This is the kind of victory — the Philadelphia 76ers believe — legitimizes their championship aspirations.
Up 2-0 in their first-round playoff series against Brooklyn headed to Barclays Center for Game 3 on Thursday, the 76ers anticipated the Nets would muck the game up.
A desperate team calls for desperate measures. The Sixers were prepared.
Starting center Nic Claxton stuffed a one-handed alley-oop on top of MVP frontrunner Joel Embiid in the first quarter, and when the contact sent Embiid tumbling to the ground, Claxton stepped over him — like Allen Iverson did to Tyronn Lue — prompting a knee-jerk reaction from Embiid to flail his leg upwards into Claxton’s groin.
The Nets’ center immediately celebrated. Embiid realized what had happened. Officials separated the two players then went to the booth to review the play.
Technical foul — taunting — on Claxton. Flagrant foul penalty, one –— not two — on Embiid. The Nets were irate. Their plan had worked, but still came up short.
Then in the fourth quarter, Claxton dunked on Embiid again. This time he went out of his way to stare Embiid down on his way up the floor.
Whistle. Technical foul. Taunting. Claxton was tossed from the game.
Embiid said he couldn’t remember the play when he was assessed a flagrant foul, but his recollection worked to a tee when asked about Claxton’s ejection.
“All of us, we knew: We know what they were trying to do,” he said. “Bait us, get us ejected, fluster us, do whatever it takes. If that’s the only way they can win, then I can’t do nothing about it.”
Nothing went according to plan for a Philadelphia team expecting a desperate and scrappy opponent Thursday night.
Embiid’s early flagrant foul forced him to play on pins and needles early, and James Harden was ejected at the end of the third quarter on a flagrant foul two call against Nets wing Royce O’Neale. The Sixers felt they shot poorly from three, were sloppy with the basketball, didn’t get much scoring production out of Embiid and blew a 13-point first-half lead. And when Harden got ejected, momentum swung in Brooklyn’s favor.
Yet they stayed poised and composed and emerged victorious with a 102-97 victory. The Sixers left the arena with a convincing 3-0 series lead. No team in NBA history has ever come back from such a deficit.
“I told Joel before we started the playoffs: These types of games are the ones you remember if you get to where you want to be,” veteran forward and NBA champion P.J. Tucker said after the game. “Those games you’re shooting 40 percent and 60 percent from the free throw line and nobody can hit a three, and you win. Those are the ones — that’s when you know you’ve grown as a team when you do whatever it takes to get a win.
“These are the kinds of games that build that foundation to be able to win, cause then when you’re rolling, it’s hard to beat you.”
* * *
Embiid couldn’t believe the Nets were going to stick with their game plan, but his teammates understood — and rose to the challenge.
This playoff series has been one of the biggest tests for both Embiid personally and a Sixers team whose championship hopes hinge on his individual dominance as the presumptive league Most Valuable Player.
In this series, he’s had to find other ways to dominate.
The Nets made it clear, both with their words and their actions, that the defensive strategy was to get the ball out of the superstar center’s hands and force other players on the roster to win games. For the third time this series, Brooklyn sent two or three players at Embiid every time he touched the ball, no matter where he touched the ball.
“It’s been the same strategy for the first three games, really the same. There has been no adjustment, which is fine for us,” the 7-footer said. “We’re up 3-0, so I’ll take it every time. Even if it means I get zero shots and zero points. As long as we win, then I’m gonna keep making my plays — over and over and over — and so far, we’re up 3-0. So if they keep doing it, I think we’ve got the [advantage]. Like tonight: We didn’t play well, we didn’t make shots, and we still got away with a win, so it’s great.”
Embiid has scored fewer points and attempted fewer shots with each game this series. Twenty-six in Game 1. Twenty in Game 2, and just 14 points on 5-of-13 shooting from the field to pair with just only assists against a whopping five turnovers in Game 3 on Thursday.
“That’s what the playoffs are: No one’s gonna sit back and let Joel just destroy you for 50 every night,” Tucker said. “Someone else has got to beat you. You’ve got to make someone else beat you. There’s no way you let the MVP play one-on-one against anybody and just kill. Nah. You’ve gotta throw different defenses at him: zone, doubles, triples. You’ve gotta do whatever you’ve gotta do to get the ball out of his hands and figure it out from there.”
Embiid has had a forgettable offensive series. He is averaging 20 points against the Nets and has yet to attempt more than 15 shots. His shots aren’t coming at the rate he’s accustomed to, but the attention demands on the offensive end opens shots for his teammates. He also had a game-saving block on Spencer Dinwiddie in the game’s final minute, a rejection that stopped a layup that would have made it a one-point game in a hostile road environment.
More importantly, he moved the ball when the trap came and didn’t succumb to the tunnel vision the Nets hoped would stagnate the Sixers’ offense. Tyrese Maxey stepped up for the second game in a row. After hitting six threes for 33 points in Game 2, he hit another five on Thursday night. His 25 points carried the Sixers when the Nets forced Embiid to move the ball.
“Kudos to Jo because he trusts. He’s trusting right now. He’s getting guys shots and he’s not forcing the issue,” Maxey said. “It’s a level of respect. He’s so good you can’t play him one-on-one. You’ve gotta double him almost every time he catches the ball, or he’ll probably score. So for him to be able to trust and get the ball out of his hands quick and not turn the ball over, it’s a big step. I feel like this is the year he’s trusting a lot more throughout the season, and I think it’s gonna benefit us.”
* * *
Some felt it was a make-up call. It was a game-shifting call nonetheless.
Isolated on the right wing against O’Neale in the final minute of the third quarter, Harden drove and pushed off. His push-off hand, however, hit O’Neale in the groin.
O’Neale crumbled to the ground, hunched over in pain for what felt like minutes. Officials reviewed the play. They then assessed Harden a flagrant foul penalty two for excessive contact and ejected him from the game.
“I told our guys, you could see it early on: There was a lot of extracurricular activity going on our way,” Sixers coach Doc Rivers said. “But you’re up 2-0. What do you expect? We’ve gotta play through it, knock out the distractions and I thought we did that in the second half.”
The Sixers remained composed. The Nets led by six after the free throws that followed Harden’s ejection. Philadelphia outscored Brooklyn, 26-15, in the fourth quarter to win the game.
“If this doesn’t teach you, then, I mean, c’mon now,” Rivers said. “This has to be a teacher for us, and it should be, but again — we have to win in different ways, and that’s one of the things this team does. We win high-scoring games, we win low-scoring slugfests. That says a lot about our team.”
No player has exemplified that heightened level of composure than Embiid, the player the Nets have taken out of a scoring rhythm this series. That composure can be the difference between a second-round exit and potential trip to the NBA Finals.
“He can play bad, and we can still win,” Tucker said. “It’s easy if he goes for 50 and we win. It’s cool. We love it, but the games he plays bad, he still made the plays to win the game, and I think that’s what sets him apart from a lot of the guys that play this game. He can really step in and affect the game and not have a good game. He didn’t play well per se, but he still made plays to win the game. That’s all that matters. Nothing else matters.”
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