Philadelphia 76ers: Brett Brown did Joel Embiid dirty in Game 5

After acknowledging his unwellness before the jump, Brett Brown did Joel Embiid, and the Philadelphia 76ers dirty by overplaying the ailing center.

The Philadelphia 76ers are a good team because Joel Embiid is a good basketball player.

It’s just that simple.

Sure, the team’s surrounded him with a bunch of talented players through the draft (Ben Simmons), free agency (J.J. Redick and Greg Monroe), and via trade (Tobias Harris, Jimmy Butler, and James Ennis), but without Embiid the Sixers would probably struggle to even make the playoffs, let alone do so as the third overall seed.

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Which is why Brett Brown‘s decision to overwork his two-time All-Star center despite being clearly under the weather is so maddening.

Now don’t get me wrong, I understand as much as anyone that Brown’s job is on the line if the team can’t pull this series out, as it would be his second straight out in the semi-finals despite having a much better roster this go around, but even so, he has to put his best players on the court, ad put them in a position to win.

Joel Embiid was not among the team’s best players in Game 5.

Again, with his future on the line, I don’t knock Brown for trying his darndest to get Embiid on the court, starting him even after missing shootarounds, but once it became abundantly clear that he wasn’t all there, the coach should have pulled the Cameroonian bigman, and instead doubled down one speed, size, and aggressiveness that the sluggish center couldn’t provide.

It’s not like it hasn’t worked before.

In the team’s lone outing without Embiid on the court this postseason, Game 3 against the Brooklyn Nets, the Sixers won with ease; outscoring the Nets 131-115 on the back of a 31 point performance by Simmons.

Would that run-and-gun strategy have worked against the Raptors in a pivotal Game 5 on their home court? Who knows, but it certainly couldn’t have been worse than trotting out an injured/sick/demoralized center and asking him to perform like Magic-era Shaq.

As a head coach, Brown has to understand he embarrassed his best player, and erased any hungover moral the team still had from their two-game win streak last week.

And really, it didn’t need to happen.

Before the game, Butler described how the team needed to pick up the slack for Embiid and muscle out a win in the way he had done in of so many times before (like Game 3). Would playing an energized starting five with Monroe at the five, looking to avenge their fallen leader have really set the team up worse than trotting out a squad with Embiid at center?

I mean they lost by 36 for goodness sake; it couldn’t have been any worse.

Next. The Philadelphia 76ers are horrible front-runners. dark

While Game 5 is important, Game 6 is even more so, and by trying to force a win with a flawed strategy, Brett Brown may have single-handedly cost the Philadelphia 76ers this series, and put is very future in jeopardy. Not a good look.