hope has to be that it merely takes Saric a little longer to manifest his subtler skills. He wasn't the man Wednesday. He wasn't a man, either. He was just a guy. But it was just one game, a flicker of light in the revelation of who Dario Saric might yet be, and the hurt of this loss in a long season was nothing a good meal and a nice nap can't heal.

msielski@phillynews.com

@MikeSielski