Embiid will be sidelined again for the second leg of a back-to-back against the Bulls in Chicago on Saturday night with a sprained right ankle as the Sixers will look for their third consecutive victory.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“He’s on the court again,” Sixers coach Nick Nurse said Friday of Embiid’s recovery. “He’s still a little sore. But he was on the court again today. Just trying to make sure that he’s a little bit better before we bring him back. … We hope that he’ll be ready for the next (trip).”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Embiid is averaging a league-best 35.0 points per game and is fifth in rebounding (11.7).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Without Embiid, Tyrese Maxey led the way against the Rockets with 42 points — 13-of-26 shooting from the field and 14-of-15 from the free-throw line. Tobias Harris added 22 points, De’Anthony Melton had 15, and Marcus Morris Sr. came off the bench to produce 14.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Morris scored 10 of his 14 in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“Maxey did a heck of a job of carrying us in this game,” Morris said on a postgame interview on NBC Sports Philadelphia. “We came out flat.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Maxey played 41 minutes and anchored the Sixers, who desperately needed that production without Embiid.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“That was a good level of aggressiveness,” Nurse said. “I thought he was great and had his jets on tonight.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Bulls will look to rebound following a 120-104 loss to the Indiana Pacers on Thursday. Patrick Williams led the Bulls with 22 points while DeMar DeRozan added 21.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Because the Bulls have dealt with a litany of injuries this season, DeRozan’s workload has increased. The 34-year-old has played more than 40 minutes in six games this month.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“I’m concerned about that,” Chicago coach Billy Donovan said. “I mean, he’s great. I talk to him all the time. But it’s kind of the situation we’ve been in with Torrey (Craig) out, Vooch (Nikola Vucevic) out and Zach (LaVine) out. I want to be mindful of that and always talk and communicate with him. He has played a lot of minutes, and I probably need to look at that.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Bulls fell behind early and weren’t able to recover despite the strong performances by Williams and DeRozan.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“You never want to put yourself in a position to have to fight back from a deficit,” Williams said. “We did a good job obviously working our way back into the game, but it’s tough to expend all that energy to get back.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Without Craig, Vucevic and LaVine, the 15-year veteran DeRozan will be counted on even more than usual.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It’s a challenge he fully accepts.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“I feel good, better than expected,” DeRozan said. “I’ve always done a great job of trying to take care of myself physically. Even now, just doing extra stuff, a lot of stuff that a lot of people just don’t know or realize that I do after games, on off days.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
–Field Level Media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Philadelphia 76ers have shown they can survive without Joel Embiid. The Sixers won for the second straight game without the reigning Most Valuable Player in a 131-127 victory over the Houston Rockets on Friday. Embiid will be sidelined again for the second leg of a back-to-back against the Bulls in Chicago on Saturday night […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-442950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nba"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yebscore.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yebscore.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yebscore.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yebscore.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yebscore.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yebscore.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442950\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yebscore.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yebscore.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yebscore.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}