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    ‘The Interview’: Joel Embiid Believes He Could Have Been the GOAT

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    If all goes according to plan, the star-laden American men’s basketball team will romp to a gold medal at the Paris Olympic Games next month. Which means that for one of the team’s linchpins, the Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid, the most complicated challenge may have been choosing to play for the United States in the first place.Embiid, who is 30, is a native of Cameroon who also holds French and American citizenship. France aggressively courted Embiid, and his decision to instead join the U.S. team led to withering criticism from the French basketball community. (Cameroon’s team did not qualify for this year’s Games.)Listen to the Conversation With Joel EmbiidThe N.B.A. star talks Philly cheesesteaks, Twitter trolling and playing for Team U.S.A. over France in the Olympics.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon Music | NYT Audio AppBut things never go easily for Embiid. He is one of the sport’s best players but also something of a Sisyphean figure. For all his success — including an M.V.P. award in 2023 and multiple scoring titles — he has never achieved the N.B.A.’s biggest prize: a championship. The Sixers have repeatedly fallen short in the playoffs, at times in heartbreaking fashion. Then there’s the churn: During his tenure, the team has seen coaches, star players and general managers come and go. And Embiid himself can’t seem to avoid injury. (Shortly after Embiid and I spoke, the 76ers did sign another star player, Paul George. So there’s reason to hope, Philly fans!)That combination of iffy management and just plain bad luck have cast the shadow of unfulfilled potential over Embiid’s decade-long career. So in some ways, the Games are a chance for a little redemption. Although based on his past experience, Embiid told me he is expecting adversity instead.Can you talk about what it means for you to be playing for the United States? It means a lot. I’ve spent half of my life here. I’ve got a great family, great wife, my son, so it just made a lot of sense. I’ve been given the opportunity to be here and accomplish a lot. More

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      George McGinnis Dies at 73; Powered His Way to Basketball Stardom

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      He won two titles with the Pacers of the A.B.A. before joining Julius Erving on the N.B.A.’s 76ers, but it was 35 years before the Hall of Fame inducted him.George McGinnis, whose rare combination of size and agility made him a pillar of two early 1970s championship teams in the upstart American Basketball Association, but whose heralded pairing with Julius Erving on the N.B.A.’s Philadelphia 76ers failed to fulfill expectations of a title, died on Thursday in Indianapolis. He was 73.The Indiana Pacers, the team with which he won his A.B.A. titles, said his death, in a hospital, resulted from complications of cardiac arrest, which he suffered last week at his home in Indianapolis. McGinnis had struggled to walk in recent years after undergoing multiple back surgeries because of a hereditary condition, the team said.McGinnis played at the high school, college and professional levels in basketball-obsessed Indiana, where he broke Oscar Robertson’s scholastic scoring records while leading Washington High School in Indianapolis to a 31-0 record and a championship in 1969.McGinnis led Washington High School in Indianapolis to a 31-0 title run in 1969.Frank Fisse/IndyStar, via ImagnAs a forward, he averaged 30 points and 14.7 rebounds in his one season at Indiana University before joining his hometown Indiana Pacers. The Pacers immediately won successive A.B.A. championships, though McGinnis, surrounded by the veterans Mel Daniels, Roger Brown and Bob Netolicky, was not the team’s unquestioned star until his second season, when he averaged 27.6 points and 12.5 rebounds per game.At a chiseled 6 feet 8 inches, 235 pounds, McGinnis was a harbinger of basketball’s athletic revolution, featuring taller players who could be brawny around the basket but more agile away from it with each passing decade, navigating skillfully in open space.“Big guys in my era couldn’t handle the ball,” he said in an interview with the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame before he was inducted into it in 2017, an honor that many believed was egregiously overdue 35 years after he retired. “But I could dribble with my left hand, my right hand and take guys outside.”He credited those skills to the coaching he had growing up in Indiana, where “fundamentals are well taught,” he said.Len Elmore, a Pacers teammate for one season — McGinnis’s last in Indiana before joining the 76ers in 1975 — said in a telephone interview that he harked back to McGinnis when LeBron James, slightly bigger at 6-foot-9 and 250 pounds, entered the N.B.A. in 2003 with the Cleveland Cavaliers.“Similar size, strength, mobility,” Elmore said, “I remember saying it immediately — George was LeBron before LeBron. You couldn’t believe that with his body he could be that agile.”McGinnis during Game Two of the N.B.A. finals against the Portland Trail Blazers in 1977.James Drake/Sports Illustrated, via Getty ImagesOne distinctive part of McGinnis’s game was his midrange jumper, a right-handed shot-put-like release that made purists cringe. “It was different, but he made it work for him,” Elmore said.After leading the A.B.A. in scoring, averaging 29.8 points, and sharing the league’s 1974-75 Most Valuable Player Award with Erving, his future 76ers teammate, McGinnis left the cash-strapped Pacers, calling his departure “a dollars and cents thing.”In a challenge to the N.B.A.’s constitution, he tried to circumvent Philadelphia’s draft rights by signing with the New York Knicks. But when the league voided the deal, McGinnis joined the 76ers, accepting a six-year contract for $3.2 million (the equivalent of about $18.3 million today). It was one season before the team acquired Erving from the New York Nets as it entered the N.B.A. with three other A.B.A. teams, including the Pacers.“George was the turnaround factor in pro basketball in this town,” Pat Williams, the team’s general manager, told Sports Illustrated in 1982. “Julius put up the walls and a roof, but it was George who built the foundation.”The 76ers’ slogan for McGinnis’s first season in Philadelphia was “Let George Do It.” Led by McGinnis, who was voted to play in the first of his three N.B.A. All-Star games, the 76ers increased their win total to 46 from the previous season’s 34 but lost in the first round of the playoffs.Erving’s arrival electrified the sport, though questions abounded on whether the two prolific forwards could coexist. “It was inevitable that people would say we hated each other, but Julius and I knew it wasn’t true, and we were above it,” McGinnis said in the Sports Illustrated article.The 76ers were within two victories of fulfilling their supposed destiny, taking the first two games against the Portland Trail Blazers in the 1976-77 league finals. But the Bill Walton-led Blazers won the next four. McGinnis struggled with his shot until the last game in Portland, when he scored 28 points.The Western Conference All-Stars in 1979. McGinnis is seated on the left, in the front row.NBAE, via Getty ImagesTrailing by two with one last possession in Game 6, the 76ers’ head coach, Gene Shue, called a play for McGinnis. Erving, who had already scored 40, was bewildered by Shue’s bypassing him and Doug Collins, the team’s best pure shooter.After another disheartening playoff exit the following season, the 76ers dealt McGinnis to the Denver Nuggets, landing Bobby Jones, whose staunch defense better complemented Erving and helped the 76ers win the title in 1983.McGinnis did not have a long career, especially compared with James’s 21st-century standard. His performance declined in Denver, in part because of an Achilles’ tendon injury. He returned to the Pacers during the 1979-80 season, finishing his 11th and final pro season, 1981-82, with an average of 4.7 points over 76 games.George F. McGinnis was born on Aug. 12, 1950, in Harpersville, Ala., about 30 miles southeast of Birmingham, the son of Burnie and Willie (Keith) McGinnis. His father was a carpenter. With a daughter, Bonnie, the family settled on the west side of Indianapolis.During McGinnis’s senior year of high school, his father died after falling off scaffolding at a construction site — days after watching George score 53 points and grab 30 rebounds in an All-Star game. McGinnis, who was also an all-state football player, said he left Indiana University early to help support his mother.He expressed regret that he had missed out on playing for the Indiana coach Bobby Knight by one season, speculating, “I think it would have given me different values.” (Knight died in November.)Many believed McGinnis’s induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2017 was egregiously overdue, coming 35 years after his professional retirement from the sport.Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE, via Getty ImagesMcGinnis was married for 43 years to Lynda (Dotson) McGinnis, who had been a high school girlfriend. She died of cancer in 2019, not long after he underwent surgery to address a back issue, spinal stenosis, that forced him to walk stooped with a cane or walker. His survivors include his sister, Bonnie McGinnis.After his playing years, McGinnis worked as a broadcaster in Indianapolis, where he and his wife founded GM Supply Company, a provider of special tooling and abrasives to manufacturers, in 1991.McGinnis remained a popular fixture in the state’s basketball community, and in September was inducted into the Indiana University Athletics Hall of Fame.Twenty years earlier, he told The New York Times, “One of the great things about being a basketball player in Indiana is that they never forget you.”Alex Traub More

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      James Harden Did Not Start the Problems for the Philadelphia 76ers

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      Discontent is not new for star players, but it has become very public for the Philadelphia 76ers at a moment when their fans are running out of patience.For Philadelphia 76ers fans, this is The Bad Place.“Disgust among Sixers fans is at one of the highest levels I have ever seen here in Philadelphia,” Joe DeCamara, a Philadelphia radio host, said in a recent interview.A confluence of misfortune and bad strategy has almost left the team where it was in the mid-2000s at the end of the Allen Iverson era: adrift with no path to contend for a championship. Whatever plans Daryl Morey, the team’s president of basketball operations, had when he took over in 2020 seem to have unraveled.“We feel like people are underrating the Sixers right now,” Morey told reporters at his introductory news conference, “but we need to go out there and prove it.”What has been proved, in fact, is quite the opposite, punctuated recently when James Harden, the team’s second-best player, publicly trashed Morey as part of his quest to force a trade to another team.Discontent is not new for star players, but in the Sixers’ case it has become very public at a moment when their fans are at their wits’ end. The broader public has developed an appetite for this brand of superstar drama because it pops up every summer, but the Sixers, perhaps more than other N.B.A. teams, are poorly positioned to plea for patience because the organization has put its fans through a decade of stops and starts, including the rebuilding plan known as The Process.Harden is one of the most talented offensive players in the N.B.A., but he has come up short in the playoffs.Bill Streicher/USA Today Sports Via Reuters ConHarden’s relationship with the Sixers became a Good News-Bad News situation this summer. The Good: Harden, a 33-year-old guard, opted into the last year of his contract. The Bad: It was on the condition that the Sixers trade him to the Los Angeles Clippers, according to two people familiar with the request but not authorized to discuss it publicly. To make matters worse, videos that emerged on social media this week appeared to show Harden disparaging Morey while speaking to reporters at an Adidas event in China.“Daryl Morey is a liar and I will never be a part of an organization that he’s a part of,” Harden said in the videos. Harden’s agent and Adidas did not respond to requests from The New York Times seeking to confirm the authenticity of the videos. A Sixers spokesperson declined to comment.The exact nature of Harden’s anger at Morey is unclear, but his displeasure is an extraordinary setback nonetheless. Harden is one of the greatest offensive players ever, and few defenders can guard him alone because of his combination of ball handling and size. He is one of a small number of players who can will a team to victory by themselves — when he chooses.Harden and Joel Embiid, the star center who is Philadelphia’s best player and the reigning Most Valuable Player Award winner, share some of the responsibility for the Sixers’ lack of success. They often underperform at crucial moments in the postseason, and did so again this spring, when the Sixers lost to Boston in the second round.This has brought even more pessimism to Philadelphia, where sports-related despair is as essential to the city’s identity as the hoagie.“As a fan, it’s simple: I want the team to win,” said Amos Lee, a folk singer-songwriter and avid Sixers fan. “I want them to spend all of the money and get all of the best players and put the coolest people on the team and that’s it. But I don’t know what this franchise is.”Lee added, “It has been for a long time really poorly managed.”Daryl Morey, the president of the Philadelphia 76ers. He traded with the Nets for James Harden in February 2022.Matt Slocum/Associated PressThe Sixers have not made it to the Eastern Conference finals since 2001, and Doc Rivers, who was hired as head coach a few weeks before Morey joined the team, had a history of falling short in the playoffs. Still, Morey kept him for three seasons. And after Ben Simmons, the star point guard drafted two years after Embiid, demanded a trade out of Philadelphia, Morey resisted before swinging a trade for Harden, who was trying to force his way off his second straight team. Now Philadelphia is his third.According to a person familiar with Morey’s thinking, the plan remains to bring Harden back after the Sixers ended trade negotiations with the Clippers when they could not reach what they believed would be a suitable deal.That is not a plan — that’s unjustified hope. Harden has shown that he is willing to hold out or loaf on the floor if he does not get the trade he wants. And even if Harden returns, the team did not make any real improvements this off-season and, in fact, lost several rotation players to free agency. If the 76ers could not get out of the second round last year, how will they do next season with a less-talented team and an unhappy Harden?If Harden does go, he will be the latest in a string of Sixers stars who have left the team under acrimonious circumstances, stretching back to Charles Barkley in 1992. Before Simmons and Harden, Iverson was frustrated with the franchise when he was traded in 2006, as was Andre Iguodala when he was traded in 2012.Morey has long shown little interest in fielding a struggling team. When he was an executive in Houston in 2019, he traded Chris Paul and multiple first-round picks for Russell Westbrook after the Rockets lost in the second round of the Western Conference playoffs. Before that, Morey dismantled a middling Rockets team that included a young Kyle Lowry. Those moves allowed the Rockets in 2012 to acquire the star who would push them toward true contention: Harden.If Morey decides to hit the eject button on the Embiid and Harden era in Philadelphia, after less than two full seasons, he has shown a willingness to make hard choices. But that requires patience Sixers fans do not have, and asking the team’s ownership to accept a near-term regression and financial hit while they are planning for a new arena.Joel Embiid won his first Most Valuable Player Award in the 2022-23 season.Winslow Townson/USA Today Sports Via Reuters ConBut the clock is not just ticking on what to do about Harden. It is also ticking on Embiid. He said recently that he wanted to win a championship whether it was in Philadelphia “or anywhere else.” He later suggested that he was not serious, though that has not eased the anxiety of some Sixers fans.On one hand, fans could understand his restlessness. He has endured several different front office heads, a coaching carousel and unhappy stars without even a conference finals appearance to show for it. But on the other hand, those same coaches, executives and teammates have had to endure his disappointing playoff performances, too.“They have not done a great job around him,” said Spike Eskin, co-host of “The Rights To Ricky Sanchez,” a Sixers fan podcast that is unaffiliated with the team. “The organization has been a mess for the entirety of his career. But he is as much to blame for their lack of success in the playoffs as anybody is.”But for now, Morey does not have many options. That is partly on him. The best option in a sea of bad ones may be to engage in some wishful thinking: Maybe Harden shows up to camp in great shape and reconsiders his desire to leave. Maybe Embiid puts together another M.V.P.-level season and does not get hurt, as he so often has.Maybe they can even get out of the second round. More

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      Jayson Tatum Shines as Boston Celtics Blow Out 76ers in Game 7

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      Tatum’s scoring output was an N.B.A. record for a Game 7, and it helped send the Celtics to the Eastern Conference finals, where they will face the Miami Heat.BOSTON — Jaylen Brown had used his public platform ahead of Sunday afternoon’s game to deliver a clear message to Celtics fans: Get loud. The energy at TD Garden for the team’s home games during its N.B.A. Eastern Conference semifinal series with the Philadelphia 76ers had been merely OK, he said.On Sunday, Brown got what he wanted for Game 7. It was loud early, and it was loud late. The crowd cheered every dunk and 3-pointer, every defensive stop and offensive rebound.By the time Boston’s Jayson Tatum stood near the center circle late in the fourth quarter, in the waning moments of a tour de force and the best game of his career, he beckoned the fans for even more noise. They were happy to oblige.The crowd was still cheering when the Celtics left the court with a 112-88 victory that decided the best-of-seven series and assured Boston that its championship dream would live on.Tatum, a first-team All-N.B.A. selection who had not exactly played flawless basketball during the series, was extraordinary on Sunday, scoring 51 points — an N.B.A. record for a Game 7. Brown added 25 points in the win. The Celtics led by as many as 30.“That’s when I’m at my best, when I’m having fun,” said Tatum, adding that he tried to channel his childhood love for the game. “When you go out there and relax and kind of think about those days when you were at the Y.M.C.A. or whatever, the game opens up.”Tatum was a stunning 17 of 28 from the field on Sunday, for a 60.7 field-goal percentage.Steven Senne/Associated PressA blowout loss will surely lead to an off-season of uncertainty for the third-seeded 76ers, who had title hopes of their own. But Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid, who recently collected his first N.B.A. Most Valuable Player Award, struggled in Game 7, finishing with just 15 points while shooting 5 of 18 from the field. Sixers guard James Harden scored only 9 points.“That’s the best team in the league,” Embiid said of the Celtics. “They’re so talented, and they’ve got a lot of guys who can play great basketball. Losing to them, seven games, I thought for the most part we played hard.”The Celtics, the No. 2 seed in the East, put the game out of reach with a searing run in the third quarter that included back-to-back 3-pointers by Brown and Tatum. The fourth quarter was a party that masqueraded as the closing stages of an otherwise tightly contested playoff series.“When J.T. is playing like that, we’re going to be extremely hard to beat,” Brown said of Tatum.In the process, the Celtics earned a meeting with the eighth-seeded Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference finals, starting on Wednesday in Boston. After surviving the play-in bracket, the Heat ousted the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks in the first round, then eliminated the Knicks in six games in their conference semifinal series. Boston beat the seventh-seeded Atlanta Hawks in six games in the first round.The Heat have a star in Jimmy Butler, who, year after year, seems to elevate his level of play in the postseason — a fearsome two-way player who seldom has an off night.The Celtics, of course, have an explosive star of their own in Tatum, but he had his struggles against the 76ers. On Sunday, he was the best player in the building. He shot 17 of 28 from the field and 6 of 10 from 3-point range, and finished with 13 rebounds and five assists.“We just handled the ebbs and flows of the series,” Celtics Coach Joe Mazzulla said. “We never got too emotionally high or too emotionally low. We were able to keep our emotional togetherness intact.”Missed opportunities will haunt the 76ers, who had a 3-2 series lead with a chance to wrap it up at home on Thursday. In that game, Tatum missed 13 of his first 14 field-goal attempts. But the Celtics were solid defensively and Tatum got hot late to extend the series with a 95-86 win.“To be honest, they had us on the ropes,” said Tatum, adding: “And I was relieved, because our season could’ve been over.”Game 7s are inherently important, but so much seemed to hinge on this one for both teams. For the Celtics, a loss would have represented a stark regression from all that they achieved last season, when they advanced to the N.B.A. finals before losing to the Golden State Warriors in six games.But progress is seldom linear, and the Celtics faced an unusually rocky path this season: an unexpected coaching change before the start of training camp, a season-ending injury to Danilo Gallinari before he even appeared in a game and a defense that lacked its familiar oomph.For the 76ers, Sunday’s game, fair or not, set up as something of a referendum on the Process, the team-building exercise that, as one of its foundational pieces, landed them Embiid in the 2014 N.B.A. draft. But now was the time for a deep playoff run.Sixers Coach Doc Rivers acknowledged the pressure before the game and anticipated the importance of his key players pushing themselves “to the max of exhaustion.”Embiid spent his final few quiet moments before the tip dribbling near the halfcourt circle. He even hoisted a couple of pretend shots before handing the ball to his teammate Tyrese Maxey.Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid and James Harden combined for just 24 points in Game 7.Adam Glanzman/Getty ImagesThe rest of Embiid’s afternoon was grim. Harden’s was somehow worse. The 76ers have now made six straight playoff appearances without advancing to the conference finals.“I thought James came to play, I really did,” Rivers said, referring to Harden. “I thought he was trying to see the game, and I thought he played downhill a lot. Where he passed the ball tonight was the right decision, and we didn’t get anything out of it.”The series was full of uneven performances. Atop that list was Harden, who scored 45 points in Game 1 before he promptly disappeared, shooting a combined 5 of 28 from the field in a pair of losses. He resurfaced for Game 4, scoring 42 points, but was passive again in Games 5 and 6. So the question was: Which version of Harden would show up for Game 7?He was laboring early in the second quarter when he appeared to lose his grip on the ball going for a layup. Caught in the air, Harden swung an elbow that caught Brown in the face.“Nothing like a shot in the face to wake you right up,” Brown said.Harden was whistled for a flagrant foul. Brown made both free throws, and then Tatum threw a lob to Robert Williams for a dunk. Rivers cited the flagrant foul as a turning point.“After that, we never played right again,” Rivers said.The Celtics were continuing to mount a run when Brown, who was playing with a cotton swab stuffed up his left nostril to stanch the bleeding from his collision with Harden, tumbled in front of the opposing bench. As Brown gathered himself and turned to run upcourt, the 76ers’ Georges Niang reached out from his folding chair to grab Brown’s left leg.Brown yelled at Niang, and both players were assessed technical fouls. At the time, Boston was actually trailing. But the fans were loud, and the Celtics made sure they stayed that way. More

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      Celtics’ Jayson Tatum Overcomes Own Poor Play to Force Game 7

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      Tatum said after Game 6 that he is “one of the best basketball players in the world.” But for the first three quarters against the 76ers, he sure didn’t look like it.PHILADELPHIA — At the end of one of the stranger games of his career, Jayson Tatum of the Boston Celtics pounded the ball against the court as the final seconds elapsed. The sound of those hard dribbles — each a percussive thud — seemed to fill Wells Fargo Center as thousands of 76ers fans tried to make sense of what had just happened in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference semifinals.How was any of it possible? How had the 76ers blown an opportunity to secure their first trip to the conference finals since 2001? How had the Celtics seized on such a simple change — sliding Robert Williams into their starting lineup — to boost their defense? And how had Tatum, after having spent most of his evening chucking up wayward jump shots, ultimately preserved his team’s season?“For 43 minutes, I had to hear them tell me how bad I was,” Tatum said of the fans. “So it kind of felt good to see everybody getting out of their seats, leaving early.”A strange series full of strange games will go the distance — because why not? — after the Celtics put the clamps on the 76ers in a 95-86 victory on Thursday, forcing a Game 7 on Sunday in Boston.Both teams are built to win now. These are not young, overachieving franchises. The 76ers are desperate to fulfill the long-awaited promise of their team-building blueprint known as the Process, with Joel Embiid, who recently collected his first N.B.A. Most Valuable Player Award, operating as their focal point. The Celtics, meanwhile, have been using the slogan “unfinished business,” a nod to how close they came to winning it all last season when they lost to the Golden State Warriors in the N.B.A. finals.An early exit for either the 76ers or the Celtics — and getting bounced from the playoffs in the conference semifinals would qualify — could lead to a summer of change. A win, though, would be seismic.“Honestly, I wouldn’t want to go to Game 7 in Boston with any other group,” 76ers Coach Doc Rivers said. “I know we’re going to rally. We’ve rallied all year long on the road.”On Thursday, Tatum rallied from his own struggles. He missed 13 of his first 14 field-goal attempts, a stretch of futility that extended into the fourth quarter. His teammates, he said, continued to feed him positive reinforcement. Keep rebounding. Keep defending. Keep passing. Keep shooting.Joe Mazzulla, the Celtics’ first-year coach, went one step further.“I love you,” Mazzulla recalled telling him. “That’s a pretty powerful statement.”Tatum came alive in the fourth quarter of Game 6, hitting four 3-pointers.Matt Slocum/Associated PressTatum’s first 3-pointer of the game gave the Celtics an 84-83 lead. He sank another one 39 seconds later. He made four 3-pointers in the game’s final 4:14, turning the arena into a mausoleum. He finished with 19 points, 9 rebounds and 6 assists.“We rely on him,” the Celtics’ Malcolm Brogdon said. “He’s our guy. And he’s proven that he’s reliable in those moments. I don’t think there’s any doubt in anybody’s minds. It doesn’t matter how many shots he missed in the first three quarters. He’s going to finish the game for us.”Tatum, a first-team all-N.B.A. selection for the second straight season, has no shortage of confidence. In a walk-off interview with ESPN after Thursday’s game, he referred to himself as “humbly, one of the best basketball players in the world.” It was quite a statement after he shot 5 of 21 from the field.“I think that shows character that you call tell yourself that when you’ve only hit one shot,” he said later, “and things aren’t going your way, and you’ve got to be the same person with the same morals, the same character whether you’re up or down. And I kept telling myself that. I believe in myself.”Accordingly, Tatum gave Mazzulla a reprieve — for at least a couple of days. Mazzulla, who was an assistant under Ime Udoka last season, took over as the team’s interim coach a few days before the start of training camp when the Celtics suspended Udoka for unspecified “violations of team policies.” The Celtics removed Mazzulla’s interim tag in February and signed him to a contract extension.But the pressure on Mazzulla, 34, has only mounted in the playoffs — and during this series, in particular. There was Game 1, which the Celtics lost even though Embiid was sidelined with a sprained knee. There was Game 4, which the Celtics lost in overtime after they forced up a poor shot in the closing seconds. (Mazzulla later apologized to his players for neglecting to use one of his remaining timeouts.) And there was Game 5, which the Celtics lost thanks to a listless display of basketball that had their home fans booing them.Joe Mazzulla has struggled to make adjustments during the playoffs in his first year as head coach of the Celtics.Tim Nwachukwu/Getty ImagesBefore Game 6, Mazzulla made a long-overdue change by starting Williams, a defense-minded center, in place of Derrick White — a move that Marcus Smart, the team’s starting point guard, endorsed. In addition to blocking two shots and affecting countless others, Williams had 10 points and 9 rebounds.“Joe’s learning, just like all of us,” said Smart, who finished with 22 points, 7 rebounds and 7 assists. “I know he’s been killed a lot, rightfully so. He needed to make some adjustments, and he did that, and that’s all you can ask for — for him to just continue to be the best that he can be.”Tatum described how he and Mazzulla had leaned on each other throughout the season.“I know there’s a lot of questions and doubts,” Tatum said, “and I’ve told him a lot of times: ‘I’ve got you, I’ve got your back. We’re in this together.’” More

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      James Harden Finds His Old Groove and Gets the Sixers Back on Track

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      Harden, the Sixers guard, summoned the scoring machine he had been for previous teams but had not been in Games 2 and 3, and Philadelphia tied its second-round series with Boston, 2-2.PHILADELPHIA — James Harden of the 76ers was on his way to Wells Fargo Center on Sunday morning when he received a text message from his coach, Doc Rivers, that included a link to a gospel song, “You Know My Name” by Tasha Cobbs Leonard. It was the first time Rivers had sent Harden a song. His curiosity was piqued.“I tell my homies, ‘Let’s play the song,’” Harden recalled, adding, “I let the whole song play, and I’m like, ‘All right, it’s got to be some kind of good juju in this song.’”It was not some random text, of course. The basketball-watching universe had spent about 36 hours dissecting Harden’s poor play in the past two games of the 76ers’ Eastern Conference semifinal series with the Boston Celtics. The point of sending the song, Rivers said, was to remind Harden of his identity.“James had to get himself back,” Rivers said.Sure enough, with 19 seconds left in overtime Sunday afternoon, Harden sank a baseline 3-pointer that lifted the 76ers to a 116-115 victory and evened the best-of-seven series at 2-2. Harden was brilliant in Game 4, finishing with 42 points, 9 assists, 8 rebounds and 4 steals.“Quite frankly,” Harden said, “today was do or die.”The 76ers have been a staple of the N.B.A. playoffs over the past six seasons, making five appearances in the conference semifinals. But those second-round series are where the road has tended to end for them. The last time they made the conference finals was in 2001, when Allen Iverson led them past the Milwaukee Bucks and into the N.B.A. finals. (The 76ers wound up losing in five games to the Los Angeles Lakers.)The collective patience of Philadelphians seems to be wearing thin. Before Game 3, when N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver presented 76ers center Joel Embiid with his first Most Valuable Player Award, it was the fulfillment — on at least one level — of the franchise’s dust-covered, team-building blueprint known as the Process. Without getting into too many of the messy specifics, it involved the team playing abysmal basketball for several seasons while collecting a slew of top draft picks, one of which they used to select Embiid from the University of Kansas.The challenge for the 76ers, of course, is that the Process was never about winning individual honors, though those are nice. The mandate now, on players like Embiid and Harden, but also on Rivers and Daryl Morey, the team’s president of basketball operations, is to vie for a championship. Embiid is 29. The 76ers traded for Harden last season. Before Game 4, Rivers was asked about his team’s level of urgency.“Do I really need to answer that question?” he said, laughing. “You worked on that question for 48 hours, and that’s what you came up with? Whatever high is, I’m going to assume it’s high.”Harden delivered. Early in the first quarter, he made a beeline to the basket and scored on a runner, playfully bopping the ball off his head after it fell through the hoop. It was a sign of more pyrotechnics to come.None of it was easy. The 76ers gave up a 16-point third-quarter lead. Embiid finished with 34 points and 13 rebounds, but struggled from the field, shooting 11 of 26. And Jayson Tatum scored 22 of his 24 points after halftime, nearly leading the Celtics to a crushing comeback victory. Instead, Harden shouldered the load for the 76ers.“I’m always a competitor,” he said. “I always want to win.”During the regular season, Harden operated as a facilitator, averaging a league-best 10.7 assists per game. He was neither the scoring nor the 3-point-shooting machine that he was in a former basketball life with the Houston Rockets. Instead, he formed a potent partnership with Embiid, the team’s centripetal force. Everything and everyone revolved around Embiid, for good reason, including Harden.Game 1 of the 76ers’ series with the Celtics upset that balance in an odd and unexpected way. Embiid had sprained his right knee late in the first round and was sidelined, which meant that Harden apparently felt obliged to board his personal time machine and travel back to his gluttonous, ball-dominant days with the Rockets. He torched the Celtics, scoring 45 points while shooting 7 of 14 from 3-point range to lead the 76ers to a narrow win.Embiid was back in the lineup for Games 2 and 3, and suddenly Harden seemed almost too conscious of his teammate’s presence, too passive and deferential. It hardly helped that Jaylen Brown affixed himself to Harden for long stretches. In those two losses, Harden shot a combined 5 of 28 from the field and 2 of 13 from 3-point range. Game 3 on Friday was particularly gruesome. Harden routinely passed up open shots. When he did launch a 3-pointer early in the fourth quarter, he barely grazed the front of the rim. More than a few fans expressed their displeasure.“I think with anyone, if you’re not making shots, you hesitate at times,” Rivers said.For his part, Harden defended his shot selection, telling reporters: “I’m pretty good on basketball instincts. I know when to score. I know when to pass, so I’m pretty sure a lot of it was the right play.”Center Joel Embiid, left, going up for a shot against Al Horford of the Celtics, scored 34 points on Sunday.Matt Slocum/Associated PressOn Saturday, the 76ers had a lengthy film session at their practice facility. Rivers identified clips from Game 3 where he felt the 76ers needed to play with more pace, where the Celtics outhustled them for rebounds and loose balls, and where his players exhibited poor body language. The Celtics, who advanced to the N.B.A. finals last season and have renewed title aspirations of their own, carried themselves differently.“I think the film yesterday said what we had to be,” Rivers said, “that they’re going to make a run, that we’re going to make a mistake. Things are not going to go well, and just keep playing.”On Sunday, the 76ers made plenty of mistakes. Their offense stalled in the fourth quarter. They stopped moving and settled for tough shots. Harden, though, has playoff experience, and he said he was also inspired by the presence of John Hao, a student who survived the deadly shooting at Michigan State University in February. Harden and Hao connected over FaceTime.Late in regulation, Harden’s runner over the Celtics’ Al Horford tied the game, 107-107. And in overtime, Harden came up with a key steal while defending Marcus Smart. He appeared to have a calming influence on his teammates.He also found himself with the ball in his hands when it mattered most. He knew who he was. More

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      James Harden Scores 45 to Beat the Celtics

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      Asked to shoulder the load, Harden scored 45 points in a playoff game for the first time in eight years.The last time James Harden scored 45 points in a playoff game, it was 2015. His Houston Rockets, down three games to none in the Western Conference finals, were winning a home game for pride against the soon to be champion Golden State Warriors.On Monday night, Harden matched that career playoff high in a much more significant game.With the Philadelphia 76ers’ star and N.B.A. scoring champion, Joel Embiid, out with a knee sprain, Harden scored 45 again, and gave the Sixers an unexpected one-game-to-none lead over the top-seeded Celtics, 119-115, at TD Garden in Boston.Points 43, 44 and 45 were the biggest, coming on a bloodless 3-pointer while closely guarded by Al Horford to give the 76ers a 117-115 lead with just over eight seconds left. On the next play, Marcus Smart of the Celtics threw the ball away in traffic under the basket, and two free throws wrapped it up for Philadelphia.“I was wondering if they were going to put two on the ball,” Harden said of the possibility of a double-team on the go-ahead shot. “It was a one on one. So then I’m looking up, I’m just, all right, this is what I work on every day. Get the best available shot no matter what it is. Raise up and shoot it.”Harden made 17 baskets on 30 shots, both season highs. He made seven 3-pointers on 14 shots, also both season highs. He also had a team-high six assists.From the first possession, Harden, 33, took it upon himself to get Philadelphia points, hitting a 10-foot jumper.“Whatever they gave me, I rose up and took a shot,” Harden said after the game. “Whether it’s a 3, whether it’s a floater, whether it’s a midrange jumper.”Asked why there was no double-team on the last shot, Celtics Coach Joe Mazzulla said: “That was one of our best defenders. He made a big shot.”Paul Reed had 13 rebounds filling in at center for Embiid. He had a career-high 15 in Game 4 of the Sixers’ first-round sweep of the Nets, a game that Embiid also missed.Going into Monday night’s game, the Celtics were favored not just in the series but to win the N.B.A. title. They were 9.5-point favorites to win Game 1 at home in the absence of Embiid.Disquietingly for the rest of the series, the Celtics actually played quite well on Monday, hitting 58.7 percent of their shots and outrebounding the 76ers by 10. But they never seemed to be able to stop Harden.“We have opportunities to bounce back,” a terse Mazzulla said.After three scoring titles and a Most Valuable Player Award with the Houston Rockets, Harden had built an impressive legacy. But it was tarnished somewhat with an abortive and injury-plagued two seasons with the Nets. When he was traded to the 76ers in early 2022, most of the focus was on the Sixers finally getting rid of Ben Simmons rather on their acquisition of Harden.Harden has fit in well as Embiid’s lieutenant in Philadelphia. He led the league in assists per game this season with 10.7 and averaged 21 points.Embiid shot around, but did not run on Monday at practice. Coach Doc Rivers said he didn’t know if Embiid would play in Game 2 on Wednesday.For one game at least, thanks mostly to Harden, the Sixers didn’t need him. More

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      Their Reputations Precede Them. And That’s the Problem.

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      When an athlete breaks the rules of the game, he or she may be judged on much more than that single act. Call it the Draymond Green Effect.Most times in basketball, a foul is just a foul. But sometimes, it can feel like so much more: a Rorschach test unearthing a person’s biases about the game, a window into a player’s thinking, a referendum on his entire career.Was that a malicious kick or an involuntary swing? When does an outstretched arm morph into a punch? Can an on-court act be judged on its own or must the actor be considered, too?A sequence of hard fouls across three different first-round N.B.A. playoff series — and the subsequent responses to them — has reinforced the extent to which the reputations of players, and the swirling narratives associated with them, seem to color the way the athletes, referees, league officials and fans process the action unfolding on the court.After each instance, the players’ reputations were called into action in some way — as corroborating evidence, as a shield, as a liability.It started on Monday of last week, when Draymond Green of the Golden State Warriors stomped his size 15 sneaker into the sternum of the Sacramento Kings big man Domantas Sabonis after Sabonis had grabbed Green while lying on the court. Afterward, the league suspended Green for one game, invoking not only the on-court incident but his entire body of work.“The suspension was based in part on Green’s history of unsportsmanlike acts,” the N.B.A.’s statement read, evoking the veritable highlight reel of pugnacious gamesmanship in his career, but not referencing any specific previous infraction.After he was called for fouling Royce O’Neale of the Nets in a first-round playoff game, James Harden of the Philadelphia 76ers gave the universal signal for “Who, me?”Frank Franklin Ii/Associated PressA few nights later, James Harden of the Philadelphia 76ers was ejected for hitting Nets forward Royce O’Neale below the waist on a drive to the basket. In the locker room after the game, Harden pointed toward his own reputation as part of his defense, mentioning that he had never before been thrown out of a game.“I’m not labeled as a dirty player,” Harden said, alluding to the public’s perception of him. He should not be judged harshly, he implied, because he is, so to speak, not that guy. (Harden, of course, has often been labeled by critics as something else: a player willing to flop to draw a whistle and earn free throws.)Then, two nights after that, Dillon Brooks of the Memphis Grizzlies was ejected for hitting LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers around the groin area while trying to defend him. The next day, Brooks, too, nodded toward his reputation, speculating that it must have preceded him on the play and informed the referees’ quick-fire decision to toss him.“The media making me a villain, the fans making me a villain and then that just creates a whole different persona on me,” Brooks said. “So now you think I intended to hit LeBron James in the nuts.”In sports, reputations are quickly formed and particularly hard to shed. Athletes conduct their professional lives in high definition. Their every move is broken down ad nauseam, scrutinized in slow motion, refracted through the eyes of analysts and commentators.Heightening this dynamic is the fact that history looms large in the sports world, seeming to always be front of mind. Record books and bygone statistics are invoked every day. Fans keep big wins and heartbreaking losses etched onto their hearts.“The past,” William Faulkner wrote, “is never dead. It’s not even past.”On top of everything else, the impulse to create two-dimensional characterizations about a person’s behavior, to reduce their action to moral terms, is widespread in the sports world, where fans and news media members often apply a storybook framework to the action, experts say.“We create these schema, these cognitive shortcuts, to read the world, and we’re quick to label individuals as friend or foe,” said Arthur Raney, a professor of communication at Florida State who has researched how emotions shape the sports viewing experience. “We do that with folks on the street, and we do that with entertainment and sports and politics and everything else.”Raney added, “And once those frames, those schema, are set, they then serve as a lens for our expectations of the future.”There will always be tension, then, around questions of whether an athlete’s reputation is fully justified.Ndamukong Suh, a defensive tackle in the N.F.L. with a long history of major penalties, cautioned people not to pass judgment too quickly. Here, he attended the league’s boot camp for aspiring broadcasters.Kyusung Gong/Associated PressNdamukong Suh, a longtime defensive tackle in the N.F.L., developed a reputation as a dirty player after a seemingly countless log of bad hits, fines and suspensions. Suh has pushed back against this characterization at various points in his career — though it is questionable whether anyone might be convinced otherwise.“Before you pass judgment on somebody, always take the time to get to know them, meet them, have coffee with them, whatever it may be and then be able to go from there,” Suh said in 2019.Many might similarly scoff at the claims of innocence of Brooks, who led the N.B.A. with 18 technical fouls in the regular season and made headlines earlier in the playoffs for taunting James (“I don’t care. He’s old.”) — essentially casting himself as a villain without anyone’s help.Still, when humans are involved in adjudicating behavior in sports, there will always be unanswerable questions about how those decisions are made. Did a player’s bad reputation lead officials to call more penalties or fouls on borderline plays? How many more fines and suspensions does a player earn after developing a reputation as someone who deserves them?“Generally, officials at the highest level do not hold grudges, but in a preconscious, mythic way are influenced by narratives,” said Stephen Mosher, a retired professor of sports management at Ithaca College.Reputations can be suffocating. Dennis Rodman’s reputation as an erratic and unsportsmanlike competitor — developed with the Detroit Pistons and honed with the San Antonio Spurs and Chicago Bulls — overshadows his status as one of the greatest defensive players in N.B.A. history. Metta Sandiford-Artest, years after his involvement in the fan-player brawl known as the Malice at the Palace in 2004, when he was still known as Ron Artest, developed a reputation as a mellow veteran, but only after changing his name and publicly reckoning with his mental health.And reputations can feel problematic when they seem in any part derived from race. Raney said the potential for this was higher in sports that were “racialized” — that is, closely associated with one race. He mentioned the tennis star Serena Williams, who is Black, as an example of an athlete who may have developed an undue reputation at times because of the color of her skin in the context of her sport. A recent study in European soccer revealed the dramatic differences in the way television commentators spoke about white players (praising their smarts and work ethic) versus nonwhite players (highlighting physical traits like strength and speed) and how far-reaching the impact of these perceptions could be.“I’d look directly at the story tellers, announcers, color people, for why these perceptions carry such weight,” Mosher said.Sports leagues invite speculation about the role reputations play in competition because of the apparently subjective nature of officiating.Joel Embiid of the 76ers was neither ejected nor suspended for this very personal foul against the Nets’ Nic Claxton.Wendell Cruz/USA Today Sports Via Reuters ConEarlier in the game from which Harden was ejected, 76ers center Joel Embiid blatantly tried to kick the Nets’ Nic Claxton between the legs. Embiid, who has largely maintained a reputation as a clean player, was not ejected or suspended. Harden and Brooks were not suspended after their ejections, either. (The N.B.A., like other sports leagues, takes into account a player’s disciplinary history when doling out punishments.)In explaining the disparity of outcomes between Embiid and Harden, the N.B.A. has asserted that the motive mattered far less than the outcome, and that each incident, even if it felt similar to another, needed to be evaluated on its own terms. No two shots to the groin are alike, essentially.“You have to be responsible for your actions outside the realm of intent,” Monty McCutchen, the N.B.A.’s head of referee development, said in an interview on ESPN.But many people’s minds went to a similar place. What would have happened if someone else — say, Draymond Green? — had kicked out the same way Embiid had. More

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      Joel Embiid Says He Can ‘Do Anything’ on the Court. Let Him Show You.

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      The Philadelphia 76ers center is one of the best big men in the N.B.A., but with his dribbling skills, he may be coming for the jobs of the guards.Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers took a half-beat to assess the situation during a late-season game against the Boston Celtics. As is often the case, he sensed an advantage.Embiid, a 7-foot, 280-pound center, cradled the ball near the top of the key as he faced up against the Celtics’ Grant Williams, a 6-6 forward who crouched into a defensive stance as he waved his left hand in Embiid’s face. It might as well have been an act of surrender.Embiid had a lot of extraordinary feats during the regular season to position himself as a favorite to win his first N.B.A. Most Valuable Player Award. In addition to leading the league in scoring for a second consecutive season, with a career-high 33.1 points per game, he averaged 10.2 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 1.7 blocks.But there was one thing he did more often than anything else, an underrated skill for him that destabilized opposing defenses and helped lift the 76ers to the third-best record in the N.B.A.: He took 5,526 dribbles.Embiid driving against Boston’s Grant Williams in a late-season game.Bill Streicher/USA Today Sports, via Reuters ConDuring that possession against the Celtics, Embiid needed just two of them — a pair of hard dribbles to his right as his teammates cleared out to the 3-point line, dragging their defenders with them. Embiid pulled up in the paint, then created space against Williams with a double pivot before he sank a short fadeaway jumper over him.“How are you going to stop that?” Ian Eagle, TNT’s play-by-play voice, said during the television broadcast.The short answer for the Celtics was that they weren’t. Embiid finished with 52 points in a narrow win.Not so long ago, N.B.A. centers made their lunch-pail livings by camping out near the hoop. A between-the-legs dribble out near the 3-point line would have probably landed them on the bench.But the game has changed, of course, and the plodding big man is a relic. The modern N.B.A. is teeming with huge players who can launch 3-pointers, run sets from the high post and, in some cases, stretch defenses by dribbling like their Lilliputian teammates. More