PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Joel Embiid presumed he had a wretched stomach bug that hit him hard for a day or two on the Philadelphia 76ers' road trip earlier this month in Texas.
The 7-footer from Cameroon became so debilitated by the ailment that he struggled walking, stayed awake deep into the night and even going to the bathroom became a chore. Embiid was finally forced to tell team officials this sickness was worse than food poisoning or any other malady he suspected, and he required a hospital visit.
The test results almost seemed preordained for bad news for Embiid around NBA playoff time.
One of the dominant big men of his era when healthy, Embiid has had a postseason career curtailed by a cornucopia of injuries — sprains, fractures, even facial paralysis — and this April was no exception.
Embiid had an appendectomy in Houston on April 9 after the two-time NBA scoring champion was stricken with appendicitis overnight and sidelined indefinitely.
No Sixers' stretch run. No play-in tournament game. He watched from the bench as the Sixers went down 2-1 to Boston in their first-round series.
“You probably go through a couple of days where you feel bad for yourself,” Embiid said late Sunday. “Then it’s right back to it. Are you going to give up or are you going to try and come back as early as possible?”
Embiid indeed returned early and was welcomed by a roaring ovation in Game 4 only 17 days after having surgery, desperate to give the Sixers the punch — scoring, rather than gut — needed to try to upset a Celtics team that beat the Sixers by 32 points in a Game 1 victory.
The result was familiar, the 76ers again lost by 32, 128-96 on Sunday night and now trail the series 3-1 headed into Game 5 on Tuesday night in Boston.
Embiid had 26 points and 10 rebounds in 34 minutes, a gutsy effort in his latest return from injury that the Sixers otherwise did little to suggest they could win the next three games. The numbers were brutal: Boston hit 24 3-pointers to the 76ers' nine; the Celtics won the rebounding battle 51-30; and Boston at one point had a 13-0 edge in second-chance points to build a 21-point lead.
Give the Sixers this much: They know how to get blown out.
With All-Stars in Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and Paul George on the roster, the Sixers this season were the first team in NBA history to lose three home game by 40-plus points. Throw in two 32-pointers (one each at home and the road) in the playoffs and team president Daryl Morey and coach Nick Nurse figure to sit on the hot seat if the Sixers can't recover and win this series.
“I think those are going to kind of happen a couple of times a year,” Nurse said. “Listen, our kind of MO all year was to have a lot of things thrown at us, pick ourselves up and fight back. We're just going to have to do it again.”
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To have any chance at resuscitating their chances, the Sixers need ruthless aggression and production from Maxey and rookie standout VJ Edgecombe. The Sixers have muddled roster construction in trying to win with two young, speedy, flashy guards while at the same time trying to force an aging, brittle, big man the ball.
Sure enough, Embiid sank two free throws for the Sixers’ first points of the game, added a monster two-handed jam and scored the team’s first eight points.
Maxey took a backseat to Embiid and took only three shots in the first half. He scored 22 points for the Sixers in 40 minutes.
“That can’t happen,” Maxey said of the slow start. “That’s on me. That’s just unacceptable by me. I was playing within the flow of the game. It kind of happened that way. It wasn’t meant to happen that way.”
Maxey and Edgecombe combined for 23 shots. Embiid attempted 21.
“There's a couple of times when he had opportunities to shoot the ball, but he's got to take them,” Embiid said of Maxey. “You've got to want it.”
Embiid said he had unspecified complications after the surgery but still went out “to do the best job possible with the conditions.” He was limited to 38 games this season, sitting out primarily to manage injuries to his knees, and hasn’t appeared in as many as 40 games in a regular season since 2022-23, when he averaged a career-best 33.1 points and earned MVP honors.
Embiid said he no choice but to push through his latest setback and try to salvage the Sixers' season. It's a familiar refrain in Philadelphia. While anything can happen, the final result for the Sixers seems as inevitable as Embiid pulling up lame — no NBA title since 1983, no conference final since 2001.
“I just told them again, way out of character,” Nurse said. “We played another, about as bad as we could play, game. That's two in the series.”
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