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For the third time in four years, the Philadelphia 76ers have been shown the door to the NBA playoffs in the second round, but this one could be the most disappointing of all.
The Eastern Conference’s No.1 seed couldn’t get past a hot No.5 Atlanta Hawks team who let the NBA world know their annoyance against the New York Knicks at the first round was no accident. No, this team is for real.
But the 76ers should never have let them get so close to a Game 7 decision maker they fell on the wrong side of on Sunday night.
The streak finally turned in Game 5 when the Sixers lost a 26-point lead in Philadelphia, forcing them to a win in Atlanta on Friday night just to force Game 7.
Naturally, the blame lies with dynamic 76ers duo Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons, who played a key role in the Sixers’ demise, but that didn’t stop Embiid from pointing the finger at a few other places before blaming his shoulders. .
This included arbitration.
“There are a lot of things that have gone wrong,” Embiid said. “Whatever, they can mess me up as much as they want. Let it be the officiant. Tonight you got some guys making mistakes, they put their hands up with me for a dunk, and they call nothing. It’s just the last three games, it’s the same over and over again.
“Then, in the last game, I got a fine for having my arms outstretched while pushing myself in the back. And I got fined just because, I don’t know why.
“So there are a lot of things that have gone wrong. As a team, we still have to be better. We still had a good chance of winning. We just made a lot of mistakes.
One of the most glaring mistakes was a missed opportunity by Ben Simmons to make an easy dunk with three and a half minutes to go in the fourth quarter, with the Sixers down by two. Instead, he sent it to Matisse Thybule, who was fouled and only touched one of them.
And Embiid wasn’t afraid to call him.
“I’ll be honest. I thought the turn was when, I don’t know how to put it, I thought the turn was we had an open shot and we took a free throw and we missed the other and they are came down and scored, ”Embiid said.“ We didn’t have a good possession on the other side and Trae [Young] came back and he did a three and then from there, down four, it’s on me. I returned the ball and tried to shake things up from the perimeter. But I thought it was the turning point.
Of course, Embiid was not exempt from some of the blame. He’s had eight costly turnovers in Game 7 and a total of 25 in the last four games of the season. There were some miserable shooting performances as well, including a 9 of 24 performance in Game 6 and an even worse 4-on-20 outing in Game 4. Certainly it was a gargantuan effort to play the whole series all the way. being hampered by a partially torn meniscus in his knee.
“I just have to be better,” Embiid said. “Personally, I feel like I have taken a big step forward this year, and I can do so much more. I can be so much better …
“Next year I’ll be even better… It’s mine. I must be better. I have to go one step further to take care of my body and my overall game because I still feel like I have a lot of untapped potential that people haven’t really seen.
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