Joel Embiid Takes Inspiration From Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook After Sixers Exit

As always, hindsight is 20/20 here and the Sixers rightfully lost the game and the series, the offseason still carries on as normal and the Celtics move on to face the Cavaliers. The Philadelphia 76ers have morphed from laughingstock to legitimate Eastern Conference contender in just two seasons.

“It is something me and Coach haven’t discussed yet”, the rookie point guard said Thursday in a media availability during the team’s exit interviews. “Going into the series Miami guarded us differently and then you go into Boston, they are way better defensively and they guarded us a certain way”, Embiid admitted.

If they want to extend the series to Game 6, the Sixers will likely have to find a way to slow down Celtics rookie Jayson Tatum on Wednesday night. But the Celtics are back in the conference finals. “They’re loud. They talk a lot of (expletive) to you”.

As Bleacher Report’s Michael Lee pointed out, officials are loathe to make potentially game-changing calls like that late in important contests, but it amounted to another reason for 76ers fans to gnash their collective teeth. Wilkerson, born in the Germantown neighborhood and now living in the Logan neighborhood, became a Sixers fan when Charles Barkley played for the Sixers in the mid-1980s.

“I feel like we had more [to show]”.

“I learned a lot”. “It’s a young team”.

Coach Brown defended the team’s prior performance in the series by saying he liked the spirit of the team in which they were playing.

If the Sixers can’t get the right big-time free agent despite their abundance of salary cap room, they still might get better by chipping away. But as the season ended, so did the commitments to JJ Redick, Amir Johnson, Ersan Ilyasova and Marco Belinelli. Fultz says his range is getting close to where he wants it to be but it isn’t quite yet. “Simmons and Embiid, they’re like Magic [Johnson] and Kareem [Abdul-Jabaar]”.

Al Horford added 15 points and eight rebounds for Boston, which will play Cleveland for the second straight year for a spot in the National Basketball Association finals.

Freedman’s father, a former attorney with the National Collegiate Athletic Association who now runs youth sports camps, grew up just outside Philadelphia in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and has raised his three children on the teams of his youth. “They need time to gel together”.

Brown played with such urgency, and delivered one of the best all-around games of his career. “That’s hard. I have an unbelievable amount of admiration for Brett anyways, but the way in which he’s created a culture in which they find joy is pretty special”. But it was when the courtesy was returned Monday during the Sixers’ season-saving 103-92 victory over the Boston Celtics that it gained a fresh coat of relevance.