Philadelphia 76ers head coach Brett Brown was full of praise for center Joel Embiid after a key win in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals.
The man at the helm showered the big man with compliments after he suited up yet again and played a massive part in the Sixers' win, despite fighting off a respiratory infection:
“If you think you’re going to go just beat up on ’em and pound it into somebody that’s being defended by a Defensive Player of the Year, as Marc Gasol is, that’s a hard way to score,” Brown said after the game, according to Derek Bodner of The Athletic. “To suggest (Embiid) didn’t get the ball with his back to the basket on Marc Gasol a lot, this is true. Some of it was him reading the game, some of it was me not wanting to put him in that situation. I thought he was just brilliant all over the place.”
Embiid wasn't the most efficient for a third straight game, but he more than made up for that by making key baskets and patrolling the paint the way the Sixers coach has wanted him to. Raptors head coach Nick Nurse was extremely impressed by Embiid's defensive effort:
“I think his presence was a lot more than his baskets tonight,” Toronto head coach Nick Nurse said of Embiid. “We weren’t in the paint as much as we would have liked to (be), and I imagine he had something to do with that, right?”
Embiid had two huge blocks, including a poster-worthy one on Kawhi Leonard, which proved vital in swinging momentum to the Sixers' favor as they walked away with the win.
Now it will be up to Embiid to show up one more time in Saturday's Game 7 and bring the same energy to help Philly reach the conference finals, with the Milwaukee Bucks already looking at a whole week's rest before playing the winner of this series.
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