The NBA regular season is down to its final week.
The Philadelphia 76ers already have their playoff spot clinched and are finalizing their seed, but the MVP race still has a week to be decided.
Joel Embiid sat out a matchup with Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets on March 27 as he was dealing with calf tightness. The big fella received criticism for doing so, but he fired back at those critics.
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ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith hopped on “First Take” to defend Embiid and he said he should still win MVP:
The fact of the matter is when you look at Joel Embiid, who gave 47 and 18 in the first go-around who’s played against him on numerous occasions in the past, if Joel Embiid sat out a particular game, considering his injury history, we got to say ‘Yo, he must have really been hurt. It must have really been a bad day’, because the one thing we know about Joel Embiid throughout his career is that that brother will chirp, he will smack at cats. He don’t smack a cats that he don’t play against. He don’t sit up there and talk smack to a guard. He’ll talk smack to a big man he knows he’s gonna go up against and he shows up so if he didn’t show up for a particular game, we know that’s an aberration. Come on now. You gotta give him the benefit of the doubt on that.
Embiid and the Sixers will take on the Boston Celtics on Tuesday to kick off this final stretch of the season.
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