The Celtics are moving on to Miami to face the very surprising (but also not so much, really) Heat in the Conference Finals. Before we move on, let’s take one last look back at the Sixers series because any win over Philadelphia is worth savoring just a little bit longer.
- Joel Embiid, frontrunner
Embiid is a very good basketball player. He earned the MVP this year. I have no qualms about him winning it, though he would have been third on my ballot behind Nikola Jokic and Giannis Antetokounmpo.
But one thing has been, continues to be, and will likely be true for the duration of his career: There is no more front-running superstar in the history of the NBA.
When things are going great, Embiid is waving to fans, crotch-chopping, and tweeting out trollish comments. But when things aren’t going well, he is the excuse-maker-in-chief, prone to quitting on the floor and lashing out at his teammates. Yesterday was no different.
“Me and James, we can't win alone. That's why basketball is played 5-on-5. We need everybody to find ways to be better.”
— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) May 14, 2023
- Joel Embiid after being eliminated 😬 pic.twitter.com/rxvWta1Eq1
Holy hell … EXCUSE ME??
“Me and James we can’t win alone?”
Man, you realize James Harden didn’t score in three straight fourth quarters? You scored 15 points and shot 5-18 while being defended by someone who was winning college national championships before you hit puberty. And you have the AUDACITY to get in front of a microphone and say you can’t do it alone?
This is pure Embiid. The process hung its hat on his immense talent but his fragile ego breaks down more often than his body does. A decade of building around Embiid has been a reflection of the star himself: Nothing more than a tease where everyone but the true culprit gets the blame when things go wrong.
The process is dead, and I, for one, could not be happier that the Sixers are on the verge of dismantling. I’d be shocked if Doc Rivers is back. James Harden probably wants a more robust nightlife. Embiid will be left behind, and if there's any poetic justice, truly without meaningful help on the roster.
When he first got into the league, the knock on him was that he was very much still a kid, drinking Shirley Temples by the gallon, not taking his nutrition seriously. While a lot of that has gotten better, he is still very much immature.
He’s graduated to passive aggressiveness from outright tantrums. Congratulations. Maybe after next year’s second-round exit, Embiid can get to the backhanded compliment stage of life.
- James Harden, fraud
I have hated watching Harden play ball for the entirety of his post-OKC career. He’s so talented, but he won an MVP simply by playing the long con on officials.
His signature moves are (a) kicking his feet forward on jumpers so he can draw cheap fouls on 3-pointers and (b) swinging his arms really low on drives through the paint so he can bring them up through reaching hands for fouls.
Two signatures, both of them grifts for free throws.
Let me toss the alley oop to Kyle Neubeck of the Philly Voice and let him slam this home:
“That's part of what Harden doesn't get in these moments, why he has so often come up small in these moments — you simply cannot win a title by just exploiting rules and hoping that you get the right whistles for four straight rounds. He takes himself out of games and out of the playoffs by hoping he can run to an adult every time there's even a marginal rule break. Most of the time, you are going to have to deal with the problem yourself. He has cried wolf so many times that nobody wants to listen, and worse yet, he ruins his own flow and his team's flow on the floor by trying to win the rule-understanding competition before anything else.”
Boom. This is why he shrinks so often. He had two games where he showed what he was truly capable of in this series, and then after Game 6 he said “tonight was just frustrating because I’m number one as far as fouls that don’t get called. It’s a fact.”
Oh boo hoo.
The Sixers tried to play into Harden’s complaining by leaking an NBA officiating report to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski that said there were “13 officiating errors disadvantaging 76ers to four disadvantaging Boston.”
An interesting dynamic approaching Celtics-Sixers Game 7, per sources: NBA’s officiating game report shared with teams from Game 6 revealed a significant disparity: 13 officiating errors disadvantaging 76ers to four disadvantaging Boston. Those can include calls and non calls.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) May 14, 2023
The gambit didn’t pay off. It’s hard to have it pay off when your stars quit.
Hey, while I’m here …
- Why is Daryl Morey so highly regarded?
What exactly have his teams accomplished? And frankly, someone who has so intensely hitched his wagon to a player like Harden should have his judgment questioned because it’s been obvious he’s a playoff zero for a long time.
Morey started out as the darling of the analytics scene before he got transferred to the star-chasing department. Since then, he's been floating along with good, not great, teams.
So to summarize, I don’t respect the Sixers at all.
- I thought “Mowed-Down Philly,” a play on Motown Philly, was a good sub-heading last night. I feel like Jeb Bush right now.
- Scott Foster strikes again
The NBA has rescinded the technical foul Foster gave Jaylen Brown after Brown reacted to Georges Niang grabbed his knee. After the game, Brown had this to say:
The following was announced by the NBA.
— NBA Official (@NBAOfficial) May 15, 2023
Jaylen Brown's (BOS) technical foul (6:50, 2nd qtr) from the game on 5/14/23 has been rescinded upon league office review.
“I don’t think Niang’s a bad guy or anything. I work out with him in the offseason. I just think he just got caught up in the intensity of the game and made a play and I responded to it. I don't know which way I should have responded to it. But if I didn't do anything it probably would have played on. And here comes Scott Foster, right away before even deciphering the situation gives me a tech. I definitely didn't want to get a tech in that situation, but somehow coming out of all that commotion, it ended up being even right? And it was nothing, no advantage from that, ended up calling it even. I got a tech, he got a tech, and then it just being a side out. And I think a play like that, that should have been a little bit more. I don't think Niang was thinking when he did it, I don’t think he's a bad guy, just caught up in the emotion of the game.”
It doesn’t matter now so I can say something about the play without it coming off as whining.
It’s absolutely outrageous that a guy on the bench can grab an active player’s knee as he tried to run away without it costing his team at all. All the Foster tech accomplished was to reward Niang for stopping play … which by the way came at a critical time with Boston down two in the second quarter. The Celtics were getting out in transition and this move stopped the play and drew the tech on Brown before the play was even reviewed.
We know how it went after that, but at the time, things could have gone differently. To review the play and say Brown was taunting the bench is ridiculous.
- Defense-first works
Joe Mazzulla is an offense-first guy, but the defense-first move to add Robert Williams to the lineup was not only critical to the Celtics winning Games 6 and 7, the guys all gushed about the move after Game 6.
Beyond the numbers, it’s hard to overstate the confidence boost that gave the guys because now they know there's someone to back them up if they get beaten off the dribble. Knowing he’s back there let’s them play up on their guys, challenge passing lanes and maybe even gamble a little bit for turnovers.
Williams’ presence boosts everyone’s game. Mazzulla will have to fight the urge to go small moving forward just so he can make sure the guys are happy and comfortable on the floor.
Let's see what he does against Miami.