Embiid falls into the depths – The Sixers’ Season is an Unsalvageable Disaster

Now, it’s 20-31, just like it was 20-30 yesterday. What does it matter: the Sixers’ season is an unsalvageable disaster, and the play-in spot is still a game and a half away because the Bulls are not the greatest example of efficiency and good practice in the Western World either. In the Western Conference, in fact, the Sixers would be exhausted, buried behind even those Trail Blazers who have been on the rise in recent weeks. It doesn’t matter that Daryl Morey continues to sell, he did it again publicly yesterday, his bet on this season being a winner. It’s impossible for so many things to go as well as they would have to go for the speech of an executive who is ruminating on what is surely the biggest disappointment of his career to make any sense, a blow as big as the risk he took. All or nothing: it was nothing.

 

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And it doesn’t matter that the Big Three are on the court: Tyrese Maxey, Paul George, and Joel Embiid hadn’t played together since January 4, but the Sixers lost in a calamitous way (125-112) against a Pistons team without Cade Cunningham. A simply respectable team (26-26 now), which is already a lot considering where they come from, which these Sixers of the not-so-invincible Big Three don’t even come close to: eleven games (only) together, 7-4 record. Embiid has played fifteen games this season, and the Sixers are around (8-7) 50% of victories in them. A drama.

 

The first half was a massacre that marked the low point of a season full of low points: 78-49, the highest scoring in a first half for the Pistons since 1982. It bears repeating: without Cunningham. Embiid played, perhaps, the worst minutes of his career. He was held to three points, only scored one basket, and piled on an extensive batch of embarrassing highlights: air balls, ridiculous turnovers, and an intolerable defensive attitude. Like the entire team. Of the stars, only Maxey put some heart into a team without Yabusele and in which the newcomer Quentin Grimes made his debut (14 points, an attempt to bring attitude where there was none). At halftime, the supposed big three had 23 points. And Malik Beasley, alone, 20. The Pistons guard finished with 36 and 9/19 on three-pointers. And Tobias Harris happily helped his exes hit rock bottom (he had 22 points and 9 rebounds).

 

After the break, and having taken a kickabout attitude in a game that should have been important (all of them should be at this point, even more so if the three stars finally play), the Sixers put themselves in the hands of an Embiid who wanted to play for a while: he scored 20 points in the third quarter (he finished with 23, 7 rebounds and 6 assists) and showed that it is a matter of power … but also of want. There was a 4-22 run and a -14, but the Pistons had gotten close to +20 again at the start of the last quarter and ( for the last time: without Cade Cunningham ) they kept the score under control. They scored very easily against a paper defense, pitiful in transition (Embiid made comebacks to his zone intolerable), and won all the statistics that have to do with wanting to play basketball: 52-36 in the paint, 22-10 on the counterattack, 26-10 on second chances.

 

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Maxey finished with 27 points and 7 assists, and Paul George (with obvious problems with his left hand) with 14, one rebound, and not one assist. A miserable reality for a team that was a challenge, drums of war at the start of the season, Embiid’s great and surely last chance in the East. And that is, well past the halfway point of the season, a monstrous disappointment and a very difficult spectacle to digest most nights. Although Morey still sees there, somewhere, a team that could be a champion.

 

These were the results of the night in the NBA:

HORNETS 117 – SPURS 116

WIZARDS 124- CAVALIERS 134

HAWKS 115 – BUCKS 110

PISTONS 125-SIXERS 112

THUNDER 121 – RAPTORS 109

NETS 102-HEAT 86

SUNS 135-JAZZ 127