Sixers address struggles of Joel Embiid, James Harden in Round 2 vs. Celtics

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CAMDEN, N.J.–The Philadelphia 76ers are moving forward now following another second round exit. The Sixers held a 3-2 series lead on the Boston Celtics with Game 6 back at their place, but they were not able to get the job done.

A large part of their struggles was due to the fact that Joel Embiid and James Harden struggled. Harden did not score in the fourth quarter of either Game 6 or Game 7 and Embiid didn’t take a shot in the final four minutes of the Game 6 loss. They then combined for only 24 points on 8-for-29 shooting in the Game 7 loss.

President of Basketball Operations Daryl Morey addressed the struggles of Embiid and Harden as he now looks to help the two of them move forward.

Morey on the struggles of Embiid and Harden

“I think Joel and James came up big in a lot of games. So obviously, look, we win or lose as a group, as a front office, players, coaches, collectively. I think sometimes it’s how we’re guarded, sometimes it’s things like that, but it’s not—no loss or win is on any one player and both Joel and James had big games during the playoffs and during all three years since I’ve been here, Joel in all three years and James in the last year and a half. So yeah, I felt like that a change had the ability to help us going forward.”

On creating playoff-like atmospheres to help Embiid

Embiid’s shooting percentages have historically dropped from Round 1 to Round 2 as tougher teams are more equipped to handle him. Morey stated:

“Yeah, that was a big conversation with Joel, again led by Joel, to his credit and working through like, ‘Hey, how can I make sure I can still get to my spots? How can I make sure that when they are trying to take this away, I have a counter?’ things like that. It’s something that we, and I’ll just put it on myself, we need to do a better job of that during the season—because the regular season can often be a Wednesday against a bad team and Joel is so good he can just dominate a game without them doing a lot of keying. I thought a lot of our matchups against Toronto or Brooklyn this year were good that they were guarding him with like heavy double…

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Author : Sixers Wire

Publish date : 2023-05-17 20:43:53

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