When star big man Joel Embiid went down with a bone bruise in his left knee, you knew, eventually, the Sixers would feel his absence on the court.
Yet the Sixers came out and won five of their first six games since Embiid went out of the lineup, giving up just 98.9 points per 100 possessions in those games, the best defense in the NBA over that span.
So in many respects, the Sixers were due for a clunker of a performance, especially on the defensive end, where they’ve been playing over their heads during this stretch without Embiid. That was especially dangerous if they came up against a team that is practically designed to hunt out mismatches and punish you into oblivion for every weak defender on the court, every rotation that is a step slow and every scheme that is poorly designed or executed.
