At a point this season, and certainly in the past, the Philadelphia 76ers have looked completely lost without Joel Embiid.
That’s not the case anymore.
While it hasn’t been pretty, the No. 1 seed 76ers have won four games in the five they’ve placed since Embiid went down with injury against the Washington Wizards.
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Mon, 22 Mar
Monday March 22nd
They earned their fourth-straight road win against the New York Knicks on Monday (AEDT) in another hard-fought battle between the two Eastern Conference rivals.
After squeezing past the Knicks last week at home, the Sixers backed it up with a 101-100 win inside Madison Square Garden as Tobias Harris found redemption in a controversial, ugly overtime thriller.
Harris hit two free-throws — after missing a pair in regulation that would have sealed the result — to put the Sixers up one with five seconds left after officials called a controversial loose-ball foul on Julius Randle.
The Knicks, including head coach Tom Thibodeau fumed at the decision, but it mattered little as Harris got it done at the line. Randle’s attempted buzzer-beater bounced out as New York fell for the 15th straight time to Philadelphia.
“Blown call by the officials,” Randle said after the game. “Not enough contact for them to call the play … after all the fouling and everything that was going on, for them to call that and decide the game is f***ing ridiculous. Yeah, it’s ridiculous, they’ve got to do a better job. There’s too many games like this.”
In truth, it was a game the Sixers probably didn’t deserve to win. Not that the Knicks did either.
Randle had tied the game at 88-88 with 6.1 seconds on the clock in regulation after Harris missed two free throws at the death. A Ben Simmons out-of-bounds pass then went through the hands of Harris; a pull-up three from Randle off the turnover was off the mark as fans got an extra five minutes of basketball.
Without the 30 points a game that Embiid has provided this season, the Sixers have had to lock in defensively and get contributions from the rest of the roster.
Shake Milton topscored for Philadelphia with 21 points off the bench, while Danny Green, who scored his first points of the game in the fourth, drained two massive three-pointers in overtime to finish with 11 points.
“Danny saved the game for us,” Doc Rivers said. “He was the only one in my opinion that kept his composure. We made mistakes. The game should have never gone into overtime. Let me just put it that way.
“So you could feel our energy. It wasn’t a good energy. Guys were down. They were mad. They thought they had blown the game.”
Harris added an inefficient 20 points (5-of-18 FG), while Simmons tallied 16 points, eight rebounds, and four assists, as well as seven turnovers in a sloppy game where the Sixers did just enough.
Randle was the high man for New York with 24 points, but it was Alex Burks off the bench who provided the scoring punch late.
DEADLY DUO DOWNS DENVER
In Denver, Brandon Ingram and Zion Williamson scored 30 points apiece for New Orleans and Nickeil Alexander-Walker added 20 points for the Pelicans, who overcame another triple-double from Nikola Jokic in a 113-108 victory over the Nuggets.
Williamson registered his 20th-straight game scoring 20 points on at least 50 per cent shooting and is now five games shy of topping Shaquille O’Neal’s record run.
Jokic posted his 11th triple-double of the season with 29 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists, helping the Nuggets rally from a three-point deficit heading into the fourth.
His three-pointer with 5:18 remaining capped a 9-0 scoring run that put the Nuggets up 95-92.
A couple of three-point plays by Ingram helped the Pelicans regain a three-point lead with less than a minute to play and New Orleans connected on a string of late free throws to seal the win.
‘HEROIC’ PLAY EXTENDS HOUSTON’S HORROR RUN
Oklahoma City’s Lu Dort scored 23 points and came up with a “heroic” late block on Houston’s John Wall Sunday as the Thunder handed the Rockets their 20th straight NBA defeat, 114-112.
The Thunder led by one when Dort missed a three-point attempt and the Rockets snagged the rebound with 15.8 seconds remaining.
Wall drove past Dort to the rim, but Dort managed to swat the ball cleanly away from behind, denying Wall’s layup with nine seconds remaining.
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“Honestly that was a heroic play,” Thunder centre Moses Brown said.
“I’ve never seen anything like it and it was so clutch.” Lu acknowledged that Wall “kind of beat me, so I just had to recover and not give up on that play.”
There was no time to celebrate however, Wall getting one more chance but bouncing a three-point attempt off the rim with less than two seconds remaining.
In the absence of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Al Horford, Dort led the Thunder against the reeling Rockets, whose 20-game skid is now three games longer than their previous worst losing streak.
Center Christian Wood led Houston with 27 points, eight rebounds and two blocks. Wall, in his second game back from a five-game injury absence, added 24 points and seven assists.
PACERS EDGE HEAT IN OT THRILLER
It was close in Miami, where the Indiana Pacers turned back the Heat’s late rally for a 109-106 overtime victory over last season’s Eastern Conference champions.
Trailing by five in the extra session, Indiana had two three-pointers by Justin Holiday and another by Malcolm Brogdon to seize the lead.
Caris LeVert, who missed a potential game-winner in the waning moments of regulation, drove in the dagger with a pull-up jumper with 48.2 seconds left that put Indiana up by three.
Seven Pacers players scored in double figures, with Domantas Sabonis contributing 17 points and 11 rebounds before fouling out in overtime.
Bam Adebayo led the Heat with 29 points and 10 rebounds but Miami endured their third straight defeat.