Dario Saric is the best reason to watch the Philadelphia 76ers right now. With Joel Embiid out for the season, Philadelphia’s other rookie from the 2014 draft class looks like a totally different player than he did at the beginning of the year. In his last eight games, Saric has averaged 19.1 points, 9.4 rebounds and 3.3 assists, shooting 46.1 percent with a +3.5 net rating. It’s a smallish sample size, but it’s an indication that he’s being looking to make plays and embracing the freedom that coach Brett Brown has given him.

For years, Saric was advertised as a point forward who plays hard at both ends and can stretch the floor. Early on with the Sixers, he would too often disappear from the action on offense, not really looking to shoot or put the ball on the floor. Now he is sizing up defenders and making the right reads. On Monday against the Golden State Warriors, he had a career-high seven assists to go with his 21 points and seven rebounds, and he shot 9-for-10 from the free throw line.

If Saric learns how to draw fouls like that consistently, his efficiency will not be dictated by whether or not his 3-point shoot is falling. It would be an understatement to say Brown likes what he sees.

“I love Dario Saric,” Brown said after the Warriors game. “Just the whole thing. I just like everything about him, and I truly mean that. You’ve heard us, we all talk about, like, this myth, it was mist -- Dario Saric, ‘oh he’s coming, oh he’s coming, oh he’s coming, who’s Saric?’ And we always kind of said the same thing: this city is going to love him. Blue-collar, bull in a china shop mentality. And talk about not letting anybody down with that expectation that we delivered on his behalf.

“I just think that he just does so much and cares so much and represents kind of almost everything that I’m trying to get to grow our program and have the city be proud of us. And then we can figure out all that, ways to score later. But he sure brings a pride and a spirit and a toughness that you want your culture to represent. I’m very proud of how he’s jumped into the NBA in a very real way.”

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