The Philadelphia 76ers came over a lot of adversity tonight to win against the Brooklyn Nets. With the series headed to Brooklyn, the Nets posed a much bigger challenge tonight. Joel Embiid surprised us all when he picked a Flagrant 1 early in the game with this play.
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Joel Embiid just kicked Nic Claxton in the nuts, received a Flagrant 1 and stayed in the game.
This is two days after Draymond Green got ejected AND suspended for kicking a dude who was grabbing his foot.
pic.twitter.com/jCGoCWWeym— Guru (@DrGuru_) April 20, 2023
Somehow, Embiid wasn’t thrown out of the game. However, his presence on the offensive end was rather very low tonight, and it might have something to do with his back.
Joel Embiid gets injured while going for the block pic.twitter.com/OrtFTJiD5Y
— MVP43🐐 (@StepBackPascal) April 21, 2023
On top of that, the Sixers ended up losing James Harden in the third quarter as well.
James Harden just got EJECTED from Game 3 for elbowing Royce O’Neale in the groin area 😯
Did the refs make the right call? pic.twitter.com/yWhaQ8VNUv
— Ballislife Bets (@BallislifeBets) April 21, 2023
Even with all these challenges, the Sixers won the contest 102-97. Here’s what Skip Bayless had to say after the game.
Skip Bayless praises Joel Embiid despite rough performance
Skip Bayless is someone who is known for berating players if they don’t give their best when their team needs it. He loves to pick on LeBron James and Stephen Curry. However, Skip gets a little biased when it comes to players he likes or teams he roots for.
Tonight Joel Embiid had a rough night. A back-to-back scoring leader, Embiid was held to just 14 points tonight. He went 5 of 13 from the field. He did have a huge block to stop the Nets from taking the game.
SWAT THAT SHOT. pic.twitter.com/rn7olGb6RD
— Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) April 21, 2023
After the game, Skip Bayless was seen praising his MVP candidate for the performance.
Embiid had a long hard painful frustrating night – didn’t handle the frustration all that well. But he capped it off with a game-saving block. He seems relatively healthy. Sixers go up 3-0 instead of having to fight through 2-1 with Game 4 in Brooklyn. Bring on Boston.
— Skip Bayless (@RealSkipBayless) April 21, 2023
In fact, the performance Sixers put up tonight made Skip confident enough to call out the 2022 Finalists, the Boston Celtics, for the 2nd round series already.
Can Joel win his first MVP?
The 2022-23 NBA season has been the best campaign Joel Embiid has put up so far. For the past two seasons, he’s been a runner up to Nikola Jokic, who’s won back-to-back MVPs. However, not only did Embiid win back-to-back scoring titles, but he also led the Sixers to an incredible season.
While there are people who’d like to see Jokic become only the 4th man to win 3 MVPs in a row, in my opinion, Embiid deserves the MVP honors this season. He’s been unstoppable, even Kevin Durant feels the same way.
