No answer for Embiid on career night
The Chicago Bulls sent different defenders, double and triple teams and just about everything they had at Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid on Friday night. It didn’t matter.
Nothing slowed Embiid, who scored a career-high 50 points in a dominant effort to lead the Sixers to a 112-105 victory over the Bulls in Philadelphia.
Embiid, one of the early favorites to win the league MVP, showed the Bulls why he’s among the NBA’s best. In addition to his scoring, Embiid filled the stat sheet with 17 rebounds, five assists, two steals and four blocks.
“He had one of them nights, man,” Bulls guard Zach LaVine said. “And it’s tough. He made a lot of contested fadeaway jumpers even when the double-team came. He got offensive rebounds. For a guy that size to be that skilled and to shoot that well, it’s not a lot you can do when he’s making those shots.”
The Bulls could not match Embiid’s output. They shot just 7-for-32 (21.9%) from the 3-point line. Zach LaVine had are struggles, finishing 9-for-28 (2of 10 from 3) but turned it on late to finish with 30 points.
Yet the Bulls (12-16) kept up with the 76ers (20-10), putting on a competitive game in their lone national TV appearance of the first half of the season against the top team in the Eastern Conference.
They cut the deficit to 105-103 with about two minutes remaining before Embiid took over to score the final seven points for the Sixers to seal the victory.
“Great player. He knocked down a lot of shots today,” said Bulls center Wendell Carter Jr., who scored 15 points in the first half but none in the second. “There is not really much else I can say about it.”
Still, this game was the kind of effort coach Billy Donovan has been hoping for — to be able to compete even on nights when shots aren’t falling. Here are three takeaway’s from Friday’s game.
1. The Bulls are learning how to stay in games.
Not much was going right for the Bulls on Friday night and yet they still found a way to make it competitive. LaVine normally is not one to celebrate moral victories, but even he admitted this represented some growth for the team overall.
These are the kind of games that would have spiraled out of control quickly last season and the type the Bulls allowed to get out of hand at the start of 2020-21.
“When teams play us, they know we’re going to fight, we‘re going to claw back,” LaVine said. “Even if we have a bad quarter
or bad possession, I think we can turn it around pretty quickly. That’s not a way to play moving forward, but it’s something that we’ve worked on throughout this year. Now, with Billy here changing our mindset to ‘It’s not over till it’s over,’ we’re going to try and find a way.”
It’s exactly the message Donovan tried to emphasize when he benched his youngest players — Carter, Patrick Williams and Coby White — to start the second half of Wednesday’s game against the Detroit Pistons. Donovan was unhappy because he thought their lack of shotmaking was effecting their effort in other areas of the game.
So much of the results of the modern NBA can be boiled down to which team knocked down its shots, — or not — each game. The Bulls have been a strong shooting team all year, entering Friday ranked 11th in 3-point percentage, which has helped them remain in games despite their astronomical turnover rate, poor defense and habit of fouling 3-point shooters.
“So that’s my point,” Donovan said. “If we can play low turnover, not excessively foul and just be solid and defend and rebound, then we can overcome an
off-shooting night. Or we could overcome Zach going whatever he was tonight, 9-for-28. Or Coby not shooting the ball great or whatever it may be. But we’ve got to be really, really disciplined.”
2. Zach LaVine had rare struggles shooting the ball.
During a postgame embrace between LaVine and Embiid, who workout together using the same trainer in the offseason, Embiid joked with LaVine that “he missed too many easy shots.”
One of the most remarkable aspects of LaVine’s career year has been how efficient he has become. In his first seven games this month, LaVine shot 54.5% while averaging 34.1 points.
So it was almost strange to see him struggle with his shot Friday night even though he finished with his sixth 30-point performance in eight February games.
“I’m upset about it,” LaVine said. “Obviously you never want to go out there and miss shots. We all played hard, I know I played hard. I just missed some easy shots that I normally make. … You have those nights every once in a while, but I’m glad that we kept fighting.”