Getty Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers is defended by Brook Lopez of the Milwaukee Bucks.
For stretches this season, the Philadelphia 76ers looked like the best team in the NBA. Just last month, they went on a tear, ripping off double-digit wins left and right, building momentum for a promising playoff run.
But lately, with the regular season winding down, Philly is looking less like a juggernaut and more like the Sixers of yore. And that includes a 13-point loss against the Milwaukee Bucks on Sunday night.
The 117-104 loss couldn’t have come at a worse time for Joel Embiid. Stacked against an MVP candidate in Giannis Antetokoumpo, the Bucks star was the clear winner of the heavyweight matchup.
And after the game, Bucks head coach Mike Budenholzer made it clear who the league’s MVP should be.
“I mean we certainly feel like Giannis is the MVP,” Budenholzer said about the NBA’s MVP race, per the Cube Rubik YouTube channel. “I think what our team has been able to do and we’ve still got some more work to have the best record in the league, but the best player, best record, what he does on both ends of the court, the rebounding, the blocked shots, the defense, the guarding on the perimeter, he does everything. He play makes, attacks, gets to the free throw line. So we feel like he’s in the conversation or he should be the guy. But I think he’s focused on our team, he’s focused on winning. His mind is in a good place and hopefully, everybody sees the MVP kind of season and performance he’s had all year.”
Embiid is still the betting favorite to win his first MVP award. Antetokoumpo, by comparison, is a distant third, behind Nuggets star and reigning MVP Nikola Jokic.
But Embiid likely needs a strong showing over the Sixers’ last handful of games to truly cement his stake in the award.
Jrue Holiday Calls Out James Harden in Sixers Loss to Bucks
Embiid’s efforts are all the more critical now, regardless of his status as an MVP candidate. That’s because his co-star James Harden has looked like a shell of himself since revealing Achilles soreness in March.
Since sitting out on March 18, Harden has missed four games. Philadelphia, meanwhile, has gone 3-5 over that stretch.
Harden is the motor behind the Sixers’ offensive engine, a factor Bucks guard Jrue Holiday knew going into the game. He spoke with reporters about the Bucks’ game plan in limiting Harden’s effectiveness Sunday night.
“[K]eeping James off the 3-point line, trying to get him in there doing floaters,” Holiday said, per Eric Nehm of The Athletic. “Since he’s such a great passer, just really having hands, trying to show bodies so that he doesn’t really see anybody. So James was going to (have to) go off (to beat us). Either he was going for 40 or 50, which is kind of difficult, or hopefully have a game like tonight where he just kind of gave it to me a couple times.”
It pays to keep Harden from getting going. For the season, the Sixers have the league’s third-best offensive rating, regularly scoring 115+ points per game. But since Harden has been scuffling with an injury, the Sixers have seen their offensive potency plummet.
Over the last eight games, Philadelphia has the league’s 11th-worst offense, on par with the Chicago Bulls and Oklahoma City Thunder.
Joel Embiid Sounds Off on Bucks After Sixers Loss
Of course, it didn’t help that Milwaukee was fresh off a drubbing by the Boston Celtics earlier in the week and clearly looking for blood.
“Obviously, they got their a** kicked last game, so they were sitting on it for two or three days,” Embiid said, per USA Today’s Sixers Wire. “So I’m sure they want to come back and get back to themselves and they did that. The hot shooting to start the game and they jumped on us and we didn’t have any answer.”
The Sixers don’t have much time to lick their wounds; they face off against the Celtics Tuesday night.