Philadelphia 76ers superstar big man is still working his way back from a knee injury that sidelined him for 10 games in March into early April, but on Monday, he took another step forward in his recovery.
The big fella had 36 points on 10-for-17 shooting and he was 14-for-15 on free throws in a 113-95 win over the Dallas Mavericks to finish up the road trip. Despite wearing a balky knee brace that has bothered him a bit, he was able to power through it and have his usual dominant game.
“I’m still not there,” said Embiid after the game. “Still not smooth enough. In the first half, I missed a couple shots that before, it was all going in without a problem. Just because it’s still not as smooth as it was before, but I’m just getting used to it.”
Embiid did admit that the knee brace is bothering him a bit after Saturday’s win, but this was one of those classic Embiid MVP performances. If it really did bother him, nobody noticed at all. He was knocking down every shot as if it was practice and he was getting to the foul line at his usual high pace.
He drew three fouls each on Maxi Kleber and Boban Marjanovic and then Dallas had to turn to Willie Cauley-Stein to defend Embiid. He then drew two fouls on him all in the first half. He was going at these guys and he made it look easy.
“Just being aggressive,” the big fella explained. “They doubled in New Orleans. They doubled, but I just kept shooting jumpers. In OKC and tonight, they doubled even harder than they did in New Orleans, but I just kept attacking going through the doubles, shooting over the double teams, and getting to the free-throw line.”
It was clear that this was a different Embiid than before. He was much more involved in the game and he seemed to play with a different urgency than he did earlier on the road trip.
“I thought he played in attack mode all night, didn’t settle,” said coach Doc Rivers. “He felt like last couple of games, he’s been settling. When you have something on you, you tend to do that so I thought he was phenomenal in how aggressive he was.”
On top of his big offensive night and making the right decisions was his play on the defensive end. Embiid did not block any shots, but his mere presence made the Mavericks think twice constantly about going inside against him. It was a different atmosphere with him in the paint and guarding the basket.
“He made the right plays,” Rivers finished. “He made some great plays out of the double teams, then they didn’t want to double team which, with Joel, he got what he wanted. really thought as good as he was a defense, overall, just our team defense tonight was was really impressive.”
The Sixers will now finally return home for four straight games after finishing up a stretch of 10 of 12 games on the road.
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
[mm-video type=playlist id=01f09kz5ecxq9bp57b player_id=01f1jxkahtwnvzepyp image=https://sixerswire.usatoday.com/wp-content/plugins/mm-video/images/playlist-icon.png]
[lawrence-related id=44627,44624,44620]