Yep the game Friday was well in hand by the time he began padding stats again. Switching Simmons over to him (as I knew it would) has come up gold for Philly.

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Joel Embiid is the lone superstar player in this series. Pretty obvious at this point.

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We shall see. Biggest game of his life is tonight. Even if he fails, he's still only 22 years old.

Ice Cold Trae is minus 32 for the series thus far. Its been the play of the Atlanta bench that has made this series close. Philly's starting 5 is vastly superior. And John Collins is showing that he is nowhere near a max player contract guy.

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Not a good start

Missing link might be right again

That possession was brutal. Stupid lousy Simmons.

i watched the end. What trash. Jew boy is probably excited though.

This use to be a great sport.

Go Suns. A true point guard.

Embiid with a donut for the second half tells the story of this game.

This isn’t a championship run…it’s starting to look like a limp out of the playoffs.

Philly has got this.

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Pushing the ball up the court by the Hawks ran the 76ers in the ground...and Simmons being on the bench at the end speaks loudly about his game

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I'm going to bounce from the spot for awhile but I will be back at some point to argue with you about this hoops stuff again. Playoffs have been great this season. See ya up the road.

I'm out.

Embiid didn't have it last night. First time it looked like the injury was impacting him. Really laboring. If he doesn't smoke the layup they win the game.

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that's what worries me. if he can't shake that off, they're not making it very far.

They can beat Atlanta without him but they won't beat anyone else without Embiid playing at a high level. When he reentered the game it was obvious he didn't have it but they kept force feeding him the ball on the block anyway.

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yeah the unfortunate truth is that they don't have someone who has that other gear they can plug in if he's struggling, and count on him to pick up the pieces. sure they can beat the hawks, but this should be a championship year. they're a #1 seed. gotta take advantage of that.

Without Embiid? I hope we get to see if that's true.

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Can't believe we have this series at 2-2. Trae was a savant running the point. 18 assists to only 2 turnovers. Shooting wasn't great, but I'll take 25/18/2TO and a win all day while being guarded by two guys on the all defensive team. Shoulder injury might've had something to do with that. Either way, kid is a baller and hit all his shots and free throws at the end of the game when it mattered most.


Nate finally waking up and not playing Solomon Hill is the real reason we won.


If the team could make layups and wide open 3's we win that game by 20 and Trae has 25 apples.

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Trae scored or assisted on all of the Hawks final 15 points. #garbagetime

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Even though he's killing us this series, gotta love Embiid.

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without embiid being 100%. embiid out completely, i don't think they take this series either.

I'm not so sure anything is bothering Emblid specifically. It's mostly fatigue. He's going to have to engineer his way through that to get to the Finals. They had that game in their back pocket if not for running out of gas.

yeah his 8 for 26 shooting performance and not their defense was instrumental in the win.

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If he goes down they will play a completely different style of ball with Simmons becoming more aggressive. That should be enough to beat the Hawks. They forced it into Embiid too much down the stretch last night. He clearly didn't have it offensively but he is their guy so they believed that they had to ride him.

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so you don't think him scoring or assisting on all of their final 15 points was instrumental? Or his 18 assists overall?


he shot poorly, no doubt. So did a lot of people. Bogi shot terrible, Embiid shot terrible. Those guys weren't being guarded by two all defensive team players though.

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Atlanta's Defense had more to do with it. Those all league defenders are locking him down with one on one coverage though. The only time he is doubled is when McMillan calls for the screen and roll. Its an interesting chess match when you think about it Shakes. Rivers is basically doubling as a means of daring McMillan to call off the screen and rolls. McMillan is only calling for screen roll so that Simmons or Thybulle will be switched onto someone else and Rivers is telling him "I ain't switching motherfucker so you better call another play".

Its interesting to watch 2 coaches that are actually coaching and making adjustments for a change.

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yea, the in game coaching chess match is interesting. It's a question of do you want to call over the screener so you can try and get a favorable switch, but then you run the risk of drawing a double team instead.

ATL defense did finally step up in the 4th quarter. That's a total team effort. Hawks even got away with sending Trae to double Embiid most of the night.

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I have never seen Embiid play that bad offensively. With all that being said if he doesn't smoke the layup Philly probably wins the game.

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Great way to screw your old team, Lou.

This is so effin typical of this franchise.

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The only difference between Ollie and Simmons is Ollie made his "free" throws

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I'm going to bounce from the spot for awhile but I will be back at some point to argue with you about this hoops stuff again. Playoffs have been great this season. See ya up the road.

I'm out.