TORONTO — Marc Gasol knew the scouting report. Every member of the Toronto Raptors did. Stay down on Joel Embiid’s pump fake. Don’t jump until both of Embiid’s feet leave the floor.

There were 28.9 seconds remaining in Game 2, and just six on the shot clock. The Philadelphia 76ers, down 1-0 in this Eastern Conference semifinals matchup, were clinging to a one-point lead. A stop would give the Raptors a chance to take the lead in the final seconds. 

Embiid caught the ball at the top of the arc. Gasol shuffled up toward him. Embiid had hit just one shot all night—a driving scoop in the lane. He’d misfired on all three of his three-point attempts and 15 of his 19 postseason triples. He knew settling for a jumper would be handing the Raptors the resulted they wanted.

He pumped the ball above his head and lifted his heels off the ground. It wasn’t as slow or long as usual, and Gasol never jumped. But he did momentarily straighten his knees and lift his arms, pulling himself out of a defensive stance. That was all Embiid needed. He took two hard dribbles to the right, spun left and pumped the ball again. Gasol, trailing Embiid just a bit, just enough for him to feel like he was trailing and shift into scramble mode, leapt again, gifting Embiid an open layup, a knockout shot lifting the Sixers to a series-tying road win.

“It feels like guys are too aggressive on me and that they’re going to bite on it, so I always pump fake,” Embiid told B/R in the visitors’ locker room at Scotiabank Arena on Monday night after the game.

But it’s one thing to fall for a deke inside the paint, especially when deployed by one of the game’s premier interior scorers. It’s another to be juked off the ground by a spot-up shooter who struggles shooting.

Embiid launched 263 three-pointers during the regular season, good for 4.1 per game. He drilled just 79 of them—an even 30 percent. In other words, Embiid is very frequently willing to take a shot that very frequently misses. An Embiid three is exactly the result defenses should be chasing. And yet, time and time again, sometimes during a game’s most consequential possession, a defender—even one as astute as Gasol, the 2013 Defensive Player of the Year—will close out on Embiid as if he were one of the game’s top snipers.

“His fake is one of the best,” said Brooklyn Nets center Jarrett Allen, who was victimized by the pump a number of times during his team’s first-round playoff series against the Sixers.

The pump fake from deep has become one of the signature moves for one of the game’s signature players and an essential part of the Sixers offense.

Embiid played 66 percent of his regular-season minutes alongside Ben Simmons, a player unwilling and incapable of shooting from deep. Simmons, as a result, spends a good chunk of his playing time camped out near the basket. No modern NBA offense wants to operate with two players clogging the paint, so Embiid is often relegated to the perimeter (Case in point: Julius Randle is the only designated “center” who averaged more dribble drives per game this season, according toNBA.com).

How does a poor outside shooter turn himself into a threat from the outside? The pump fake is part of Embiid’s solution.

The move also symbolizes why Embiid is a top-10 player. Yeah, he’s big and quick, but he also possesses a preternatural feel for the game’s intricacies despite not picking up a basketball before the age of 15. It’s a strain of genius that’s propelled him to the top of the sport, and that’s empowered him to discover distinctive methods for manipulating opponents. The pump fake from the perimeter might be the best example.

“I shoot 30 percent from three, but guys still jump when I shot fake and I don’t know why,” Embiid told reporters in January. “… But just because you take them, people are compelled to guard.”

He was reminded of this quote Monday night in Toronto.

“That’s true; I don’t get it,” he told B/R. “But I mean, guys are always coming up from [the paint] and guarding me at the three-point line and it looks like my shooting motion. It’s slow, you don’t know if I’m going to shoot it or not  and then at the top of it I just decide not to shoot it.”

The speed of the pump—or lack thereof—appears to be one of the keys. Most pump fakes are quick and tight, like jabs. Embiid’s looks like someone hit a slow-motion button. He also raises the ball above his head (most players bring the ball up to around their eyes) and simultaneously lifts his toes and hips.

“I don’t know why guys go for it. I think it’s because he brings the ball all the way up,” Sixers center Amir Johnson said. Johnson had another theory too: The defenders guarding Embiid are often rim protectors planted in the paint. “When you’re closing out on a guy and running from inside to close out, you’re scrambling,” he added. “At times like that, any pump fake will get a guy.” 

“When that’s going, you’re not doing the math of what a guy shoots from the spot,” Allen said. “You’re just trying to get out there on him.”

Embiid always had the move tucked in his pocket. His introduction to the NBA was a tape of Hakeem Olajuwon highlights given to him by a coach in his native Cameroon. Embiid watched the tape on repeat. He learned how simple fakes and jabs and stutters could confound even the greatest defenders, and early in his basketball career he began honing his own version of Olajuwon’s Dream Shake. “He did that pump sometimes during our scrimmages,” said Justin Wesley, who played with Embiid at Kansas University. “But it wasn’t as exaggerated as it is now.”

Drew Hanlen, a skills trainer who works with Embiid during the offseason, said the first time he saw Embiid use the slow pump fake from the perimeter was during a summer session in 2016. Embiid was preparing to make his NBA debut after missing his first two seasons due to a series of foot injuries. He and Hanlen knew that in the Sixers’ egalitarian offense, Embiid would often be stationed on the perimeter—“Lots of people can run stuff from that top spot,” Sixers head coach Brett Brown said—so they were working on attacking and shooting over closeouts. On one possession, Embiid pumped the ball above his head, sending one of Hanlen’s interns flying into the air.

“He’s 7 feet; you think you’re going to block his shot?” Hanlen asked. Everyone in the gym, assuming this was another example of the jocular Embiid performing for the crowd, laughed.

“At first I thought the move was just him goofing off,” Hanlen said. The fake, Hanlen added, “Wasn’t something (Embiid) was ever taught. It came to him naturally.”

Hanlen and Embiid have spent time drilling ways to attack defenders darting out to the perimeter. Last summer, they studied clips of Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo using a Eurostep-like move (Hanlen calls it a “pound evasion”) to slip by opponents. Embiid’s off-the-bounce game has improved, but he and Hanlen both know upgrades are needed. Embiid’s drives usually feature one hard dribble followed by two long steps, a sequence that turns him into a runaway train. He doesn’t leave himself any room to maneuver and struggles reading the floor (among all players who averaged four or more drives per game, only Chandler Parsons turned the ball over more frequently, perNBA.com).

“This summer we’re going to work on taking one more controlled dribble to give him more options,” Hanlen said. “That’s the next step for Joel. Playmaking off the bounce.”

If history is any indication, Embiid should have no issue developing that part of his game. Take, as an example, the first time Embiid’s varsity coach saw him utilize a pump fake from the perimeter. It was Embiid’s senior year of high school, and he’d just recently transferred to The Rock School in Gainesville, Florida. His coach, Justin Harden, was implementing a new motion offense. The set called for Embiid to receive the ball on the elbow and either hit a cutter backdoor or hand the ball off to one of the two guards. The group ran the set a few times. Harden then told Embiid that he could make his own read from the elbow, too. On the next play, Embiid, who had only started playing basketball three years earlier, faked a pass, faked a shot, drove the ball to the hoop and threw down a dunk.

“He’s always been such a cerebral player,” Harden said. “He’s an anomaly in terms of how quickly he’s able to understand things and take advantage of situations.”

And so as Embiid caught the ball above the three-point arc late in Game 2, he knew his customary slow-motion pump fake wouldn’t work. It never has against Gasol, who rarely leaves his feet before a shooter does, a skill that’s helped him limit Embiid to 34.5 percent shooting in head-to-head matchups over the previous two years. Leading up to that point in the series, Embiid had yet to find an answer. He’d missed on 18 of his 24 shot attempts. He’d coughed the ball up six times that game. He knew he’d need to try something different, something Gasol wouldn’t expect. He sped the pump fake up. It was a move Gasol didn’t recognize. In the matter of moments, he’d processed the situation and downloaded a path to a win.

Yaron Weitzman covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow Yaron on Twitter, @YaronWeitzman, and sign up for his newsletter here.

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Brooklyn Nets head coach Kenny Atkinson joins Howard Beck on the Full 48 podcast to discuss his team’s breakthrough season, D’Angelo Russell’s ascent and more.

Myles Garrett put his hand on the ground for his first rep in team drills in his first NFL training camp in the summer of 2017. The Browns’ No. 1 overall pick had been limited earlier in camp because of a high ankle sprain, so all eyes were on him. Garrett got to the quarterback, but it was the way he did it that left an impression on teammates. “He ran an offensive lineman over with one arm…” Browns defensive tackle Trevon Coley remembers, still amazed a year-and-a-half later. “When he hit the dude, the first thing that hit the ground was the dude’s head. We were all standing there saying, ‘Oh my God.’”         

You shook my core

Stirred by your trance

Left me want wanting more

After only a glance

Garrett knifed to the left of then-Jets guard James Carpenter in his first snap of his first regular-season game in October of 2017, and before Carpenter could turn his head around, he was past him and smothering quarterback Josh McCown.

Your smile made waves

In the oceans of my mind

Your eyes made slaves

Of this man you came to find

Garrett took a snap in September of 2018 with the Browns 32 seconds away from their first victory in nearly 21 months, a shark striking at the scent of blood. Rookie QB Sam Darnold was on the other side of scrimmage, desperately trying to bring the Jets back from a four-point deficit. Garrett tried sprinting to his left and, rushing upfield, freed himself from offensive tackle Kelvin Beachum, bringing down Darnold down by his heels.

Your beauty bounds above the rest

Leaving others in awe

You are simply the best

Anyone ever saw

Garrett came in from left end in December of 2018, powering Texans right tackle Kendall Lamm backward and then colliding with left tackle Julie’n Davenport a few feet behind quarterback Deshaun Watson. For a moment, it seemed, Garrett was lost in a mass of giants. And then an arm emerged from the chaos—Garrett’s—dragging down Watson for a sack, with an assist from linebacker Joe Schobert.

You capture fools to kings

Your love knows no peer

Put on this earth for many things

But love is why you’re here

At 6’4″, 272 pounds, Garrett has Instagram abs. He can jump higher than an NBA player (41″ vertical) and burst quicker than a jackrabbit (1.63-second 10-yard split). When the Browns made him the first pick of the 2017 draft, there was nary an argument. A generational talent is what scouts have called him.

And there’s more.

As interesting as he is imposing, he dreams of stepping in the ring with WBC heavyweight champ Deontay Wilder—and of writing a book filled with his poems like the one above.

Quarterback-imperiling, guitar-strumming, game-plan ruining, rom-com watching, halfback destroying, nature-walk taking, offensive-lineman steamrolling, Anita Baker playing—he is part warrior and part bard.

But somehow, the hard edges blend into the softness as if there were no dichotomy in Myles Garrett.

The Warrior

It was downtime in the NFL, and Myles Garrett was hanging with friends from college. They were playing something called “The Pain Game,” in which cards are drawn to see how many pushups and situps each has to do.

As a result of one particularly unfortunate draw, Garrett had to do more than 100 consecutive pushups. By the time he was declared the “winner” of the game, he had done 564 pushups and 314 situps.

Two days later, he was still sore. Garrett is OK with pain, whether inflicting it or enduring it. He used to enjoy taping on boxing gloves, climbing between the ropes of a ring and sparring. Then it became difficult to find a willing opponent.

“Boxing is kind of like football in that you test each other’s desire to be there,” he says.

Someday, desires will be tested. For now, he hits the heavy bag, the speed bag and jumps rope.

He likes to train in different ways. The other day, it was soccer on the beach. Basketball was his first love and remains a passion. He could dunk when he was 12 years old, and he always has looked up to his older half-brother, Sean Williams, a former NBA player.

He recently caught an alley-oop pass and dunked with such ferocity that he shattered the backboard. The points he scored on the play won the game.

After posting a picture of himself beneath the mangled backboard, Garrett heard from new Browns coach Freddie Kitchens. The strong suggestion: Retire from basketball.

“All right,” Garrett told him. “I hear you loud and clear. I’ll focus on other training. There are other ways to do it.”

It’s all about being the best defensive end he can be. That explains why he works out twice a day—three hours first thing in the morning and three hours in the evening. And why he hasn’t had a dessert in six years (since his last bite of his grandmother’s chocolate cake). And why he doesn’t drink soda. And why he’s limiting pizza and pork to once a month.

When the Browns run sprints in practice, Coley says, Garrett runs so hard he nearly passes out.

The competitor in him can be traced his father, Lawrence, who refuses to lose. If they are playing a game of pool up to five and he is trailing, Lawrence will insist the game goes to 10. Then 15, and on and on.

His nerve comes from his mother, Audrey. When Garrett’s brother, Sean, was accidentally kicked in the face by another boy after falling off a swing at school, Audrey went to school to check on him. When the other boy’s father told her Sean needs to watch what he’s doing, her reply was a right hook to the jaw.

“My mom gets aggressive,” Garrett says. “She has no problem throwing down.”

Her son is more even tempered but no less fierce. “He got that dog in him—that inner dog,” Coley says. “Nobody gonna bully him. He doesn’t take crap from anybody.”

That explains why teammates voted Garrett a captain in his second season. He has the respect of every corner of the locker room.

He has the respect of opponents and fans too. They voted him to the Pro Bowl after he had 13.5 sacks last season.  Garrett became one of only 15 pass-rushers in NFL history with 13-plus sacks in a season at the age of 23 or younger.

He is capable of much, much more.

“He has an enormous amount of potential,” says retired offensive tackle Joe Thomas, Garrett’s teammate in 2017. Citing Garrett’s quickness, lower-body flexibility and strength, he adds: “I’ve never played against anybody who was like him. Von Miller has the same bendiness, the ability to turn the corner. DeMarcus Ware reminds me of the way he turns the corner. But DeMarcus was 250 to 260 pounds. Von is small. Myles is 275 pounds. He’s a big man.”

Garrett believes many more sacks are possible as his team evolves. With the acquisition of Odell Beckham Jr., more points—and more pass-rushing opportunities—could be forthcoming. There are reinforcements up front with the acquisitions of Olivier Vernon and Sheldon Richardson. And Garrett is counting on the change in the coaching staff to benefit him as well.

“I hopefully have more freedom to be the player I want to be,” Garrett says. “[Former defensive coordinator and interim head coach] Gregg [Williams] was more like: ‘You win with these two moves. I don’t want to see anything else out of you.’ It’s kind of hard with two moves. I feel like you can’t always be so predictable. You can be as strong or fast as you want, but speed chop and power move aren’t always going to work. You have to mix up what you’re doing. Sometimes you have to stutter step, sometimes you have to spin inside, you have to run some games. You have to have some freedom to throw different looks at them, and we didn’t always have that.”

Garrett and quarterback Baker Mayfield are the twin pillars the Browns will be built upon. And Garrett is pleased to share the responsibility with the second-year quarterback, in part because he admires the audacity with which he plays.

“We’re quite different,” Garrett says. “We’re both confident in what we do. He carries his swag in a different way. I’m more to myself. I don’t like to be as vocal. But you can take it to the bank I’m thinking I’m the best player on the field at any given time. He’s just more likely to say it.”

The Poet

When many of his contemporaries are Fortniting, Snapchatting or carousing under the moonlight, Garrett often is writing poetry.

He’s not much into video games. Almost every weekly usage report from Apple tells him he’s been on his phone less than he was the week before. Friends encourage him to make social media posts, but he would rather live in the moment.

Garrett says he never has touched weed—as a child, he felt it had a deleterious effect on his brother, Sean, and swore it off. He never had alcohol until he tried red wine a couple of months ago. “I took a sip and didn’t like it,” he says. “Not for me.”

He recently went to a nightclub for only the second time in his life. He was with Coley and former teammate Emmanuel Ogbah. “It was funny to see my teammates and friends in that kind of environment,” he says. “You see who’s got some game. But I left early. It’s not something I would do often.”

Poetry, now that’s something else. It pulses through his veins. He writes poems three or four times a week.

Garrett writes about feelings, not football. And there is not a lot of common ground. “When I’m doing sports, I don’t feel anything at all,” he says. “I enjoy the moment. It’s a safe haven. But once you try to let someone inside your soul, you become vulnerable. You have to be comfortable in your own skin. I don’t open myself up like that to a lot of people. It takes courage.”

When he writes, he prefers to do it longhand. If the inspiration hits at a certain time, typing it out on his phone will do. But he says when he writes longhand, it “feels like it flows through me better.”

A book of poetry is in his future. His only dilemma is if it should be “by Myles Garrett” or if he will use a pseudonym. He’s also working on a dinosaur book for children (Garrett has been a dinosaur fanatic since Jurassic Park came out on video when he was a child, and he wants to be a paleontologist after he retires from football).

Garrett has been writing regularly since he was about eight years old. His father’s mother, Juanita Garrett, or “Gran” to him, loved poetry and literally gave him the pen and paper. “We didn’t have much else to do,” he says. “So we’d sit down and write.”

One day, he and Gran watched the documentary Ali Rap about Muhammad Ali. “I was mesmerized,” Garrett says. “He was one of the greatest boxers of all time, if not the greatest, and a great poet. He could tell you a story with his words. That’s really what poetry is.”

Gran eventually was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and passed away during Garrett’s freshman year at Texas A&M, but Garrett keeps her alive in his verses and his demeanor.

Charming and disarming, Garrett smiles a lot. “His personality is just like [Gran’s] and my husband’s,” Audrey Garrett says. “He was her last grandchild and her favorite. That was her baby.”

After Gran’s death, Garrett thought about getting a tattoo in her honor. But he’s not about tattoos. Or piercings. Or rap music—he finds much of the subject matter is repetitive and tiring.

Garrett prefers listening to classic rock—Journey, Queen, the Rolling Stones—or soul—Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, Teddy Pendergrass. That’s the kind of music Mom and Dad always played on car rides.

Audrey describes her son as “nerdy.” Many of his teammates undoubtedly would agree. He cries at sad movies. He escapes with anime. He finds peace taking photographs on nature walks. He’s learning to play guitar.

Garrett always has been sensitive. Once when he was five years old, Garrett was engrossed in a television show.

Mom: “Myles, I need you to clean the bathroom.”

No response.

Mom: “Myles! Get up and do your chores!”

No response.

Mom: “Myles!”

Mom: “OK, go get the spoon.”

Garrett brought her the spoon, and she swatted his hands.

Mom: “Do you know why I did that?”

Garrett, crying: “Yes, but you didn’t have to hit me. I promise if you get my attention next time, I’ll do what you want.”

And Mom never had to use the wooden spoon on him again.

It was a little different scenario when he was in college and his father asked him to kill a large “North Texas wasp” that had gotten in the house, according to the Players’ Tribune. Garrett refused.

“Dad,” Myles reasoned, “Everything on this Earth has a purpose and deserves the right to live.”

Garrett thinks differently than most. His family sometimes played “The I Love You Game,” in which each participant took a turn telling the others how much he or she loved them. I love you…more than there are grains of sand on the beach, or I love you…more than there are stars in the sky.

When he was six, Garrett said, “I love you like a sideways eight.”

Sideways eight? The symbol for infinity.

“Now, at times after he makes a sack, people think he’s making a heart on the field to celebrate,” Audrey says. “He’s making a sideways eight to tell us he loves us to infinity.”

The Warrior Poet

Near the end of the movie Braveheart, William Wallace speaks of what his countrymen did in the First War of Scottish Independence.

“In the Year of our Lord 1314, patriots of Scotland, starving and outnumbered, charged the fields of Bannockburn,” he says. “They fought like warrior poets.”

How does a warrior poet fight? As if the cause means everything. As if passion and nobility and determination and commitment are limitless.

If he wished, Garrett could be digging for fossils in South Dakota’s Badlands. He could be writing sonnets in an artsy coffee shop. He could be shooting hoops, maybe in a massive arena in front of thousands.

But he’s a football player. Why?

“I love it,” he says. “I love the hitting. I love making the big play. I love being out there with my teammates. I love the camaraderie. I can’t say I always love practice. But it’s a means to an end. I want to have those big performances, those games you talk about years down the line. I want to win those big playoff games. I want to win a Super Bowl. I want to hold up the trophy. I want to splash Champagne on my teammates. I want to take care of my family for generations. I want to have my head turned into a bust in the Hall of Fame.

“Those things can only happen if I’m doing the best I can each and every day, looking out for my teammates and keeping out of trouble.”

Former Browns defensive line coach Clyde Simmons says Garrett “has a chance to be one of the greats, as long as he stays healthy and continues to work on his craft.” In January, Simmons, who played defensive end in an era when nasty was a prerequisite for his position, also said he thinks there are “some little things in there that I think he could be a little bit more aggressive about, a little nastier about.”

To which Garrett says: “I’m the kind of guy who is always respectful of the game. I want to beat you, but I don’t want to do anything dirty. I want to do it the clean way. You don’t want to do something that hurts the team.”

During practices one fall at Texas A&M, 6’5″, 325-pound offensive tackle Germain Ifedi grew frustrated after repeatedly being shown up by Garrett. On one play, Garrett long-armed the blocker, and his arm slid up to his throat. Ifedi, who now is with the Seahawks, threw a punch. Garrett avoided it. Then Ifedi charged Garrett.

Instead of fighting back, Garrett extended his arm, grabbed Ifedi’s facemask and held him at bay. Ifedi kept swinging but couldn’t connect.

That’s Garrett—thoughtful and forceful at once.

Garrett realizes the mind is a powerful thing, even in a physical confrontation. Thomas helped him understand how to be a thinking man’s defensive end by studying the offensive tackle Garrett would oppose each week during his rookie year. Thomas would  then give him three moves he thought could exploit his weaknesses.

“The nicest thing I can say about him is he’s got the brain of an offensive lineman,” Thomas says. “He’s not like your typical dumb defensive lineman. He’s cerebral and thoughtful, and that really helps with the way he attacks offensive linemen.”

The forces within Garrett are not oppositional. They are complementary, yin and yang.

This is how he sees it: “I’m caring and loving and supportive of people who have been forces in my life and have guided me where I am today. But football is my job. If I lose my job, I can’t be supportive of the people who have been there for me. The person in front of me is trying to take my job. I have to whup him, or he beats me and takes my job. I’m not going to let that happen. I’m not out there to injure anybody, but I’m out there to hurt your will and make sure you don’t want to do it anymore, take away your will to keep on fighting.”

Of course, like any good poet, he has a vision.

He can become one of the legends of the game, like Lawrence Taylor. “I want to have the same impact on the game as LT,” he says. “That’s big talk because he’s one of the best ever. But it’s doable.

“I want to go down as the greatest player to ever play.”