Lately, Embiid inefficient when it matters
Sixers center struggled down the stretch in last two games
PHILADELPHIA >> The layups were rolling out and the longer shots were crashing wide, the rim was unforgiving and the laws of average were having their way. Even for the great ones, basketball can be that way. It was that way Monday for Joel Embiid.
“But Monday,” Dwight Howard was saying Wednesday afternoon, “is over.”
Howard has been around the NBA since 2004, well long enough to believe he knew what was coming in Game 5 of an Eastern Conference semifinal series Wednesday night against
Atlanta. He’d seen enough legendary NBA big men to know how and why they reached that status, and he’d seen enough of Embiid in 2020-2021 to have a feel that the Hawks were about to be reminded why he was an MVP finalist.
Embiid would score 37 points and collect 13 rebounds, enough to prove that his 4-for-20 shooting in a threepoint Game 4 loss was a statistical quirk. But he missed two free throws with 10.2 seconds left and appeared to be exhausted in the fourth quarter of a 109-106 come-from-way-ahead loss.
Even though they are down, 3-2, in the first-to-four series, the Sixers’ fine season is not over. They can win Friday in Atlanta and, if so, would play a Game 7 at home Sunday. But as he had too often in his career, Embiid was drained when it mattered, routinely falling to the floor, unable to control his dribble and shooting 1-for-5 in the fourth quarter.
Considering how the game began for him, that was staggering. He needed two minutes to make his first shot, a tough 11-footer. Then there was a drive, a 10-foot pull-up, two more mid-range shots, a three
pointer and a floater.
By the end of the first quarter, Embiid was 8-for-8 with a couple of rebounds, an assist and a snuff. That was enough to have the Sixers up 14 after 12 minutes, and to remind the Hawks that no matter how well they can occasionally shoot, Embiid can be a problem.
Aware that the Sixers haven’t won a championship since before Embiid was born, that Embiid had never been past the second round of the playoffs and had a bothersome tear in his rightknee meniscus, there was the predictable manufactured panic after Game 4.
“That last game is in the past,” Howard said. “You have to leave it where it is at. Maybe you talk about it that night or the next day, but then you get all the frustration out, and get rid of all that bad energy and come back the next day ready to go.
“I think he’s going to come back and have an amazing day. He wants to dominate. And that’s what he’s going to do.”
It was strange as it was unfortunate that Embiid was so publicly badgered after his worst game of the season. That’s because it wasn’t just a good season for him, but a nightly display of multifaceted excellence that no Sixer has ever had the variety of skills to supply. He averaged a career-high 28.5 points. He dropped 40 on Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert, and made it seem routine. He shot 37.7 percent from distance. He dumped 50 on the Bulls. He scored 30 or more points 23 times.
One postseason struggle, even if his knee was a little ouchy, should not have been cause to wonder about his ability, health or disposition. But two?
“It’s part of sports,” Doc Rivers said. “We’ll be back for Game 7.”
There is reason to believe that, for Embiid was, for most of the game, unstoppable Wednesday.
But Rivers is going to have to replay the message he delivered after the clunker in Atlanta.
“Listen, we lost the last game, so everybody’s mindset was on edge,” he said. “And they were all ready to go. That’s what you want from all of us. And Joel was just like everybody else.”
When he left the floor with 1:27 left in the third and the Sixers comfortably ahead, Embiid raised his index finger, inspiring “MVP, MVP” chants.
When the Hawks drew within 87-76 with 10:03 left, Rivers went back to his starting lineup, Embiid fed Seth Curry for a drive, and on the next possession, spun into the lane for a short jump shot.
Atlanta, though, kept coming, and with some success in a Hack-a-Ben ploy to expose Ben Simmons’ feeble free-throw shooting, had a 105-104 lead with 1:26 showing.
A night earlier in Brooklyn, Kevin Durant,
one of the five best ever to play the game, played all 48 minutes of a turning-point victory over Milwaukee, scoring 49 points. The message was clear: The Nets will mean business in what once was the presumptive Eastern Conference final against the Sixers.
For three quarters Wednesday, Embiid volleyed a message back that the Sixers had a highscoring superstar, too. But unless he starts doing that in the fourth quarter, it won’t matter.