Joel Embiid looked tired in the fourth quarter
Who knows if Embiid’s knee was bothering him or not down the stretch, but after getting nothing to fall in the third quarter and exerting all of his energy to grab 21 total rebounds for the game, the Sixers’ MVP candidate looked completely gassed everytime he got the ball on offense.
Even though the Hawks did swarm Embiid every time he touched the ball in the second-half, he just could not get anything going offensively and was held to 0-12 shooting from the floor and just 4 points in the second-half!
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Joel Embiid has now played in 143 of the 192 total minutes in this series and he just looks tired. The guy is giving it his all out there on the court and even had a chance to give the 76ers the lead in the last several seconds of the game, but he looked slow and out of rhythm, resulting in him missing a layup attempt under the basket.
Atlanta’s suffocating defense in the second-half on Embiid played a big role in them erasing a 13-point halftime deficit, but the Sixers need to do a better job at giving their star more rest. The guy is playing with a partially torn meniscus in his left knee and is playing the second-most minutes on this team in this series next to Tobias Harris, so he deserves a couple extra minutes or so of rest here and there.
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Dwight Howard has been fairly effective in this series as Embiid’s backup, averaging 6.3 points, 6.5 rebounds and shooting 81.8% from the floor in about 11 minutes per game off-the-bench. Giving him 2, maybe 3 extra minutes on the floor instead of Embiid may ultimately prove to be a positive difference for the 76ers in this series, especially since Joel Embiid looked tired from the start of the fourth quarter on in Game 4.
Simply from observation, the Sixers must try and give their star some breaks, otherwise they are going to wear him down to the point where he will not be able to perform well when they need him most, like in the final few minutes of Game 4. This win was not a fluke for the Hawks and if they continue to wear out Embiid and make life tough on him, they could easily pull off another surprising victory on the road in Philadelphia.
