Joel Embiid just passed a major milestone and nobody seemed to notice, writes ByDavidMurphy. Hie maturity was impossible to miss as he scored 40-plus points for the 10th time this season.
on Monday night. The Sixers were coming off a road loss to the top-seeded Heat, a 99-82 stinker in which Embiid missed 11 of his 15 shot attempts and finished with 22 points. It was a forgivable defeat, for a variety of reasons. The Sixers were playing the business end of a home-road back-to-back less than 24 hours after a hard-fought 125-119 win over the Cavaliers. James Harden was in street clothes due to a previously scheduled maintenance day for his hamstring issue.
“As I’ve been watching the last two games where I haven’t been myself, I saw that — and I’ve got to talk to him, too — I saw that I’ve been hanging out at the three-point line a lot instead of living in the paint,” Embiid said.“I told him that [Monday night], I’m just rolling to the basket,” Embiid said. “I don’t want to pop, I don’t want to stay at the three-point line.
For 36 minutes, he was as active as he has ever been on the defensive end, sliding out to the foul line to contest DeMar DeRozan’s maddening midrange game, sliding back down to the block while shadowing Chicago’s multiple ballhandlers, spinning around to the opposite block to body up Thompson. After each stop, there he was, running the court, trailing Harden in transition, settling into the paint for another round of blows.