PHILADELPHIA– When the Philadelphia 76ers visited the Denver Nuggets on March 27, it was an opportunity for Joel Embiid to make another statement against Nikola Jokic in the MVP race.
However, Embiid sat out the matchup due to calf tightness. He received criticism for sitting out. It seemed a bad decision with the MVP potentially at stake. The big fella fired back at the criticisms, but they were still there.
Before the Sixers knocked off the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday, coach Doc Rivers was asked about sitting Embiid for that one, but not for either of the back-to-back games with the Golden State Warriors and the Phoenix Suns.
“It was all discussed,” said Rivers. “We had it all mapped out. We felt like because he had missed a couple coming up to that, that he could get through the entire trip and that was the plan going in. It didn’t work out.”
He had played in 13 straight games leading up to that Nuggets matchup, but the calf tightness arose on March 22 in a win over the Chicago Bulls. He missed the second half of that win.
There is a thought process that missing that matchup with Jokic could hurt Embiid’s MVP chances — a notion Rivers brushed off.
“I think Joel’s body of work speaks for itself,” he said. “We did the right thing there, so I don’t think that’s fair. You’re not judged for one game that I know of. You’re judged for the entire season of work and your team’s record and how you perform. He’s been dominant all year.”
To be fair, Embid has missed other games, and he put up a dominant performance against Jokic in January. However, the sentiment is understandable. If one wants to win MVP, he has to play against the best players in the league.
“He’s missed other games, you know what I’m saying?” Rivers continued. “So no, I don’t. Will that hurt him? I doubt it, but it could. I don’t know. I don’t know what people use as criteria. It seems like it changes weekly what the real criteria is. Before, it’s a bunch of numbers. Now it’s wins and I’m like ‘it wasn’t wins last year,’ you know what I’m saying? It just feels like every year, it keeps changing.”
Embiid and the Sixers will play host to the Toronto Raptors on Friday.
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