{"id":522183,"date":"2026-01-07T09:14:40","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T09:14:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/522183\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T09:14:40","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T09:14:40","slug":"76ers-joel-embiid-reacts-to-goaltend-overall-play-in-loss-to-nuggets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/522183\/","title":{"rendered":"76ers’ Joel Embiid reacts to goaltend, overall play in loss to Nuggets"},"content":{"rendered":"

PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia 76ers<\/a> were primed to keep the good vibes rolling on Monday when they played host to a Denver Nuggets<\/a> team missing all five of their starters and top two reserves. Following a 3-game win streak to end their 5-game road trip, this was a perfect opportunity to pick up another win.<\/p>\n

Instead, the Sixers laid an egg. They allowed the Nuggets to shoot 53.1% from the floor overall and 48.6% from deep and fell 125-124 in overtime.<\/a> Joel Embiid, who had a terrific game of 32 points and 10 rebounds, was called for a goaltend with 5.3 seconds left on a Bruce Brown drive for Denver that proved to be the game-winning bucket.<\/p>\n

“I haven’t seen it, but, yeah, I think I mistimed it,’ Embiid said after the loss. “I thought Tyrese (Maxey) was going to be in the way a little bit more to give me a chance, but, yeah, I just mistimed it.”<\/p>\n

One has to wonder if this was just a trap game for the Sixers. They had a terrific win over the New York Knicks<\/a> on Saturday to end their road trip and returned home to face the short-handed Nuggets. On top of them being undermanned, it was also the second night of a back-to-back as they had fallen to the Brooklyn Nets<\/a> on Sunday before heading to Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

“Yeah, it shouldn’t be an excuse,” Embiid stated. “Obviously, when you see they’re missing all their best players, I don’t know what happens if we lowered our guards, but that’s on us. We should have been better. That’s not an excuse.”<\/p>\n

The Nuggets were walking into practice style jumpers as third-year guard Jalen Pickett scored a career-high 29 points and knocked down seven triples while Peyton Watson added 22 points. The overall defensive effort for the Sixers was just not good enough to get a win.<\/p>\n

“Just point of attack,” Embiid explained. “We let them get comfortable. We’re all NBA players, and when you let someone get in a rhythm, they’re most likely to keep it going. Obviously, we weren’t aggressive enough to stop, and they got in that rhythm, and it carried over.”<\/p>\n

Either way, the Sixers came up short in a game they needed. This loss doesn’t define them, and these things happen over the course of an 82-game season, but when considering how bunched up things are in the standings, this was a loss they can’t afford. Philadelphia needs to win these types of games.<\/p>\n

“We just didn’t make the plays when we needed them,” Embiid finished. “The spacing was kind of terrible tonight, so we got to work on that. But yeah, terrible loss.”<\/p>\n

The Sixers will play host to the Washington Wizards<\/a> on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia 76ers were primed to keep the good vibes rolling on Monday when they played…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":522184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3781],"tags":[679,7,670,247,52,1049,6850,301,187,3943,832,1361,304,4196,6,626,671,239,191,67,302,61,628,2361,678,207,25507,66,83,256,1263,682,468,683,303],"class_list":["post-522183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-denver-nuggets","tag-76ers","tag-basketball","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-nets","tag-brown","tag-bruce","tag-bruce-brown","tag-denver","tag-denver-nuggets","tag-denvernuggets","tag-jalen","tag-jalen-pickett","tag-knicks","tag-maxey","tag-nba","tag-negative","tag-nets","tag-new","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-news","tag-nuggets","tag-overall","tag-overall-negative","tag-pa","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-76ers","tag-pickett","tag-sports","tag-sports-news","tag-tyrese","tag-tyrese-maxey","tag-washington","tag-washington-wizards","tag-wizards","tag-york"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115853057609640061","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}