It took a while, but Sixers head coach Doc Rivers eventually hit on the essence of his team’s narrow victory Tuesday night over the Celtics at Wells Fargo Center.
Rivers ran through the Sixers’ flood of late-game miscues, a “whole laundry list” that allowed Boston to nearly erase a seven-point deficit with 9.8 seconds remaining. Jayson Tatum missed a game-tying baseline jumper attempt at the buzzer, though, and the Sixers got to view their blunders in a winning light.
“There’s so many things that we did wrong, but what we did right was Joel Embiid,” Rivers said.
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SIGN UP HERE “The MVP race is over. Tonight, we couldn’t make shots. … The man just scored half our points in an NBA game. And I’m biased, but the MVP race is over.”
Such a proclamation would be hyperbolic in almost any circumstance. But after a 52-point Embiid performance in the Sixers’ 79th regular-season game — on 20-for-25 shooting from the floor, 12 for 13 from the foul line — it sounded fair enough. Embiid was masterful from the elbow, showing off superior skill and power. Anything resembling defensive cushion meant a mid-range make. Perfect defense likely spelled trouble, too — a 7-foot, 280-pound player sinking an elegant fadeaway jumper, or maybe even shimmying in the paint before finding an open teammate.
Of course, one world-class night doesn’t negate the brilliance of fellow MVP contenders Nikola Jokic and Giannis Antetokounmpo or completely guarantee that Embiid will take the trophy. Still, games where Embiid is many levels better than anyone else on the court are more routine than fluky at this point. Tuesday's game was his third 50-point outing this season and the fifth of his career. He’s averaged a league-leading 33.3 points and posted at least 30 in 44 of his 65 appearances.
With the Celtics down All-Defensive big man Robert Williams III (left knee injury) and All-Star forward Jaylen Brown (lower back pain), Embiid was even a little better than usual.
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“I don’t remember him missing a shot,” James Harden said. “That’s an efficient 50 — one of the most efficient 50s I’ve seen. At the elbow, his sweet spot, he made the right decision the majority of the time. His shot was falling. And he made some really good passes. We need that consistently from him.”
Three of those passes were rather ironically to a player known for impacting games without scoring. In his first season as a Sixer, P.J. Tucker has posted 3.6 points per contest and drawn the occasional grumble from the home crowd when he’s declined open looks.
On Tuesday, Harden thought the Sixers should shift Tucker to the corner and put Tobias Harris (five points on 2-for-8 shooting) in the dunker spot down the stretch. Harden trusted his friend to take and make the shots that would be available following Boston’s all-out double teams on Embiid at the nail.
“Just better for our team,” Harden said. “And P.J.’s an excellent three-point corner shooter. Joel had a rhythm tonight where he could pick and choose if he wanted to pass it to myself or P.J. He made the right decisions and P.J. knocked corner threes down. Joel made some great passes tonight.”
As he did with Harden in Houston, Tucker believes he’s playing alongside an MVP.
“I knew when he made the first couple (shots) in the fourth quarter, he was going to close it out,” Tucker said. “When he gets it going like that, nobody can stop him.”
There are infinite ways one could go about dissecting the MVP race, many of them valid.
While Embiid’s coach and teammates are not exactly neutral arbiters, none of their endorsements rang remotely hollow.
“I don’t know,” Embiid said. “They’re probably right, but we’ve got bigger goals.
“We understand we’ve got a chance, but it’s not going to be easy. Tonight, for me it was kind of disappointing because we found so many ways to (almost) lose the game. And that’s on all of us. I’m part of it. … We’ve got bigger goals in mind, but we’ve got to be better than that.”
Individually, Embiid’s 59-point, eight-assist, seven-block game vs. the Jazz in November would qualify as “better than that.” It’s awfully hard to picture anything else superior to Tuesday, although Embiid quite regularly appears capable of unparalleled dominance that makes everything else fade to the background.
Again and again, the Sixers win because he plays so well that nothing matters besides him wearing their uniform.
