The Philadelphia 76ers started the second round of the 2022 NBA playoffs with a big loss against the Miami Heat. After finishing the first half of the game with an advantage over the No. 1 seed in the East, the Sixers couldn’t keep up and lost the game after James Harden failed to show up in the 3rd and 4th quarters.
DeAndre Jordan couldn’t fill Joel Embiid’s void. He was bullied by Bam Adebayo all night long, leaving his team helpless against the inspired Heat. The Cameroonian big man is currently sidelined after picking a right orbital fracture and mild concussion against the Toronto Raptors in Game 6 of their first-round series.
Embiid suffered this injury when the Sixers had a 20+ point advantage over the Raptors, which raised some eyebrows around the league and earned head coach Doc Rivers criticism. Even though the veteran coach defended his decision of keeping his best player on the court even with a big advantage, bad comments didn’t stop coming.
Danny Green, a Sixers veteran, appeared to throw shade at Rivers for his decision to go with Embiid until the last second, like Tom Thibodeau normally does, saying that they should have removed the player from the game earlier than they did.
In the wake of the Embiid news, during a recent edition of his “Inside The Green Room”, the 3x NBA champion expressed his opinion on the Embiid situation (1:20).
“We saw him on the plane after the game and he was holding his head – it seemed pretty severe,” Green said. “We didn’t know (how bad it was), there were no stitches, I saw a little scratch. But when it happened, he kind of wanted to go back in the game. We’re like, ‘Joel, you can’t go back in the game. We subbed you out and challenged the replay.’ Mind you, we probably should’ve pulled the plug a little earlier. But I mean, it is what it is.”
This was a major blow for the Sixers, who initially didn’t know when Embiid would return. Hopefully, he can make it back to the lineup in Game 3 or 4, giving his team a chance to get back in the series, even if they are down 2-0. Still, the Sixers would prefer to win one game in Miami, but they’ll need James Harden playing at his best level or the job will be extremely hard to carry out.
