PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Joel Embiid punished Milwaukee with a triple-double one night and wanted to go right at Detroit and try for another on the next one. So the amiable big man with a career list of injuries that would fit on a scroll or two made a good-natured plea with the press to try to convince the 76ers to let him play in back-to-back games.
“Can you guys put pressure on them?” Embiid said with a laugh. “I want to play tomorrow, so start writing
articles and put pressure on them so they’ll let me play.”
Not even the power of the pen can aid Embiid in playing consecutive games.
The Sixers smartly rested their All-Star center — no one game in October in the NBA is worth the potential of long-term harm — and then they went out and got smoked Sunday night by the Detroit Pistons.
LeBron James is in Philadelphia, and that's a good thing. Jaylen Brown has an NBA Finals MVP on his resume and is serving up one-liners about lamb and gravy in his rivalry with a former Boston teammate.
No matter the star power added to the roster, the natural growth of homegrown talent such as Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe, the 76ers have always since his 2016 debut — and will always — win as much and go as far in the postseason as Embiid will take them.
The Sixers were outrebounded 54-37 and trailed by 21 points in their first loss of the season to the Pistons. The Pistons pounded the inside and scored 24 second-chance points. They got the kind of looks that only get tougher to attempt when Embiid is in the lineup.
So yes, with the Sixers already thin in frontcourt depth, it was up to James to man a bulk of the minutes at center. The 41-year-old James won the opening tip for the Sixers.
The Pistons won everything else.
“We’re going to have those moments where we have different lineups out there throughout the course of the season,” James said. “I think the more minutes we get, the more games that we get under our belt, the more time we get, we’ll know what works well for us.”
James scored 18 points, grabbed two rebounds and was a minus-22 going up against Paul Reed, and the Sixers were left to hope his presence at center was nothing more than a cameo.
The Sixers were a whopping plus-49 with Embiid on the court over the first three games and minus-25 with him off it.
“I mean (heck), we've got an MVP over there,” James said as looked in the direction of Embiid's locker.
“I'm not here to have a sustainable role at the five. We've got Joel Embiid at the five. I don't see it being a sustainable role but it's a role that we know we can tap into if we needed. But sustainable playing the five? If I was to say I was signing here to have a sustainable role at the five, I don't think none of us would actually want that.”
The Sixers also played without big men Dominck Barlow (back), Jabari Walker (knee) and 7-foot-6 center Tacko Fall. Fall has yet to play this season with a left quadriceps strain.
“We've got a 7-7 guy over there who hasn't played. That would help," James quipped.
Even with Embiid and his 11 boards in the lineup against the Bucks, the Sixers were still outrebounded 62-39.
Maxey, a first-time All-Star starter last season, had a suggestion to fix the rebounding woes.
“Some of our tall guys could come back,” Maxey said with a smile. “That would be great. We've just got to hit, box out, try to fight. We've got to figure it out.”
James took inspiration from Detroit's bench where Taurean Prince sat and watched the game. Prince didn't play but he is responsible for one of the great viral interview moments in NCAA Tournament history when he deadpanned the definition of a rebound after his Baylor team was outrebound by Yale.
“In the great words of Taurean Prince, who I saw tonight on the bench,” James said, “a good friend of mine, so, the ball goes up into the air. You go grab the ball. That's what we've got to do, man. They got more of those than we did.”
So the Sixers do what they do so many times when Embiid doesn't play and took the loss.
Let him sit. One game won't hurt. It's when those absences start stacking up that always doom the Sixers.
Even if one of the greats can take his place.
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