Also like, this Philly-NY series is crazy because it feels like Philadelphia has no home court advantage. Embiid getting booed in his own arena! Jalen Brunson getting 'MVP' chants when he went up to shoot free throws!
This series is also honestly a sort of legacy dismantlement for Nick Nurse as a coach. Dude has a championship! Dude's done some impressive things! But he went to Philly and it's like... losing a game 1 because of a miscue on calling a timeout.
And then this game, like... Philadelphia is shallow and the player quality on that team dips sharply as you go into the bench; there's a reason they dug a huge hole losing games in the regular season when Embiid went down with injury.
But you gotta be able to figure out a way to have Embiid play fewer minutes. You gotta cobble together some manner of decent non-embiid lineup. Because that man cannot be on the floor the entire second half, by the start of the fourth quarter he looked basically useless. Couldn't guard anyone, couldn't jump. He simply doesn't have the conditioning for it. That entire fourth quarter was defined by Embiid gassing out.
Nurse's coaching philosophy has always been about winning by simply playing his good players more minutes than other coaches are willing to, but with Embiid... when Embiid gets gassed a switch flips and he goes from being one of the best players in the world to being Kelly Olynyk with a better whistle.
